In The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats (1999), French structuralist Francis Zimmerman attempts a discussion of ancient practices and conceptions of health in India, framed on a speculated geographical representation of the concerned populations. He argues that in ancient Hindu medical texts the land and fauna classification was directly related to bodily function, disease classification and therapeutics…
Tag: Orientalism
Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Introduction
History and lie. Fifth century B.C. Herodotus is equally known as the ‘Father of History’ and the ‘Father of Lies’. His chronological and causal accounts of the Persian Wars may have marked the beginning of history as a discipline, but it was ignored by none, from his contemporaries to his most postmodern commentators, that Herodotus also included in his records some factually questionable episodes…
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…
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 2.2.3
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
Two Frenchmen in the Orient – Part 2
The most recurrent – and delightful – materials found in Flaubert’s stories from Egypt are precisely the author’s reflections on the very act of writing. Flaubert basically writes about writing. … But one would not deny that there is also a more humanistic interest in the project of travelling…