New in Paperback: Robert Irwin's DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE

New in paperback this month is Robert Irwin's Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism & Its Discontents. Widely praised when published in late 2006, Dangerous Knowledge explores the legacy of the Orientalists from ancient civilization to modern times. Critic Michael Dirda wrote in The Washington Post Book World: "Dangerous Knowledge will be hotly argued about in departments of literature and Middle Eastern studies for some time to come. Still, like Robert Irwin, I strongly believe that most scholars work hard to discover and tell us the truth. Dangerous Knowledge is a paean to that noble purpose."

DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE at Insidehighered.com

Insidehigered.com has an interview today with Robert Irwin:

Q: You note that the initial scholarly reception for Orientalism was quite critical. But the book went on to have considerable influence. How do you account for that?

A: The earliest reviewers were mostly people who knew a lot about the actual state of the field. The enthusiasts who came later did not know the field and were mostly too lazy to check Said’s assertions. The book, by “speaking truth to power,” appeals to the adversarial mentality so common among students and radical lecturers.

Bashing Orientalism has seemed to be a natural intellectual accessory to opposing Israeli policies on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, American imperialism and British racism. It is much easier deliver patronizing lectures or essays about old-fashioned Orientalists than it is to actually do anything useful for Palestine (or come to that actually learn Arabic and become the “right” kind of Orientalist, whatever that would be). Also, for many students, Said’s book, with its references to Foucault, Gramsci and Althusser, must have provided them with their first brush with critical theory. Exciting stuff.

SALON salutes DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE

Great notice of Robert Irwin's much-praised DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE: ORIENTALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS in today's Salon.

"At this fraught historical moment, a new book, Robert Irwin's "Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents," launches the most formidable assault on Said yet. Irwin has impeccable scholarly credentials: He teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, has written on Arabic literature and art, and is the Middle East editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Irwin's book is a hybrid, both a history of the academic field of Orientalism and an all-out assault on Said's most famous book.

Irwin maintains that Said's thesis is false, the arguments he made for it dishonest, distorted and weak, and his theoretical framework self-contradictory and evasive. He charges that Said engaged in a counterfactual rewriting of history, attacking figures from earlier eras because they did not say or do what Said thought they should have. Said's entire project, in his view, is "a work of malignant charlatanry in which it is difficult to distinguish honest mistakes from wilful misrepresentations.""

DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE in THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

After terrific notice in THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE WALL STREET JOURNAL for Robert Irwin's beatdown of Edward Said's screed ORIENTALISM, this weekend came a brilliant review in the WASHINGTON POST written by BOOK WORLD editor Michael Dirda:

Dangerous Knowledge is, obviously, a history of that apostolic succession. It ends, though, with Muslim critiques of Western Orientalism and a chapter about Edward Said titled "An Enquiry into the Nature of a Certain Twentieth-Century Polemic." This is an allusion to John Carter and Graham Pollard's quietly devastating 1934 Enquiry into Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets , which exposed Thomas J. Wise, England's foremost book collector, as a forger, cheat and liar. Irwin forthrightly maintains that "Said libelled generations of scholars who were for the most part good and honourable men and he was not prepared to acknowledge that some of them at least might have written in good faith."

Is Irwin right about Said? He certainly makes a cogent case. And yet. Said too was admired, even revered, by many good and honorable men and women, many of them first-rate thinkers and theorists. Haven't we, after all, persistently tended to view the Middle East through prejudices and distorting lenses of one sort or another? There's no doubt, then, that Dangerous Knowledge will be hotly argued about in departments of literature and Middle Eastern studies for some time to come. Still, like Irwin, I strongly believe that most scholars work hard to discover and tell us the truth. Dangerous Knowledge is a paean to that noble purpose. ?

DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE in WSJ

Further praise for DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE: ORIENTALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS from The Wall Street Journal Weekend:

"Mr. Irwin, trained as an Arabist, has written scholarly studies of Islamic history and is the author of "Night & Horses & the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature" and other books on Near Eastern subjects. He is thus an expert in his field and a skilled writer. With this book, he has put these abilities to splendid use, both in providing a detailed history of European Orientalism and in rebutting the influential onslaught against the discipline mounted by the late Edward Said more than 25 years ago in "Orientalism."... With "Dangerous Knowledge" and its depiction of "orientalists" as discrete individuals — with all the prejudices and mixed motives so many of them exhibited, together with their genuine, and often painfully won, accomplishments — Mr. Irwin has provided the nuanced critique of Islamic studies that Edward Said, with his self-aggrandizing bluster, failed to deliver."

DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE in the NEW YORK TIMES

Great notice by William Grimes of the New York Times for Robert Irwin's Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents. "Mr. Irwin writes for a general audience in a lively, readable style....The payoff is Mr. Irwin’s all-out assault on Mr. Said, which makes for bracing reading."