Beyond Orientalism
In a post-colonial, post-modern world, what is the intellectual ground on which Asia and Europe can meet and communicate? Historically the meeting place between East and West has often been a place of illusions, mutual misunderstandings, and hostile projections. Have we now at last dispelled the illusions and stereotypes of a previous age? Do we now stand within the global clearing of a single world? What can we hope to gain from the meeting of Asia and Europe on this newly cleared ground?By John Clarke
For Edward Said 'Orientalism' was Europe's way of representing the East, involving an attitude of patronizing superiority, the accompaniment to and the valorization of the imperial expansion of the European powers, the affirmation of their global domination. Some believe that little has changed. The hegemony of Europe, they argue, did not end with the lowering of flags of empire, and the imperial mechanisms of power are still just as effectively operated as they were previously by the more overt and formal institutions of empire.Nevertheless it is arguable that the conditions under which East and West meet have changed drastically in the last decades of the twentieth century. European self-questioning has progressed rapidly. The modernist Enlightenment conceptual framework on which the Orientalist project rested has been shaken to its foundations, accompanied by a world-wide cultural explosion and a remarkable economic transformation in Asia, a transformation in which the current economic crisis may be only a temporary check. This globalizing process means that Europe itself has been superseded by the process of modernizing which it initiated.
These new conditions which now prevail make even more urgent the need for understanding between Asia and Europe, for a diligent cross-cultural inquiry and educational strategy which yet remains conscious of the dangers of Orientalism. We now exist in a global civilization, and we need a global interplay between values and world-views. This implies, in my view, an interactive pluralism which both respects traditional loyalties and identities, yet which is able to set them in creative interaction with each other, a sense of radical toleration which demands, not just grudging acceptance, but willingness to learn from the 'Other'.
The interaction of values and world-views between Asia and Europe has a long history and, far from being uniformly oppressive of the 'Other', as Said once argued, has frequently been transformative to both sides. As Joseph Needham put it: 'For three thousand years a dialogue has been going on between the two ends of the Old World. Greatly have they influenced each other'. The intellectual and cultural significance of this dialogue of civilizations is now even more important than ever and is, I would argue, at the heart of the post-modern, globalized world that we have now entered.
This new post-Orientalist, post-colonial ground on which we meet is not always easy to traverse, however, and there are many dangers and obstacles that lie along the new Silk Road between Europe and Asia. For example, there is the resurgence of nationalism after the end of the Cold War, the revival of extreme right-wing politics in Europe and America, and the growth of religious fundamentalisms. Asian nations have emerged as self-conscious and independent powers, and above all there is the renewal of China's power and self-confidence after long centuries of humiliating treatment by the West. On the European side, there is the development of economic and political union in Europe, with its increasing political integration, which could lead towards an increasing cultural narcissism, particularly if it is drawn into a world economic recession. And at the other end of the Silk Road there is the resurgence of Asian consciousness, the 'Asianization of Asia', riding on the wave of rapid and unprecedented economic and social transformation. The new Silk Road, the new global superhighway, opens up the world, yet simultaneously places barriers along the way.
This paradoxical situation is a reflection of the fact that Orientalism itself has in the past often been caught in a dialectical tension between the extremes of globalism and universalism on the one hand, and on the other pluralism and particularism: it tends towards a universalistic outlook which transcends cultural boundaries and encourages an inter-cultural convergence, yet it also affirms local and regional differences and tends to nurture the unique particularity of cultures which stand in contrast with each other, even in mutual incomprehension. A brief examination of this tension will help to bring out some of the characteristics of the encounter between Asian and Western cultures.
First universalism. In its various forms it has a long pedigree in Europe. Leibniz, for example, in his pursuit of the 'perennial philosophy' sought to distil into a single system all that was fundamental in the world's philosophies and religions, believing that this would provide not only a solution to the catastrophic religious divisions and wars in Europe, but also a way of building a bridge between European and Chinese philosophy. His thinking in this respect is often said to have led, in the long run, to the establishment of the United Nations, an institution which is founded on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the middle years of this century, in the face of a different kind of cataclysm, the philosopher C.A. Moore inspired a universalist movement in the late 1930s which sought nothing less than a 'world philosophical synthesis'. In his opening address to the East-West philosophers' conference of 1939 in Hawaii, Moore declared that its purpose was to forge a synthesis of the ideas and ideals of East and West, a purpose which was driven by what he saw as the West's need for a 'wider perspective', one which would be suitable for 'a truly cosmopolitan and international world order, in which diverse basic conceptions and resultant evaluations of the two cultures are combined into a single world civilization'.
More recently still, the universalist model has appeared in the 'end of history' thesis advanced by Francis Fukuyama, in which he announced 'the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government'. Allied to this has been the belief in the universal applicability of Western-created economic models, a belief which has been challenged by the articulation of alternative Asian models, and indeed on which recent economic events in Asia and Russia have themselves cast serious doubt.
A particular form of universalism which came into vogue in the middle years of the century, for example in the work of F.S.C. Northrop and C.G. Jung, goes under the heading of 'complementarity'. Here the key to East-West understanding was seen not in the fusion of differences, but in the recognition of a fundamental reciprocity between the two different civilizations, in particular between the spiritual propensity of the one and the scientific rationalism of the other, and the need to broker a 'marriage of East and West' in which harmony was to be achieved through the recognition of the unity of opposites.
Universalism has certainly proved highly contentious in recent times. It has been viewed on the one hand as the foundation stone of a universal conception of humanity, and of the establishment of a rationally compelling set of values. On the other hand it has often been criticized as a totalizing metaphysics which obliterates cultural differences, as a way of privileging of Western over Asian values, as a product of what Husserl called 'The Europeanization of all foreign parts of mankind' which he believed to be 'the destiny of the earth'.
The complementarity model has also come in for much criticism of late, particularly from a deconstructionist methodology which characterizes it, not only as simplifying and essentializing East and West, but also as a discriminating form of binary discourse, demeaning to Asian thought in the way that polarized gender language is demeaning to the female sex, the East representing the weak, female, irrational set of characteristics, contrasting poorly with the masculine, rational, and dynamic qualities of the West.
In spite of these post-colonial critiques we need to recall that the universalistic model has had its advocates amongst Asian intellectuals as well, for example the Indian philosopher and statesman, S. Radhakrishnan, who advocated a particular form of universalism associated with Neo-Hinduism. Hinduism as such has always been associated with a tolerant, eclectic outlook, a creed based on the spiritual oneness of the universe and of humanity, and Radhakrishnan sought nothing less than the foundation of a genuinely cosmopolitan philosophical and religious discourse in which 'a cross-fertilization of ideas and insights, a great unification will take place in the deeper fabric of men's thoughts', and will lead to 'a world society with a universal religion of which the historical faiths are but branches'.
This leads to a consideration of pluralistic models. As with the universalistic variety, these have often, particularly in the form of multiculturalism, come to be seen as divisive and dangerously conflictual. In recent times there are plenty of examples of the way in which pluralistic outlooks can lead to intolerance and ethnic strife, and on a global stage pluralism has been associated with certain somewhat modish rightist ideas such as those of Samuel Huntington, who dismisses any idea of a single world civilization, and sees the 'clash of civilizations' as an inevitable and key feature of the emerging post-modern, post-Cold War world order.
A now much favoured form of pluralism is associated with hermeneutics and with the notion of dialogue. 'Dialogue' is a term which has indeed achieved almost cult status of late, and its increasing use is seen by some to represent a profound cultural shift, especially evident in the field of inter-faith encounter where, according to the theologian John Hick, we are moving 'from the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue'. Hermeneutical dialogue is viewed by thinkers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer not as a cosy chat but as a challenging encounter of traditions, based not on intuitive insight of the other but of the confrontation between one's own historically-based prejudices and the texts and traditions of other cultures. Gadamer's important insight here is that true communication at whatever level means not the obliteration of differences, but rather their fully self-conscious recognition, and their integration into the process of dialogue. It is the very diversity and plurality of outlook and perspective, not their mutual absorption or melding, which is the necessary condition for understanding of any kind. This sort of pluralism, therefore, is not the mere obdurate antagonism or 'clash' of incommensurable opposites, but rather the creative tension that exists between contrasting voices which are prepared to listen to and debate with each other and share differences as much as similarities.
It might be objected that this 'hermeneutics of difference', as it is called, simply perpetuates colonial, Eurocentric attitudes? Gadamer has been criticized for insufficient awareness of the underlying political interests, racist attitudes, and of ideological manipulation, of the repressed inequalities that are disguised through humanistic talk of dialogue. Is a true hermeneutical engagement possible as long as, in Heidegger's phrase, East-West dialogue 'shifts everything into European'? Is dialogue simply a way of belatedly shoring up the West's collapsing hegemonic status? And, even beyond Orientalism, is true understanding and accommodation possible between cultures with radically different histories, traditions, and languages?
There is no simple answer to these questions, indeed 'knowing the answers' might well be part of the problem. The Enlightenment project which we seem to be moving beyond encouraged us to believe that all questions have answers and these answers, along with their mode of proof, can be expressed in a single, universal, rational frame of discourse. This approach may be useful in the natural sciences, but in the realm of human affairs it is both false and dangerous. In the human sciences I tend to agree with thinkers such as Isaiah Berlin that it is an illusion to suppose that all knowledge can be unified in a single system of thought under the discipline of a single methodology. There are limits to mutual understanding and to the possible resolution of inter-cultural difficulties.
What follows from the obdurate plurality of cultural traditions is not necessarily anarchy or universal conflict as some conservative voices predict, but rich variety, the very key to life itself in its interactive profusion, a culture-diversity to mirror the bio-diversity of the natural world. There are encouraging signs that a renewed East-West encounter - beyond Orientalism - is already emerging, offering us the alluring prospect, not of a homogenized world, but of a creative dialogue arising out of single world of many different centres of culture, value, and thought, different yet co-operating, diverse yet convergent.
Professor John Clarke is a reader in the History of Ideas and can be reached at:
School of Humanities
Kingston University, Surrey, UK
j.clarke@kingston.ac.uk