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    Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid
    Unavailable
    Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid
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    Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid
    Ebook888 pages12 hours

    Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid

    By Daniel Martin Varisco

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The late Edward Said remains one of the most influential critics and public intellectuals of our time, with lasting contributions to many disciplines. Much of his reputation derives from the phenomenal multidisciplinary influence of his 1978 book Orientalism. Said's seminal polemic analyzes novels, travelogues, and academic texts to argue that a dominant discourse of West over East has warped virtually all past European and American representation of the Near East. But despite the book's wide acclaim, no systematic critical survey of the rhetoric in Said's representation of Orientalism and the resulting impact on intellectual culture has appeared until today.

    Drawing on the extensive discussion of Said's work in more than 600 bibliographic entries, Daniel Martin Varisco has written an ambitious intellectual history of the debates that Said's work has sparked in several disciplines, highlighting in particular its reception among Arab and European scholars. While pointing out Said's tendency to essentialize and privilege certain texts at the expense of those that do not comfortably it his theoretical framework, Varisco analyzes the extensive commentary the book has engendered in Oriental studies, literary and cultural studies, feminist scholarship, history, political science, and anthropology. He employs "critical satire" to parody the exaggerated and pedantic aspects of post-colonial discourse, including Said's profound underappreciation of the role of irony and reform in many of the texts he cites. The end result is a companion volume to Orientalism and the vast research it inspired. Rather than contribute to dueling essentialisms, Varisco provides a path to move beyond the binary of East versus West and the polemics of blame.

    Reading Orientalism is the most comprehensive survey of Said's writing and thinking to date. It will be of strong interest to scholars of Middle East studies, anthropology, history, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and literary studies.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Washington Press
    Release dateApr 11, 2017
    ISBN9780295741642
    Unavailable
    Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid

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    Reviews for Reading Orientalism

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    • 5/5
      This is probably the best book to read after reading Edward Said's Orientalism. Perhaps they should be sold as a set. Orientalism generated an enormous body of critical literature; Varnisco has read more than 600 pieces and presents them here in a carefully documented, highly readable survey. He seems to have striven to be even-handed and fair; for example he both praises and criticizes Bernard Lewis. Since he has a detailed bibliography and notes, it serves equally well as a one-volume overview and as an entrée to all the literature. Varnisco's notes pose the one difficulty in the book: they are very definitely worth reading as one goes, but with so many, it is hard to choose: continue reading the text or flip back and forth?Varnisco's writing is marvelous. The introductory material is a little stiff and heavy on the academese, but after that it flows. He pulls together many direct quotations from his enormous variety of sources with grace and produces a highly readable text. In addition, he is very witty, and makes loving use of his language. He often includes well-chosen puns that enrich his text by producing alternative readings, both of which are correct. Examples include the subtitle, The Said and the Unsaid and on page 272: "The volume in question in which the offending article by Lewis appears is poor evidence for Said's dis[cuss]ing of Orientalism-as-usual", or the chapter heading Defin[ess]ing Orientalism. It is a pleasure to read an author who plays so skillfully with language.
    • 5/5
      This is probably the best book to read after reading Edward Said's Orientalism. Perhaps they should be sold as a set. Orientalism generated an enormous body of critical literature; Varnisco has read more than 600 pieces and presents them here in a carefully documented, highly readable survey. He seems to have striven to be even-handed and fair; for example he both praises and criticizes Bernard Lewis. Since he has a detailed bibliography and notes, it serves equally well as a one-volume overview and as an entrée to all the literature. Varnisco's notes pose the one difficulty in the book: they are very definitely worth reading as one goes, but with so many, it is hard to choose: continue reading the text or flip back and forth?Varnisco's writing is marvelous. The introductory material is a little stiff and heavy on the academese, but after that it flows. He pulls together many direct quotations from his enormous variety of sources with grace and produces a highly readable text. In addition, he is very witty, and makes loving use of his language. He often includes well-chosen puns that enrich his text by producing alternative readings, both of which are correct. Examples include the subtitle, The Said and the Unsaid and on page 272: "The volume in question in which the offending article by Lewis appears is poor evidence for Said's dis[cuss]ing of Orientalism-as-usual", or the chapter heading Defin[ess]ing Orientalism. It is a pleasure to read an author who plays so skillfully with language.