Robert Graham Irwin

Robert Graham Irwin (born 1946) is a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature.

He read modern history at the University of Oxford, and did graduate research at SOAS. From 1972 he was a lecturer in Medieval History at the University of St. Andrews. He gave up the academic life in 1977, to write. Irwin is currently a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and the Middle East editor of the "The Times Literary Supplement".

"Dangerous Knowledge"

In 2006 his critique of Edward Said's "Orientalism", "Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents", was published. Among his various critiques, he points to how Said focused his attention on the British and the French in his critique of Orientalism. He also addressed how Said linked the academic Orientalism in those countries with imperialist designs on the Middle East. Yet, by the 19th and the early 20th centuries, it was more proper to assign Russia as an empire having imperialist designs on the Caucasus region and Central Asia. Irwin pointed to how Russia evaded Said's attention. [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/books/01grim.html?ex=1163394000&en=b2e925d36504c43c&ei=5070 "The West Studies the East, and Trouble Follows", William Grimes, New York Times, November 1, 2006] Another of Irwin's key points is that oriental scholarship or 'Orientalism' "owes more to Muslim scholarship than most Muslims realize." [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3237245.ece "Islamic science and the long siesta" Robert Irwin, TLS, 23 January, 2008.]

Maya Jasanoff criticized the book in a review in the "London Review of Books": "...Irwin's factual corrections, however salutary, do not so much knock down the theoretical claims of "Orientalism" as chip away at single bricks. They also do nothing to discount the fertility of "Orientalism" for other academics. The most thought-provoking works it has inspired have not blindly accepted Said's propositions, but have expanded and modified them." [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n11/jasa01_.html "Before and After Said", Maya Jasanoff, LRB, 8 June, 2006.]

Works

*"The Arabian Nightmare" (Dedalus Books, 1983, novel)
*"The Middle East in the Middle Ages:The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250-1382" (1984)
*"The Limits of Vision" (Dedalus Books, 1986, novel)
*"The Mysteries of Algiers" (Dedalus Books, 1988, novel)
*"The Arabian Nights: A Companion" (1994)
*"Exquisite Corpse" (Dedalus Books, 1995, novel)
*"Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh" (Dedalus Books, 1997, novel)
*"Islamic Art" (1997)
*"Satan Wants Me" (Dedalus Books, 1999, novel)
*"Night and Horses and the Desert: the Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature" (1999)
*"The Alhambra" (Harvard University Press, 2005)
*"For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies" (2006)
*"Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents" (Overlook Press, 2006)

Quotes

"During the Rushdie case, the leader of the largest Buddhist organisation in Britain was asked how buddhists would react to blasphemy, and he answered: We support it, because it makes people think. – That was well said. I don't know how to react, but it strikes me that Muhammed is increasingly given a divine status which he didn't have in original Islam. Muhammed is no god. He is a human being making mistakes which, by the way, is evident from the authorised accounts about his life."Flemming Rose: "Forsvar for en profession" [Defence of a profession] , interview with Prof. Robert Irwin, Jyllands-Posten, 12 April 2008, section 1, page 17 (accessed via [http://infomedia.dk Infomedia.dk] )]

On Edward Said's work 'Orientalism':

"I am a medievalist, but he hates the middle ages. Altogether he loathes the past, he does not have the ability to enter into the spirit of other ages. He lies about European novelists and twists their works; I am myself a novelist with great sympathy for some of those whom he denounces in his book. Finally, I am an orientalist, too, and his book is a long a persevering polemic against my subject, so I need to ask: is there anything at all to like in Said's book? – No. It is written far too quickly and carelessly. It abounds with misprints and mis-spelled names. It is an extremely polemic book, and throughout time many polemic books for or against Islam and the Muslim world have been written, but none have been taken serious in the same way as Said."

On Edward Said:

"The fact is that researchers cannot build anything on Said's thoughts.dead-end. ... He has made it difficult for westerners to say anything critical about Islam and the Muslim world. You cannot do that because then you run the risk of getting denounced as an orientalist, i.e. a racist, an imperialist and other terrible things."

External links

* [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n11/print/jasa01_.html Before and After Said] , Maya Jasanoff, "London Review of Books", Vol. 28 No. 11 dated 8 June 2006
* [http://bostonreview.net/BR32.1/rosen.php Orientalism Revisited, Edward Said's unfinished critique] Lawrence Rosen, "Boston Review", Jan/Feb 2007
* [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200703/hitchens East is East] Christopher Hitchens, "The Atlantic Monthly", March 2007
* [http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/12/06/orientalism/ How Edward Said took intellectuals for a ride] Gary Kamiya, "Salon.com", 2006

ee also

*Arabist
*Orientalism
*Orientalism (book)

References