The debate on Orientalism began some fifty years ago in the wake of decolonization. While initially considered a turning point, Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) was in fact part of a larger academic endeavor – the political critique of “colonial science” – that had already significantly impacted the humanities and social sciences. In a recent attempt to broaden the debate, the papers collected in this volume, offered at various seminars and an international symposium held in Paris in 2010-2011, critically examine whether Orientalism, as knowledge and as creative expression, was in fact fundamentally subservient to Western domination. By raising new issues, the papers shift the focus from the center to the peripheries, thus analyzing the impact on local societies of a major intellectual and institutional movement that necessarily changed not only their world, but the ways in which they represented their world. World history, which assumes a plurality of perspectives, leads us to observe that the Saidian critique applies to powers other than Western European ones — three case studies are considered here: the Ottoman, Russian (and Soviet), and Chinese empires. Other essays in this volume proceed to analyze how post-independence states have made use of the tremendous accumulation of knowledge and representations inherited from previous colonial regimes for the sake of national identity, as well as how scholars change and adapt what was once a hegemonic discourse for their own purposes. What emerges is a new landscape in which to situate research on non-Western cultures and societies, and a road-map leading readers beyond the restrictive dichotomy of a confrontation between West and East. With contributions by: Elisabeth Allès; Léon Buskens; Stéphane A. Dudoignon; Baudouin Dupret; Edhem Eldem; Olivier Herrenschmidt; Nicholas S. Hopkins; Robert Irwin; Mouldi Lahmar; Sylvette Larzul; Jean-Gabriel Leturcq; Jessica Marglin; Claire Nicholas; Emmanuelle Perrin; Alain de Pommereau; François Pouillon; Zakaria Rhani; Emmanuel Szurek; Jean-Claude Vatin; Mercedes Volait

How does Edward Said's Orientalism speak to us today? What relevance did and does it have politically and intellectually? How and in what modes does Orientalism engage with new, intersecting fields of inquiry? At the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Orientalism these questions shape the essays collected in the present volume. The "after" of the title does not only guide the contributions in a look on past discussions, but specifically points at future research as well. Orientalism's critical entanglements are thus connected to productive looks; these productive looks make us read differently, but only after we recognize our struggle with the dominant notions that we live by, that divide and unite us. More specifically, this volume addresses three fields of research enabling productive looks: visual culture; the body, sexuality and the performative; and national identities, modernity and gender. All articles, weaving delicate, new analytical and theoretical textures, maintain vital links with at least two of the fields mentioned. Orientalism's role as a cultural catalyst is gauged in the analysis of materials such as Iranian film, 16th and 17th century Venetian representations of "the Turk," Barthes' take on Japanese culture, modern Arab travel narratives, Palestinian popular culture, photography on and of the Maghreb, Japanese queer and gay culture, the 19th century Illustrated London News, theories on migration and exile, postcolonial cinema, and Hanan al-Shaykh's and Mai Ghoussoub's writing on civil war in Lebanon. Authors include: Karina Eileraas, Belgin Turan Özkaya, Joshua Paul Dale, John Potvin, Mark McLelland, Tina Sherwell, Nasrin Rahimieh, Stephen Morton, Anastasia Vallasopoulos, Suha Kudsieh and Kate McInturff.

More than three decades after its first publication, Edward Said's groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East has become a modern classic. In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding. Essential, and still eye-opening, Orientalism remains one of the most important books written about our divided world.

This edited volume presents a critique of citizenship as exclusively and even originally a European or 'Western' institution. It explores the ways in which we may begin to think differently about citizenship as political subjectivity.

How does Edward Said’s Orientalism speak to us today? What relevance did and does it have politically and intellectually? How and in what modes does Orientalism engage with new, intersecting fields of inquiry?At the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Orientalism these questions shape the essays collected in the present volume. The “after” of the title does not only guide the contributions in a look on past discussions, but specifically points at future research as well. Orientalism’s critical entanglements are thus connected to productive looks; these productive looks make us read differently, but only after we recognize our struggle with the dominant notions that we live by, that divide and unite us. More specifically, this volume addresses three fields of research enabling productive looks: visual culture; the body, sexuality and the performative; and national identities, modernity and gender. All articles, weaving delicate, new analytical and theoretical textures, maintain vital links with at least two of the fields mentioned. Orientalism’s role as a cultural catalyst is gauged in the analysis of materials such as Iranian film, 16th and 17th century Venetian representations of “the Turk,” Barthes’ take on Japanese culture, modern Arab travel narratives, Palestinian popular culture, photography on and of the Maghreb, Japanese queer and gay culture, the 19th century Illustrated London News, theories on migration and exile, postcolonial cinema, and Hanan al-Shaykh’s and Mai Ghoussoub’s writing on civil war in Lebanon.Authors include: Karina Eileraas, Belgin Turan Özkaya, Joshua Paul Dale, John Potvin, Mark McLelland, Tina Sherwell, Nasrin Rahimieh, Stephen Morton, Anastasia Vallasopoulos, Suha Kudsieh and Kate McInturff.

Douglas Little explores the stormy American relationship with the Middle East from World War II through the war in Iraq, focusing particularly on the complex and often inconsistent attitudes and interests that helped put the United States on a collision course with radical Islam early in the new millennium. After documenting the persistence of "orientalist" stereotypes in American popular culture, Little examines oil, Israel, and other aspects of U.S. policy. He concludes that a peculiar blend of arrogance and ignorance has led American officials to overestimate their ability to shape events in the Middle East from 1945 through the present day, and that it has been a driving force behind the Iraq war. For this updated third edition, Little covers events through 2007, including a new chapter on the Bush Doctrine, demonstrating that in many important ways, George W. Bush's Middle Eastern policies mark a sharp break with the past.

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.