Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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(1991), call for the creation of Occidentalism, that is the academic study of the West, as a post-colonial response to the cultural and intellectual dominance of Western scholarship.

In contrast to the Islamists, there are also a number of Arabic intellectuals engaging with the concerns and issues of Western scholarship. In most cases such scholars are migrants, often educated by and now working in Western universities. The main concern for such writers remains the mutual proliferation of stereotypes about Arabs and Westerners and the question of the impact of globalization, cultural interaction and politics upon representations of Islam. Clearly these two strands of contemporary Arabic scholarship do not sit easily with each other. The Islamists direct much of their criticism towards those Arab intellectuals who have adopted or utilized Western methodologies in their analysis. This is seen as a rejection of Islam and complicity with the secularism of the Western colonial aggressor. Similarly, Western influenced Arabic scholars tend to reject Islamist approaches as ‘Orientalism in reverse’, questioning the privileged insulation of Arabic culture from wider international debates concerning modernism, postmodernism and globalization.

Orientalism, gender and religion

In the concern to highlight politics and the marginalization of the Other, the post-colonial agenda in scholarship has much in common with the development of feminist approaches to the study of religion (King 1999: 111–16). It is not surprising then to find that recent works have shown an increasing awareness of gender as a factor relevant to the Orientalist debate (Miller 1990). Lata Mani (1987) argues that nineteenth-century debates about the legality of sati (the ritual burning of a Hindu widow on her deceased husband’s funeral pyre) – a practice abolished by the British in 1829 – did not allow the women concerned to emerge as either ‘subjects’ or ‘objects’. Instead the Hindu widow became the ‘site of contestation’ in a debate which centered instead upon the question of whether or not the burning of widows was sanctioned by ancient Hindu sacred texts. All participants in this debate, whether abolitionists or preservationists, accepted without question the authority of Hindu brahmanical scriptures as the definitive source for ‘the Hindu position’. The location of the ‘essence’ of Hinduism in ancient texts clearly reflects the Protestant presuppositions of the early Orientalists and gained further support from their reliance upon the scholarly community of brahmanical pandits as the authorized spokesmen for Hinduism (King 1999: Chapters 5 and 6).

Similarly, recent work has also paid attention to the images of the ‘sexualized Orient’ found in Western fantasies about the Oriental ‘harem’ and ‘the veil’ (Lewis 1996; Mabro 1996; Yegenoglu 1998). Notions of the seductive and sensual nature of the Orient and of the Oriental woman in particular also continue to this day in media advertising and popular culture. Whether this involves popularized accounts of the ‘secrets of the Kama Sutra’ (which is thereby transformed from an ancient Hindu text on the etiquette of courtship and lovemaking into an exotic manual of sexual positions), or the commodification and sexualization of Thai therapeutic massage, modern Western consumer culture continues to build upon much older colonial legacies and Orientalist stereotypes.

Attention has also turned to the role played by women in the Orientalist and imperial enterprises. Reina Lewis (1996), taking her lead from the work of Lisa Lowe (1991), argues that an examination of the location of female Orientalists in a complicated and sometimes contradictory network of power-relations demonstrates the diversity of the Orientalist project. Female Orientalists took up a variety of stances with regard to Western

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imperial superiority over the East at the same time as being involved in a complex series of domestic debates about the status and role of women in Western society. Her analysis suggests that an adequate critique of Orientalism should avoid the tendency to focus upon the expressed intentions and motivations of individual Orientalists and consider instead the broader structural relations of power that Orientalist discourses maintain: ‘When we look at European women’s representation of and participation in processes of othering, we are looking at representations made by agents who are themselves partially othered (as the symbolic feminized other of men in Europe)’ (Lewis 1996: 238).

The most recent work within the field of post-colonial studies has focused upon the mutual involvement of a variety of factors (including race, class, gender and sexuality) in the study of the cultures, histories and religions of Asia. Anne McClintock (1995: 6–7) argues for instance that ‘imperialism cannot be understood without a theory of gender power’. Similarly, Mrinalini Sinha (1995) has examined the ways in which nineteenth-century British notions of ‘masculinity’ developed in opposition to the perceived ‘effeminacy’ of the Bengali male. Sinha’s work demonstrates rather well the complex interaction of Hindu and British notions of gender, race and sexuality in the colonial period. Attention has also turned in recent works to the existence of manipulative strategies and representations in pre-colonial Asian societies (Pollock 1993: 96–111; Killingley 1997; King 1999). These works suggest that the Orientalist tendency to stereotype and diminish the ‘Other’ is by no means an exclusively Western practice.

Concluding remarks

One of the most important insights to be drawn from the Orientalist debate is an awareness of the political nature of knowledge itself. Fundamentally, what post-colonial approaches teach us is to be more aware of the ongoing influence of colonialism upon the representation of others, and also of ourselves. Like feminist scholarship, post-colonialism is diverse but remains grounded in an awareness of the politics of knowledge, that is the involvement of scholarship in issues of power, authority and justice. This is especially relevant when dealing with the cultures and traditions of others, but ‘indigenous’ accounts by cultural ‘insiders’ are no less implicated by issues of authority and representation. Moreover, such has been the impact of Western domination over the last few centuries that indigenous traditions have themselves been transformed by the material and cultural violence of Western colonialism. Rejecting the separation of religion and its study from political concerns, postcolonial analysis opens up the possibility, indeed for such theorists the necessity, of exploring alternative ways of understanding and representing human diversity. How are we to make sense of differences between people in a pluralistic rather than an oppositional way? How might we try to understand the diverse ways of living that represent our common global heritage? This is perhaps the central issue confronting humanity today and no doubt will continue to influence debates within the study of religion. In this regard the comparative study of religion has a key role to play in the quest for greater understanding of the various cultures, peoples and forms of life that make up the world in which we live.

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Killingley, Dermot (1997), ‘Mlecchas, Yavanas and Heathens: Interacting Xenologies in Early Nineteenth Century Calcutta’ in Eli Franco and Karin Preisendanz (eds), Beyond Orientalism. The Work of Wilhelm Halbfass and its Impact on Indian and Cross-Cultural Studies, Amsterdam and Atlanta GA: Rodopi, Poznan: Studies in the Philosophies of the Sciences and the Humanities, vol. 59: 123–40.

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Suggested reading

Asad, Talal (1993), Genealogies of Religion. Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

A scholarly examination of Christian monastic discipline, the history of anthropological concepts of religion, and the Salman Rushdie affair from a post-colonial perspective. Not for the general reader.

Batchelor, Stephen (1994), The Awakening of the West. The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture, London: Aquarian Press.

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A readable account of the interaction and reception of Buddhism in Western culture. Highly recommended.

Inden, Ronald (1990), Imagining India, Cambridge, MA and Oxford, England: Blackwell.

Inden is an anthropologist specializing in South Asia. This book offers a wide-ranging critique of the study of South Asian religion and society, and is strongly influenced by Edward Said and poststructuralist theory. An important work.

King, Richard (1999), Orientalism and Religion. Post-colonial Theory, India and ‘the Mystic East’, London and New York: Routledge.

An exploration of ‘the Orientalist debate’, postcolonial theory and their implications for the comparative study of religion. Chapters explore the nature of religious studies, Orientalism, the study of Hinduism and Buddhism and the comparative study of mysticism.

Lopez Jr, Donald (ed.) (1995), Curators of the Buddha. The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

A collection of six scholarly articles examining the Orientalism question in relation to various aspects of the study of Buddhism. The work presupposes a great deal of knowledge of Buddhism and its study and is aimed at the academic scholar rather than the student or general reader.

Mongia, Padmini (ed.) (1996), Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, London, New York, Sydney and Auckland: Arnold (Hodder Headline Group).

A collection of important contributions to contemporary postcolonial theory, though with no specific reference to religion.

Said, Edward (1981), Covering Islam. How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, London: Routledge.

A readable discussion of Western media portrayals of Islam.

Said, Edward (1978; 2nd edn 1995), Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient, London and New York: Penguin.

The classic text examining the link between Western colonialism and representations of the Orient.

Turner, Bryan (1994), Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalism, London and New York: Routledge. An examination of the impact of postmodernism and globalism on Western sociological studies of Islam.