Polluters of the Brain

Bernard Lewis, Edward Said, and why “Orientalism” is Bulls—t.
Part 3: Orientalism and Postmodernism.
By Michael Isenberg.

In Part 2 of this series, I gave credit where credit is due to the things that Edward Said got right in his influential book Orientalism, in which he attacks Western scholars of the Middle East as racist lackeys of imperialist oppressors.

It will take two more posts for me to cover all the things he got wrong.

Let me start by addressing something that I don’t hold against him. Professor Said’s critics have made a great deal out of an infamous gaffe in Orientalism: “After Mohammed’s death in 632, the military and later the cultural and religious hegemony of Islam grew enormously. First Persia, Syria, and Egypt, then Turkey, then North Africa fell to Muslim armies.” Said got the sequence wrong—Turkey fell to Islam centuries after North Africa. But having written a couple books myself, I know just how hard it is to eliminate every last error and typo. I’m willing to give Said a pass on this one. If you consider the book as whole, it’s clear that he knows his history (Albeit I’m surprised the error wasn’t corrected in the book’s 25th Anniversary edition).

Of far more concern than a probably unintentional error of chronology is that Orientalism is based on a fundamentally flawed philosophy.

That philosophy is postmodernism.

Postmodernism is an approach to art and literary criticism that hit its stride on college campuses in the 1960s, just as Said was doing his graduate work. But its roots extend to older philosophies of the “we know that we know nothing” variety, such as the positivism of August Comte and the skepticism of David Hume. It’s closely associated with “poststructuralism,” “social constructionism,” “deconstructionism,” and the “French Theory” (or just “Theory”) of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault. Despite the nuanced theoretical distinctions that academics draw between these terms, as far as I can tell, in practice they’re used interchangeably.

The basic idea is that reality is ultimately unknowable by human beings. We can only know “narratives” and “representations,” which are inevitably warped by race, culture, language, socioeconomic group, and the interests of the powerful—especially the last. Foucault’s “big squishy pink-marshmallow word is ‘power,’” writes Said admirer and postmodernism critic Camille Paglia, “which neither he nor his followers fully understand.”

Needless to say, in a world where there is no truth, only “social constructs,” the effort to find Grand Themes running through history is pure folly (which is a problem for me personally, since my novel The Thread of Reason is the first installment in a series about one of those Grand Themes).

In Professor Said’s words, “The real issue is whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all representations, because they are representations, are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer.”

Applying that philosophy to western scholarship of the Middle East, he says, “My whole point about this system is not that it is a misrepresentation of some Oriental essence—in which I do not for a moment believe—but that it operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting.” Note that he’s inconsistent on whether a thing called the Orient actually exists apart from its representations. Here he says he does “not for a moment believe” in the existence of an “Oriental essence,” but in another passage, which I cited in Part 2, he says that “human reality seems to be genuinely divided, into clearly different cultures.” In any case, the inconsistency makes little difference in the postmodernist world view. We fallible humans can only grasp the representations anyway.

In her 1970 essay, “The Comprachicos,” Ayn Rand identifies the problem with this kind of philosophy, and the implications of teaching it to students. She was talking about “Progressive” ideas in general, but her critique certainly applies to postmodernism in particular.

They are being taught, by implication, that there is no such thing as a firm, objective reality, which man’s mind must learn to perceive correctly; that reality is an indeterminate flux and can be anything the pack wants it to be; that truth or falsehood is determined by majority vote. And more: that knowledge is unnecessary and irrelevant, since the teacher’s views have no greater validity than the oratory of the dullest and most ignorant student—and therefore, that reason, thinking, intelligence and education are of no importance or value.”

One has to wonder, if knowledge bears such little relationship to any sort of reality, what benefit there is in funding universities, or paying the comfortable salaries of postmodernist academics.

Camille Paglia has expressed similar reservations:

The fashionable French posturing—‘there are no facts’—has got to stop. There are no certainties, but there are well-supported facts which we can learn and build on, always with the flexible scholarly skepticism that allows us to discard prior assumptions in the face of new evidence. If there are no facts, surgeons couldn’t operate, buildings would collapse, and airplanes wouldn’t get off the ground.

Professor Paglia does not always employ such scholarly and measured tones when discussing postmodernism: “Empty word play,” she calls it. “Pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions.” “Positively idiotic.” “Abject philistinism masquerading as advanced thought.” And my favorite: “Polluters of the brain commit crimes against humanity. Dante’s Inferno has a special reserved foxhole for the followers of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault, who will boil for eternity in their own verbal sludge.”

Remarkably, Ms. Paglia does not include Mr. Said among those she would boil for eternity. She writes, “Said’s thinking has been influenced by Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon, but he uses their ideas sparingly and judiciously.” I find Professor Paglia's opinion mystifying in view of the implicit postmodernism that pollutes every page of Orientalism, not to mention Mr. Said’s own numerous explicit acknowledgments of his debt to Foucault. In all fairness, when she wrote this she was reviewing a different Said book, Culture and Imperialism. She may also have gone easy on him in view of their common ground on the New Historicism, yet another academic movement, this one popular in the 1990s. Said and Paglia both found it lacking in rigor.

It is now generally accepted that postmodernism has run its course. “Gone out of fashion,” say Jose Lopez and Garry Potter, editors of After Postmodernism. “Moribund,” says Paglia. Alas, reports of postmodernism’s near death are greatly exaggerated. Its noxious influence lives on in the persistent belief that there is no truth, only narrative. The main thing that's changed is now there’s less of a focus on text as a source of narrative, and more of a focus on race and gender, a trend to which Orientalism contributed in no small way.

And yet, getting into bed with postmodernism isn’t the only thing Orientalism gets wrong, as I shall discuss in Part 4, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Photo Credit(s): Judy Horacek

What do you think laws are for?

In which I respond to Tommy’s left wing critics.
Part V of a series: Who is Tommy Robinson?
by Michael Isenberg.

Dear Left-of-Center Friends: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your discussions with me about this series on anti-Islam crusader Tommy Robinson, who was jailed last month for livestreaming outside a grooming trial, in violation of British reporting laws. Despite my disagreements with you, some of our exchanges were quite civilized, which was a wonderful change of pace in this not-so-civil political climate in which we find ourselves. I always work hard to make sure I’m not reporting fake news, but your constant insistence on knowing my sources pushed me to dig even deeper than usual for corroborating evidence on the claims Robinson made in his autobiography and Oxford Union speech. And the many links you sent me that captured his less-than-stellar moments definitely had an impact on Part 3 of the series, where I took on the question of whether he’s racist. I love you all. But nevertheless, I feel compelled to call you out on your—how shall I put this nicely?—your inconsistencies.

As I wrote at the conclusion of my previous installment, “Most Shameful Hour,” “I recognize that many on the Left do not share my admiration for Tommy Robinson’s courage in speaking out against crime in his community inspired by the ideology of Islam. They think he’s a vile individual, both in character and ideas. Fine. Reasonable people can disagree. I had hoped, however, that regardless of what they think about Mr. Robinson himself, they would share my alarm at the prospect of a state that can beat down anyone who thinks they can mess with it. Sadly, my left-of-center friends do not see it that way.”

The following tweet from Owen Jones is typical of how they do see it. In his Twitter profile, Mr. Jones describes himself as a socialist and a writer for The Guardian, but I won’t hold those things against him on account of there’s a cat in his cover photo.

When did Leftists such as Mr. Jones suddenly become the champions of law and order? (And please don’t answer, “About the same time the Right stopped.” Tu quoque, besides being a fallacy, is so boring). When did the Left join the “The law’s the law” crowd? Certainly not when rioters were setting fire to the town of Ferguson, MO.

Or when punching Nazis was all the rage. I infer from this tweet that Mr. Jones was more or less in approval of the assault on the vile Richard Spencer:

pic.twitter.com/RNyKc5Uvgr

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) August 15, 2017

Even after his “’Tommy Robinson’” is not a martyr” tweet, Mr. Jones attacked President Trump for enforcing immigration law in the United States:

Hey, I’m with you, Owen, on some of these at least. When the law is unjust, it’s right to speak out. Sometimes it’s even right to defy it. “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God,” said Benjamin Franklin, a man who knew a thing or two about rebellion. What’s not right is to turn your back on that sort of principled opposition and suddenly transform into Judge Jeffreys when the victim of an unjust law is wearing the jersey of the opposing team.

The Left’s inconsistency is particularly jarring since this is a freedom of the press case. If some other reporter were jailed for what Mr. Robinson did, but he was a standard bearer for the Left, we would hear howls of outrage from that side of the aisle—inevitably invoking the word “chilling”—and read learned treatises on how unjust reporting laws are.

And I agree. They are unjust.

There’s a key distinction here. Many of my left-of-center friends have lectured me in great detail about exactly what the law says, and how Tommy Robinson ran afoul of it. I get all that. I concede that this is the law of the land. My point is that it shouldn’t be.

Such laws violate freedom of speech and freedom of the press. These aren't just high-sounding words. They're essential ingredients to maintaining a free society. They're embraced by the British Constitution. And yes, I understand that the British Constitution is a patchwork of laws and court decisions, not a single written document like in the United States. That’s not relevant in this context. What is relevant is that it’s nevertheless a thing and that it protects certain freedoms.

Press freedom is especially crucial in the context of trials. Justice needs to take place in full view of the public to prevent the bench from becoming an instrument of tyranny. It is no coincidence that the vilest dictatorships on earth—Iran, for example—regularly conduct trials in secret. Great Britain, where our freedoms originated, does not belong in their company.

Nor do I buy the argument that without strict reporting laws, “trials of alleged rapists would collapse and alleged rapists would walk free.” Other countries routinely hold trials in full view of the public and manage to get convictions. For example, we just convicted a prominent rapist in the United States—Bill Cosby—despite daily play-by-play coverage on CNN.

There’s something else at play here, and there’s an exchange from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that illustrates it beautifully. In this scene, Dr. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute confronts steel executive Hank Rearden for selling a greater quantity of his “Rearden Metal” to a customer than the law allows. Rearden observes,

“You seem to be pleased about it.” “Don’t I have good reason to be?” “But, after all, I did break one of your laws.” “Well, what do you think they're for?” Dr. Ferris did not notice the sudden look on Rearden's face, the look of a man hit by the first vision of that which he had sought to see. Dr. Ferris was past the stage of seeing; he was intent upon delivering the last blows to an animal caught in a trap. “Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against—then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.”

This is exactly what happened to Tommy Robinson, not just in his present incarceration, but throughout his long persecution at the hands of Her Majesty’s Government. The grooming crisis, the evil practice of creating an emotional connection with young girls—often by addicting them to drugs—in order to turn them into sex slaves, was out of control. Tommy Robinson—who had a victim in his own family—had the temerity to shine the disinfectant of sunlight on it. Because he claimed the perpetrators were disproportionately Muslim, he was called racist and fascist and every other name under the sun. But this was not some feverish anti-Muslim propaganda. Events vindicated Mr. Robinson completely as reports came out that thousands of girls were victimized; public officials conceded that they had been slow to prosecute, in part because the girls were poor and white, in part because they were afraid of being accused of racism; eventually prosecutions were conducted and convictions obtained. Tommy Robinson had done the state some service and they knew’t. And that couldn’t stand. He had embarrassed them; he had to be destroyed. But what do you think laws are for? It's a tribute to Mr. Robinson's honesty, that in an age of proliferating laws, the prosecutors had to work as hard as they did to come up with the mortgage fraud charge against him.

I implore my left-of-center friends, who pride themselves on standing up to authority, and speaking truth to power, to look beyond Mr. Robinson’s team jersey and take heed. A State powerful enough to destroy your opponents today is powerful enough to destroy you tomorrow.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com