Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Part 1.1
Ten years after the demise of Edward Saïd, the maverick thinker remains one of the most cited and debated upon intellectual of the past half century. The thought of Saïd, and in particular his 1978 masterpiece, Orientalism, is generally perceived as initiator of what would become one of the most active fields of academic research and in some contexts, of activism: post-colonialism…
Category: EN
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Part 1.2
Edward Saïd’s reflections on the powers of the colonizing West on the rest of the world did not arrive in a vacuum. It had forefathers both in terms of the object of analysis, and in the methods he chose to follow…
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Part 1.3
The sudden prominence of Saïd after Orientalism is only equal in intensity with the number of voices that have criticized his work. Some are precise and question certain specific questions, or methodological assumptions of the work. Others are vaster, if not utterly rejecting the whole of Saïd’s intellectual undertaking…
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Section 2.2.1
Father of history, father of lie — but fortunately contemporary commentators do not refer to Herodotus’ name only to highlight the lack of rigor, or even the credulousness of the man. His writing and approach to historical recording was a rather large improvement from the logographers or tellers of tales, and even during his lifetime, this was certainly already realized…even during his lifetime…
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Section 2.2.2
One needs to scratch the outer skin of Herodotus’ historical account of Egypt to start noticing the more ideological, if not political, perspectives of his discourse. We could first notice how Herodotus, quite regularly, describes at length ethnographic observations or stories containing sexually explicit, if not trash material.
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Section 2.2.3
Finding the first Orientalist is a matter of importance. It is aiming at discovering the roots of what became later a major part of world history, one that determined world dynamics in the recent centuries and, according to Saïd, still does today as an after-effect of colonialism and in the surviving forms of Orientalism…
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Conclusion
Questioning the responsibility of Herodotus in the Orientalist project is asking the question of alternatives. Saïd himself seems to praise the curiosity and adventurous mind of Herodotus. Herodotus’ very presence in the debate is also liable to his enterprise of not only travelling to foreign places, but also of maintaining records of them…
Two Frenchmen in the Orient – Introduction
There was everywhere amongst Orientalists the ambition to formulate their discoveries, experiences, and insights…
– Edward Said, Orientalism