Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism

Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. By ZACHARY LOCKMAN (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2004; pp. xxi + 307. £40; pb. £16.99). MANY, if not most, academics engaged in Middle East Studies in the United States have come to believe that their field was subject to a dangerous assault on its freedom and integrity as a result of developments triggered off by the 9/11 attack: assault from outside by those who either ignored or belittled its claim to area expertise; assault from inside by a group of fellow academics who argued that it had been largely hi-jacked by post-modernist followers of Edward Said to the detriment of its scholarship, its relevance, its patriotism and its political impartiality. As a European who has taught at Middle East Centres in both Oxford and Harvard for some forty years, I see matters from a somewhat different perspective. For one thing, accusations of political, methodological, not to speak of ideological, bias have been part and parcel of the field throughout most of the post-war period, and more especially since the deep divisions promoted by the 1967 Middle East war. For another, the influence of Edward Said's seminal work, Orientalism (1978), has never been anything like as strong in our field as it has more generally in post-colonial, feminist and cultural studies. I would also argue, again from personal experience, that the present situation is not anything like as dire as many of my colleagues seem to think, and that the twin impact of 9/11 and the bungled occupation of Iraq have, in fact, alerted many powerful groups in both Washington and academe as to the need for more area and Middle Eastern language expertise not less—a situation which has already brought us a large rise in government funds, as well as, at Harvard at least, pressure for several useful appointments in both Islamic and Middle Eastern political studies.