On Russian Orientalism: A Response to Adeeb Khalid
Nathaniel Knight
Adeeb Khalid and I agree on many things. Although he does not find the argument in my recent article on Russian Orientalism compelling, our positions on
some key issues are quite close. 1 Khalid is dissatisfied with my interrogation of
Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism as it applies to the Russian empire.2 But
my critique of Said was not nearly as unequivocal as Khalid suggests: to say that
we should regard Said’s model with caution is not a “blanket dismissal.” Nor do
I advocate ignoring the rich and stimulating literature on European imperialism
that has flourished in the time since Said’s work first appeared. In fact, my criticisms of Said have much in common with the arguments of a number of authors
who, while sympathetic to many of Said’s objectives, find fault with his theoretical inconsistencies, ahistorical formulations, essentializing tendencies and deterministic view of the individual.3 Khalid is well aware of these criticisms. He
alludes to the “conceptual dilemmas” arising out of Said’s use of Foucault, as well
as to his “tendency to essentialize Orientalist discourse (and ‘the West’), and to
over-determine the relationship between Orientalism and colonialism.” Subsequent scholars, Khalid notes, have worked hard to refine Said’s ideas, thereby
imparting “greater flexibility and sensitivity to historical change.” I believe I can
safely conclude that Khalid and I agree on at least one essential point: Said’s
1
The article in question is Nathaniel Knight, “Grigor ¢ev in Orenburg, 1851–1862: Russian
Orientalism in the Service of Empire?” Slavic Review 59: 1 (Spring 2000), 74–100.
2
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
3
For example, James Clifford, “On Orientalism,” in his The Predicament of Culture: TwentiethCentury Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 255–76;
Aijaz Ahmad, “Orientalism and After: Ambivalence and Metropolitan Location in the World of
Edward Said,” in his In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literature (London and New York: Verso, 1992),
159–219; Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds., Orientalism and the Postcolonial
Predicament: Perspectives of South Asia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993);
Dorothy M. Figueira, “Oriental Despotism and Despotic Orientalisms,” in Anthropology and the
German Enlightenment: Perspectives on Humanity, ed. Katherine M. Faull (Lewisburg: Bucknell
University Press, 1995), 182–99; Marjorie Perloff, “Tolerance and Taboo: Modernist Primitivisms
and Postmodernist Pieties,” in Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of
Modernism, ed. Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995),
339–54. See also George Marcus and Michael Fischer’s brief but trenchant comments in
Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986), 1–2 .
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1(4): 701–15, Fall 2000.
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NATHANIEL KNIGHT
Orientalism, while stimulating, provocative, and vastly influential, has significant
methodological and conceptual flaws. It should not be adopted as a “universal
model,” but rather should be read in the context of subsequent critiques.
While we may agree on some of the essentials, however, differences remain
over the particulars. In this essay, I will address some of the specific points Khalid
raises in his critique of my article and conclude with some suggestions as to how
the notion of Orientalism might be rendered more useful both in general and in
terms of its applicability in the Russian context.
Why Exceptions Matter: Grigor¢ev Revisited
In my recent article, I dwell at length on the case of Vasilii Vasil ¢evich Grigor¢ev,
a scholar and imperial administrator whose ideas and experience, I contend, raise
questions as to the applicability of Said’s Orientalism as a paradigm for understanding the relationship in Russia between academic scholarship and imperial
domination. Khalid responds to Grigor¢ev by introducing Nikolai Petrovich
Ostroumov, another Orientalist who for 40 years loyally served the cause of imperialism in Central Asia. Obviously, Khalid seems to suggest, Ostroumov
cancels out Grigor¢ev, balance is restored, and the Orientalism paradigm stands.
Khalid’s argument reveals a misunderstanding. It was never my purpose to
present Grigor ¢ev as an archetype embodying the field of Oriental studies as a
whole. My aim was to challenge what I see as an overly deterministic, universalizing tendency in Said’s Orientalism, not to replace one set of generalizations
with another. I do not deny that scholars of Asian languages and cultures could
and did make substantive contributions to imperial rule. In this regard, Ostroumov is irrelevant. What Grigor ¢ev shows is that we cannot assume this collaboration to always be the case – knowledge and power do not inevitably go hand in
hand. Nonetheless, the question remains: why should the experiences of a single
Orientalist suffice to cast doubt on such an influential body of thought as Said’s
Orientalism? This is certainly a legitimate issue, and to address it, we need to
consider once again the nature of Said’s conception.
Khalid has summarized well the different ways in which Said defines Orientalism. What he neglects to bring out are the tensions, even contradictions,
between these definitions. Orientalism, for Said, can mean at least three different
things. It is, at once, a “style of thought” based on the dichotomy between East
and West, a “system of knowledge” through which the West envisions the East,
and, finally, a “corporate institution for dealing with the Orient.”4
Each of these areas might prove a fruitful field of study in its own right, but
Said insists that they are intrinsically intertwined into a discourse characterized
4
Said, Orientalism, 2–6.
ON RUSSIAN ORIENTALISM: A RESPONSE TO ADEEB KHALID
703
by “sheer knitted together strength” and “redoubtable durability.” 5 In viewing
Orientalism as a single cohesive entity, Said imputes the qualities of the whole
onto all of its parts. In effect, he proceeds from an assumption of universality.
Orientalist tropes are never mere “opinion” that may or may not be shared by
others. Orientalism governs the very cognitive processes through which the
Orient can be “known,” making Orientalist attitudes and motives all but inescapable to anyone shaped by European culture.
How is one to evaluate Orientalism as a theoretical construct, particularly
with regard to Russia, a context quite distinct from that in which it was originally conceived? We can certainly find cases that seem to fit the general trend, as
Ostroumov shows, but these instances do little to support the universalizing assumptions upon which the model rests. I have taken a different approach.
General theories, such as Said’s Orientalism, I would argue, attain validity not so
much on the basis of positive proof as on the lack of evidence to the contrary –
anomalies, to use Thomas Kuhn’s terminology.6 Therefore it is precisely the data
that do not “fit” that are most meaningful and productive. Anomalies stimulate
us to refine, rethink, and if necessary jettison our theoretical constructs. It was in
this spirit that I conceived my article. My study was not an attempt to construct
a positive model of the “true” face of Russian Orientalism. It was, rather, a
thought experiment in which Grigor¢ev’s ideas and experiences were weighed
against the universal expectations of Orientalism and judged to be anomalous.
My goal was not to build an airtight case exonerating a discipline from the “contamination” of imperialism, but rather to suggest that in a number of instances
alternative explanations are possible.
A single anomaly, of course, can hardly topple an entire theory, but as more
anomalies accumulate, pressure builds to rethink the paradigm. It is curious,
therefore, that Khalid chooses to dismiss my discussion of Grigor¢ev by pointing
out that many other critics have noted similar anomalies. The fact that critics
have returned time and again to Orientalists who “don’t fit the mold” suggests
that there may indeed be a problem with the way in which Said imputes Orientalism to the individual.
Granted that anomalies are important, the question still remains: just how
much of an anomaly was Grigor¢ev? Khalid raises some important objections that
deserve careful consideration.
Orientalism as Practice
5
Ibid., 6.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1970).
6
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NATHANIEL KNIGHT
In a way, it comes as a surprise to find in Adeeb Khalid a fervent defender of the
Orientalism paradigm. In his fascinating study of Jadidism in Central Asia,
Khalid proposes a nuanced approach to the role of the individual in the production of culture. Drawing on the insights of Pierre Bourdieu, Khalid suggests that
we direct our attention away from structures dictating the “rules of society,” and
focus on social agents as they deploy strategies of action based on a “logic of
practice” derived from their experience of the world. Shifting attention from
structures to practices, while continuing to recognize the limitations that structures impose, allows us, Khalid argues, to “see the individual as an agent actively
negotiating the social world rather than as a mere actor acting out a script dictated by structures.”7 Armed with Bourdieu’s theory of practice, Khalid
resolutely upholds the autonomy of cultural production: the Muslim cultural
elite, he argues, was not intrinsically enmeshed in the structures of political
power – alliances were possible, but by no means automatic. 8 Likewise, the Jadid
movement was not merely the ideological wing of the Central Asian
bourgeoisie.9
My approach to Russian Orientalism is quite similar to the methodology
that Khalid proposes for studying cultural production in Central Asia. I have
tried to view Grigor¢ev as an active agent whose behavior, while shaped by a
range of constraints and dispositions, was not predetermined by a set Orientalist
“script.” My aim has been to place Orientalism within the realm of practice, to
probe the link between specialized knowledge and imperialist power in a specific
historical context. Perhaps I have oversimplified Said’s ideas by transplanting
them from a deductive mode of thought into an empirical framework. But if the
notion of Orientalism is to be used as a tool of historical explanation, it seems to
me, such an exercise is not only reasonable, but necessary.
Like Khalid, I recognize that cultural and scholarly elites can enter into alliances with state power, but I do not believe that such alliances are automatic –
that imperialist domination and the production of knowledge constitute a
unified endeavor, neither side of which can exist without the other. If such
alliances exist, I argue, they must be demonstrated using standard methods of
historical documentation and analysis. Khalid apparently feels that these methodological demands are “crude instrumentalism.” It seems to me, though, that
this is merely good historical practice.
Starting from these premises, I find, in my study of Grigor¢ev’s tenure in
Orenburg, that he was largely unsuccessful in achieving a significant influence on
7
Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1998), 6.
8
Ibid., 37–39.
9
Ibid., 220.
ON RUSSIAN ORIENTALISM: A RESPONSE TO ADEEB KHALID
705
imperial policy. The power that he did wield, I argue, stemmed not so much
from his expert knowledge as from his advanced administrative skills – a rare and
valuable asset in the borderlands. Khalid suggests, however, that Grigor¢ev’s
desire to exercise power and influence outweighs his lack of success. This argument brings to mind Khalid’s account of a Shaykh who went to the khan of
Kokand to display his miracle-working skills, no doubt also motivated by a desire
to exercise power and influence. The khan had him thrown into a pond and
beaten to death.10 Grigor¢ev’s nemesis, General Bezak, used less brutal methods,
but in the long run was equally effective in warding off unwanted advice. In both
of these instances the context is essential. Another khan or another general may
well have been more receptive to the inclusion of “expert” opinion, but this
would in no way have been preordained by discursive structures.
The issue is not, as Khalid seems to think, whether or not Russian Orientalism was autonomous from the state. It is, rather, the permeability of the state
that is in question, the ability of the disciplines, by virtue of their mastery of specialized knowledge, to shape the conceptual and practical manifestations of state
power. In the context of the Russian autocracy, with its aggressive maintenance
of exclusive rights to initiate and implement policy, the level of permeability, I
would argue, was relatively low, and was episodic rather than systemic.11 The
state formulated its actions and policies apart from any corporate will of academic Orientalism (if such a thing could be said to exist), and if academic
specialists participated in the formation of policy, it was at the initiative of the
state and on the state’s terms.
A supporter of Said would no doubt say that such an argument amounts to
not seeing the forest for the trees, that a scholar does not actually have to participate directly in imperial rule in order to be “implicated.” Simply by virtue of
being part of an intellectual endeavor that claims to produce knowledge about
something known as the “Orient,” a scholar is engaging in the dichotomization
and hence the marginalization of complex human reality. The scholar is therefore
morally culpable for the suffering of the subjugated “other” just as much as if he
had sent troops into battle. 12 This is metaphysics – mind, beyond any demon10
Ibid., 39–40. To be more precise, the Shaykh falls into the pond after being ordered by the
Khan to cross it on a rope.
11
These issues are discussed more fully in Laura Engelstein, “Combined Underdevelopment:
Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia,” American Historical Review 98: 2 (April
1993), 338–53.
12
We see in this reasoning the way in which the ability to shuffle back and forth between different
definitions of Orientalism creates an extraordinarily flexible accusatory weapon. Confronted with
scholars whose ideas seem to mark a clear departure from the standard retinue of Orientalist
“truth” (Orientalist as a “system of knowledge”), Said falls back on the notion of Orientalism as a
“style of thought.” Any statements about the “Orient,” or “Islam,” or “Arabic culture,” regardless of
706
NATHANIEL KNIGHT
strable historical causality, acting as an instrument of violence and oppression.
The question remains: how does Orientalism function as practice?
Orientalism, Nationality, and Race
Nationality was dear to the heart of Vasilii Vasil¢evich Grigor¢ev. His vision of
academic Orientalism was inseparable from the pursuit of samobytnost ¢ – Russia’s
national uniqueness. Khalid suggests, however, that we take Russian nationalists
like Grigor ¢ev far too literally. No matter how much Grigor¢ev may have professed Russian national uniqueness, he knew perfectly well that when it came to
relations with the “Orient,” Russia was European through and through.
Moreover, the very idea of Russia’s national uniqueness, Khalid argues, was
merely warmed over German Romanticism, hence quintessentially European.
Khalid’s argument on Romanticism illustrates one of the more ironic aspects
of Said’s Orientalism – the tendency to essentialize the very entities it attempts to
deconstruct. Following Khalid’s logic, all of the great anti-colonial nationalists of
the 20th century – from Gandhi to Nassar to Ho Chi Minh – were in fact European, in that they defined their political objectives in accordance with the
European ideology of nationalism. Attempting to anchor any particular set of
ideas or body of knowledge to a single essentialized identity is bound to lead to
such absurdities. More importantly, Khalid is presenting a false dichotomy: Russia must either be fully European or not European at all. If the notion of Russia’s
uniqueness is an historical myth, so too is the idea that Russia was just another
European imperialist power. If Khalid is serious about breaking down the concepts of “East” and “West,” what better way to start than by acknowledging that
Russia both was and was not a part of Europe? Embracing the idea of Russia’s
distinctiveness (as opposed to uniqueness or generic Europeanness) helps to
explain much about how Russians viewed themselves and their relations with
non-European “others.” The very urgency with which Russians portrayed their
presence in Asia as a “civilizing mission” was, as Khalid notes, a product of their
“unrequited relationship” with Europe. But there may be more to the picture.
For along with the Orientalist tropes of backwardness and helplessness, a strain
of “Occidentalism” can frequently be detected in the idea of Russia as a bearer of
enlightenment. Not only would Russia bring order and civilization to the peoples
of the East, nationalists argued, it would do a better job of this than England,
France and the other colonial powers. Where the Western powers pursued their
their content, are by definition part of “Orientalism,” and hence implicated in its worse excesses.
See, for example, Said’s discussion of Louis Massignon and Hamilton Gibb. Despite both scholars’
complex and sympathetic views on Islam, which Said freely acknowledges, both are presented as
exemplary representatives of the classic tradition of Orientalism, largely by virtue of the fact that
they both claimed the right to have something to say about Islam. Said, Orientalism, 255–84.
ON RUSSIAN ORIENTALISM: A RESPONSE TO ADEEB KHALID
707
imperial ambitions with a cutthroat abandon, letting no scruple stand in the path
of their rapacious instincts, Russia would bring to bear a kinder, gentler imperialism motivated by a benign concern for the well being of the subject peoples.13
Thus, even as Russia was bringing the fruits of civilization (understood in
positivistic terms as universal values) to the East, it was distancing itself from the
source of those fruits – the West. In this regard, my image of the “awkward triptych” of the West, Russia, and the East is quite appropriate, for here is a case in
which Occidentalist and Orientalist tropes are deployed simultaneously in an
attempt to valorize Russia’s standing as a different kind of imperialist power.14
The example of Russia illustrates quite well the unstable, shifting nature of
the boundary between the Orient and the West, which can now be seen as “more
a project than a place.”15 But is the essence of Orientalism to be found in the
way in which we define the boundary between East and West or in the fact that
we draw the boundary at all? Said, in effect, tries to have it both ways. The path
of last resort is to view Orientalism as a “style of thought” encompassing any attempt to speak of an “Orient” as such. But Said also sees Orientalism as a
particular way in which the West has represented the Orient, a “system of
knowledge,” encompassing the content as well as the process of representation.
What, then, is this content? Khalid has argued that, for Said, the boundary
between Orient and Occident is fundamentally civilizational, rather than racial. I
would not be so quick, however, to separate Orientalism completely from racial
ideology. In asserting the existence of a set core of Orientalist knowledge, which
he terms “latent Orientalism,” Said comes close to making racism an integral
component of Orientalist thought. Latent Orientalism, Said argues, is a rocksolid set of assumptions about the Orient “the unanimity, stability and durability
[of which] is more or less constant.”16 This is more than just “Orientalization.”
Latent Orientalism is a body of positive knowledge, content rather than form,
that permeates anything a Westerner can think about the Orient. Latent Orien13
A good example of this rhetoric can be found in P. P. Semenov, “Obozrenie Amura v fizikogeograficheskom otnoshenii,” Vestnik Imperatorskogo russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva 15: 6
(1855), 253–54. Quoted in Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and
Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), 203–05.
14
From the standpoint of Central Asia, Russia may indeed have appeared indistinguishable from
“the West,” but this is better regarded as a manifestation of what Weeks refers to as “national
daltonism” than an objective reflection of Russia’s status. See Theodore R. Weeks, Nation and State
in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863–1914 (DeKalb,
IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996), 15–16.
15
Milica Bakiç-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia,” Slavic Review
54: 4 (Winter 1995), 917.
16
Said, Orientalism, 206.
708
NATHANIEL KNIGHT
talism, to be sure, takes on a variety of manifest forms, but at its heart is an unchanging depiction of the Orient and its inhabitants as passive, stagnant, and
inert. “The very possibility of development,” Said writes, “transformation,
human movement in the deepest sense of the word – is denied the Orient and
the Oriental.” 17 To be an Oriental, in other words, is to be, in the eyes of the
Orientalist, organically inferior, utterly incapable of positive change either as an
individual or as part of a “nation.” One could debate whether the organic inferiority imputed by latent Orientalism makes racial ideology a necessary corollary,
but both modes of thought clearly share a belief in ontological limitations on the
capacity of individuals to develop.
Having fleshed out some of the intricacies of Said’s argument, we can now
return to V. V. Grigor¢ev. If the mere habit of referring on occasion to “Asia”
and “Asiatics” is enough to brand Grigor ¢ev as Orientalism incarnate, then there
is little more to be said. But if we take as a measure some of Said’s more specific
formulations, particularly the idea of latent Orientalism, then some distinct
anomalies come to light. Grigor¢ev, for example, adamantly rejected the idea of
intrinsic limits on the ability of “Asiatics” to develop.18 This is just as much a
repudiation of the organic inferiority inherent in “latent Orientalism” as it is the
racial theory to which his remarks were specifically addressed.
Grigor ¢ev’s advocacy of education among the Kazakh nomads, I have argued,
also constitutes a departure from Said’s framework. Khalid, however, raises a
substantive objection with his assertion that the Orient/Occident divide is one of
civilization rather than race. If this is the case, Orientals who are willing to abandon their inferior heritage and assimilate into Western civilization could be
expected to develop intellectually and spiritually. But Grigor ¢ev’s position differs
from this formula precisely because he did not expect or require the Kazakhs to
abandon their native culture in order to advance. On the contrary, within the
framework of “organic nationality” that had shaped his worldview since the
1830s, an individual could only attain spiritual and intellectual fulfillment as a
part of a nation, and a nation could only advance by preserving its cultural
uniqueness.19 This applied just as much to the Kazakhs as it did to the Russians
themselves.20
17
Ibid., 208.
Knight, “V. V. Grigor¢ev,” 95–97. Grigor¢ev’s ideas are expressed most explicitly in the article
“Iz zaural¢skoi stepi,” Den¢ 28 (1862), 5–7.
19
See V. V. Grigor ¢ev, “O znachenii narodnosti,” Molva, no. 24 (1857).
20
Grigor¢ev’s application of “organic nationality” to nomadic peoples can be seen in his article “O
zemledelii v Bashkirii,” quoted in N. I. Veselovskii, Vasilii Vasil¢evich Grigor¢ev po ego pis¢mam i
trudam, 1816–1881 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia. A. Transhelia, 1887), 210–12.
18
ON RUSSIAN ORIENTALISM: A RESPONSE TO ADEEB KHALID
709
But if mere “Asiatic” ethnicity was not, in Grigor¢ev’s mind, an obstacle to
progress, what about Islam? Robert Geraci, for example, has uncovered a significant body of opinion within government and missionary circles that viewed
Islam as “organically hostile to education.” By 1910, government specialists were
prepared to eliminate all secular education in Islamic schools on the seemingly
contradictory basis of a belief that, on the one hand, Moslems could not learn,
and a fear, on the other, of what would happen if they did.21 Undoubtedly,
Grigor ¢ev was hostile to Islam. His hope was that through education and the
development of indigenous institutions, the Kazakhs would turn away from the
“Tatar-Muslim” influence and move closer to “Russian civilization.” Yet his plan
for Kazakh schools included Islamic religious education, so it would be hard to
argue that he saw Islam in all forms as an intrinsic impediment to education. 22
Islam was a fact of life. The government, Grigor¢ev felt, should not encourage the
religion, but neither should it attempt to eliminate it.23
Orientalism in Russia: The Perils and Possibilities
The issues raised above and in my article should illustrate some of the difficulties
in applying the notion of Orientalism in the Russian context. This does not
mean, however, that the idea is entirely without utility for Russian historians.
Clearly issues have arisen in the discussions surrounding Orientalism that are of
fundamental importance and deserve to be explored more fully. At the same
time, Said’s work can serve as an example of some of the pitfalls to be avoided in
discussing Russia’s engagement with its Asiatic “others.”
It would be tendentious and inaccurate to disassociate Russia completely
from the broader European discourse about the “Orient.” Grigor¢ev’s own writings draw quite clearly on an extensive and deeply rooted set of cultural stereotypes – what we might call an Orientalist discourse – revolving around the idea
of Asia and the Asiatic. Like its Western analogues, Russian discourse on Asia
was predicated on an assumption of cultural superiority and interwoven with an
array of tropes denoting the indolence, despotism, deviousness, and depravity of
21
Robert Geraci, “Russian Orientalism at an Impasse: Tsarist Educational Policy and the 1910
Conference on Islam,” in Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917, ed. Daniel
R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 138–61.
Geraci, in characterizing this moment as “Orientalism at an Impasse,” follows Said’s lead in
equating the “Orient” with Islam, and in defining Orientalism in terms of the viewpoints of those
individuals who display the necessary “Orientalist” attitudes. As Geraci himself shows, the range of
opinion on the question of Islam and education among academic scholars was far more diverse and
balanced than the views of government specialists and missionaries that constituted the “impasse.”
22
[V. V. Grigor ¢ev], “Otkrytie kirgizskoi shkoly v Troitske,” Severnaia pchela, no. 241 (1861), 2.
23
On Grigor¢ev’s proposed policies regarding Islam, see Veselovskii, V. V. Grigor¢ev, 207–08.
710
NATHANIEL KNIGHT
the Asiatic “other.” This discourse deserves to be studied, and I would enthusiastically second Khalid’s call for further research into the concept of Vostok in
Russian culture.
But while Orientalist discourse was certainly present in Russian culture, it
need not be viewed in the totalizing framework proposed by Said. For the remainder of this essay, I would like to propose and discuss five specific ways in
which we can render our analysis of Russian views of Asia more flexible and
fruitful.
1) Orientalist discourse must be historicized.
Said’s model of a stable and cohesive discourse stretching back to the time of
the ancient Greeks is questionable under any circumstance and certainly offers
nothing of value in the Russian case. Orientalist discourse could and did change.
Views of the East during the Enlightenment, for example, differed markedly
from those of the late 19th century, and these shifts need to be traced with
care. 24
2) Orientalist discourse should not be generically equated with Oriental studies.
It is true, of course, that scholars, like everyone else, are influenced by the
cultural, political, and institutional context within which they operate. But to
fuse all of these contextual elements into a single overarching discourse with
absolute determinative force is an extreme position with disturbing implications
for anyone engaged in the production of knowledge. Scholarship, from this perspective, means nothing on its own terms, and can only be interpreted with
regard to the “interests” that stand behind it. It is much more productive, I
would argue, to see Orientalist discourse and scholarship as distinct entities engaged in complex and dynamic patterns of engagement. Orientalist discourse
may be refracted into Oriental scholarship and mobilized in specific instances,
but it should not be seen as constitutive of the discipline as a whole.25
Attention should be paid as well to the internal composition of Oriental
studies. Said defines Orientalism as a “style of thought” based on the distinction
between “Orient” and “Occident.” But most practitioners of vostokovedenie, I
would suggest, defined themselves largely in terms of their particular subfield–as
Turkologists, Sinologists, Indologists, Arabists, Persianists as well as specialists in
Buddhism, Islam, Shamanism and so forth. Global dichotomies between East
24
Cf. Figueira, “Oriental Despotism and Despotic Orientalisms,” 191–95.
For an insightful theoretical discussion of the relation between scholarship and culture, see
Timothy Lenoir, Instituting Science: The Cultural Production of Scientific Disciplines (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1997), 1–21. On Said’s tendency to confuse discourse in the
Foucauldian sense with intellectual tradition, see Clifford, “On Orientalism,” 266–71.
25
ON RUSSIAN ORIENTALISM: A RESPONSE TO ADEEB KHALID
711
and West may have played a minor role if any in their actual scholarly production, while the term “Orient” continued to exist as a disciplinary designation
largely as a matter of tradition and institutional convenience. 26 Vostokovedenie
itself bears little resemblance to “Orientalism” as Khalid describes it: the field
encompassed cultures far beyond the “literate societies of the Old World,”
engaged in extensive ethnographic studies, and was not at all isolated from
broader theoretical developments.27
And even when scholars did partake in Orientalist discourse, we cannot
assume that the knowledge their work produced remained permanently anchored
in its original context. As David Luddins points out in the case of India, the very
ideology of science engendered an acceptance of Orientalist scholarship as “a set
of factualized statements about a reality that existed and could be known independent of any subjective colonizing will.” Epistemologically detached from the
colonial context, Orientalist knowledge “floated free of its original moorings,”
becoming available for a variety of political purposes including, by 1900, the
nationalist struggle for independence against the British empire. 28 In the Russian
context, we might note how the Eurasianists, who, as Nicholas Riasanovsky
points out, represent a decisive break from the dominant Russian pattern of perceiving the East, drew on a long tradition of Oriental scholarship showing the
intricate interconnections between Russia and its Asian neighbors.29
3) Orientalist discourse should not be viewed as the single determinant of identity.
Perhaps the greatest contribution of Said’s Orientalism is the way that it has
focused attention on the role of dichotomy in the articulation of identity. Said
argues convincingly that representation of the Orient has played a key role in
establishing the idea of Europe as “the West.” But for all the importance of the
26
Khalid’s observation regarding the renaming of the journal Narody Azii i Afriki to Vostok/Oriens
is intriguing, but I doubt very much that we can take this as proof of “self-placement on the right
side of the civilizational divide.” Certainly more mundane explanations are conceivable; in the
absence of direct evidence one way or another we should be cautious in positing motivation.
27
The career of Vasilii Vasil ¢evich Radlov illustrates well the possible range of vostokovedenie. For
an overview, see Andrei Nikolaevich Kononov, ed., Biobibliograficheskii slovar ¢ otechestvennykh
tiurkologov: dooktiabr¢skii period (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 194–98.
28
David Ludden, “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge,” in
Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, 252.
29
Nicholas Riasanovsky, “Asia through Russian Eyes,” in Russia and Asia: Essays on the Influence of
Russia on the Asian Peoples, ed. Wayne Vucinich (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 1972), 26–27.
Grigor¢ev’s own scholarship, which was explicitly oriented toward the historical ties between Russia
and Asia was a significant contribution to this literature. See his Rossiia i Aziia: Sbornik issledovanii
i statei po istorii, etnografii i geografii, napisannykh v raznoe vremia V. V. Grigor¢evym (St. Petersburg:
Tipografiia brat. Panteleevykh, 1876).
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East/West dichotomy, we should not forget that other dichotomies exist and can
also play an important role in the formation of identity. Native and foreign,
noble and commoner, male and female, urban and rural, nomadic and settled,
educated and ignorant, progressive and reactionary – all of these dichotomies and
more functioned simultaneously in the Russian empire, in some cases cutting
across the Orient/Occident divide. And each dichotomy was generated by its
own particular discourse, which overlapped and interacted with other discourses
in complex and often illogical ways. The superimposition, in Grigor ¢ev’s case, of
Orientalist tropes and the discourse of organic nationality is just one example of
these sorts of interactions. Regional studies are especially important in that they
allow us to see the various ways in which discourses of similarity and difference
become interwoven in specific contexts.30 Giving absolute primacy to the
Orient/Occident dichotomy in the manner of Said can easily obscure the multiplicity of possibilities for interaction and accommodation existing alongside the
stark forces of domination and oppression.31
4) “Orientalization” should not be viewed as an exclusively Western practice.
Said did not, of course, invent the notion that we define the world around us
through binary oppositions. This idea was a central component of French Structuralism, which in turn was influenced by the work of Jakobson, Trubetzkoy,
and the Prague school of linguistics.32 Bringing the idea of “Orientalization”
back to its intellectual roots allows us to posit an important corrective to Said’s
framework. Rather than seeing “Orientalization” solely as a process of Western
cultural domination, we can view it more broadly, in the tradition of Jakobson
and Trubetzkoy, as a fundamental tool of human cognition. All societies have
their “others.” All cultures define groups around them in more or less generalized
terms framed in opposition to their own self-perception.33 The concept of
“nesting Orientalisms,” which Khalid notes with approval, is certainly a useful
refinement of Said’s framework, but it still seems rather inflexible: the “Orient,”
with all its specificity of association, continues to serve as the ultimate object of
30
Khalid’s study on the Jadids in Central Asia is just one example of the wave of excellent recent
research on the local contexts of Russian imperialism. See also recent work by Thomas Barrett, Paul
Werth, Willard Sunderland, Robert Geraci, Nicholas Breyfogle, Lynda Park, Charles Steinwedel,
Theodore Weeks, and Yuri Slezkine.
31
For a very insightful discussion, see Edward J. Lazzerini, “Local Accommodation and Resistance
to Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century Crimea,” in Russia’s Orient, 169–87.
32
Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology,” in Structural
Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 31–54.
33
My point here is quite close to James Carrier’s argument in “Occidentalism: World Turned
Upside-Down,” American Ethnologist 19: 2, 195–213.
ON RUSSIAN ORIENTALISM: A RESPONSE TO ADEEB KHALID
713
marginalization.34 Maria Todorova’s argument that “Balkanism” constituted a
distinct discourse of alterity – more than just a “variation on an Orientalist
theme” – seems more productive in this regard.35 Looking beyond the overarching East/West dichotomy will help us to see how binary thinking functions
to define identity in a broader range of cultural settings.
5) The concept of Orientalism should not preclude the possibility of verifiable knowledge and meaningful cross-cultural communication.
A key component of Said’s theory is the idea that Orientalist knowledge is a
mirage, a collection of representations that displace the complex reality over
which they are superimposed. As Aijaz Ahmad notes, Said is emphatic that
“Europeans were ontologically incapable of producing any true knowledge about
non-Europe.”36 The effect of this model is to erect an epistemological firewall
around the Orient, now re-essentialized as “that which we cannot know.”
Naturally, such a position gives rise to paradoxes and contradictions. Jadids, to
take an example from Khalid’s book, crusaded vigorously against the practice of
pederasty in Central Asia.37 But the same criticisms from a Russian would have
to be seen as inherently false–at best a projection of Western erotic fantasies onto
the mute and passive “other.” Behind these paradoxes lies a deeper question
about the nature of representation itself. For Said, representation is essentially
synonymous with misrepresentation – if there is a distinction at all it is merely a
matter of degree. The very process of using language is one of deformation.
“Truths,” Said asserts, quoting Nietzsche, “are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.”38 But representations, Said insists, are more
than just distortions. They are instruments serving specific purposes predetermined by the culture, institutions, and political environment in which they were
produced.39
34
Milica Bakiç-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms,” 920–21.
Maria Todorova, “The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention,” Slavic Review 53: 2 (Summer
1994), 453–82. The concept of “subaltern” (and especially “nesting subalterns”) is also promising
in that it denotes a state of subordination without invoking a universal axis of marginalization. See
Lazzerini, “Local Accommodation,” 175–76.
36
Ahmad, “Orientalism and After,” 178.
37
Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform, 145–46.
38
Said, Orientalism, 203. In fairness to Said, one has to note his ambivalence and even confusion
on this point. He wavers between a Nietzschean view of truth as discursively constituted and a
humanist faith in an objective reality that can be truthfully represented – hence his assertion that
the West mis-represents the Orient. In fact, Said needs both positions, regardless of their
incompatibility to sustain his argument. For discussion of these points, see Grewgious, “Used
Books: Orientalism by Edward Said,” Critical Quarterly 36: 4 (Winter 1994), 87–98.
39
Said, Orientalism, 272–73; Ahmad, “Orientalism and After,” 193–94.
35
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NATHANIEL KNIGHT
Said’s argument is disturbing. Out of Orientalism emerges a dark and nihilistic view of the scholarly vocation. With genuine knowledge a mere illusion,
scholarship is reduced to a cynical game, played according to an arcane and
exclusionary set of rules, in which the object of study becomes a mere prop
manipulated by self-aggrandizing scholars competing to pander most effectively
to the demands of the time. The very possibility of understanding other cultures,
of engaging deeply and sympathetically with the values and traditions of
“others,” is dismissed as either a naive delusion or a devious deception. All Western knowledge and behavior toward the Oriental “other,” regardless of how
neutral it appears on the surface, must inevitably proceed in Said’s framework
from a pathological will to dominate.
Scholars of Russian and Eurasian societies have particular reason to be
alarmed by Said’s epistemological nihilism. Khalid notes in passing that “Sovietology” can easily be seen as a variant of Orientalism, and he is absolutely right.
If the division between Occident and Orient was the great formative dichotomy
for the 19th and early 20th century, then the gap between the “free world” and
“communist Russia” has played an equally dramatic role in more recent times.
And what was the field of Russian studies if not the “corporate institution” for
dealing with Russia, for making the “riddle wrapped in an enigma” into a known
quantity, manageable, comprehensible, and predictable for policymakers and the
general public alike? We cannot, moreover, hide behind the comfortable assumption that it is only those scholars whose work is “relevent” – the kremlinologists,
bomb counters, nationality experts, and other policy gurus – who are somehow
linked to this endeavor. Following Said’s logic, whether we study medieval
iconography, Pushkin’s use of metaphor, symbolist painting, the Stolypin reforms, or daily life in Stalinist Russia, we are all implicated. A critic well-versed
in Orientalist theory would have little difficulty rendering the intellectual
production of our field into a mere epiphenomenon of a marginalizing structure
of domination.
Apart from the sense of personal affront we may feel as potential objects of a
reductive theoretical scheme, Said’s framework cuts across many of the fundamental values underlying our endeavor. As scholars dedicated to the study of
Russia and its empire, we proceed from the basic assumption that we can know
the “other.” Our knowledge may not be perfect or absolute, but just as speaking
with an accent does not preclude the possibility of meaningful communication,
our position as cultural outsiders does not prevent us from producing meaningful
and verifiable knowledge. Objectification, essentialization, and marginalization
are perennial pitfalls to which our field, with its persistent urge to define the
“Russian soul,” has fallen prey all too often. If nothing else, the discussions sur-
ON RUSSIAN ORIENTALISM: A RESPONSE TO ADEEB KHALID
715
rounding Orientalism have been invaluable in drawing attention to precisely
these dangers.
There are no easy solutions to the dilemma of the “other.” Rejection of
essentialized categories of identity can easily lead to an equally extreme rejection
of the very idea of cultural difference, itself an insidious form of neo-imperialism:
everyone is fundamentally the same, therefore everyone is like us. The best we
can do is to cultivate an appreciation of complexity and avoid totalizing frameworks that subsume the distinctiveness of individuals and cultures into the
determinative force of “discourse.” 40 In my critique of Said I have tried to draw
attention to these perils. My criticisms are not new or unique. But in the context
of our field, these are discussions that are well worth additional debate.
Dept. of History
Seton Hall University
South Orange, NJ 07079 USA
[email protected]
40
Ironically, it is precisely this reaffirmation of the primacy of the human experience that is Said’s
more passionate and admirable goal. See Said, Orientalism, 328. But in engaging the dehumanizing
essentialism of Orientalist discourse, Said cannot avoid reproducing it.