Thinker and author Wael Hallaq for Al Jazeera Net: Our knowledge is corrupt in its essence and we judge Edward Said's work is a condemnation of the humanities

Living in the world today is not an innocent experience at all, there is no innocent adult, and we are all responsible for these issues and tragedies, and each of us should understand his identity and where did we get this identity as modern individuals?

How does this affect us and the world we inhabit?

Such big questions prompted the Canadian academic and author (of Palestinian origin) Wael Hallaq to rethink in depth what he sees as modern academic complicity with various forms of capitalism, colonialism, and power.

Through his book “Orientalist Palaces: A Approach to Criticizing Modern Science”, Hallaq - Professor of Social Sciences at Columbia University - sought to deepen criticism of Orientalism, as part of his quest to research the roots of Orientalism that inhabit the structure of “Western knowledge” in all its manifestations of law, philosophy and others. One of the areas that embodies the hegemony and authority of the West, which allows the secular Western self to expand according to an immoral perspective.

Criticism of Orientalism has always been a focus of academic attention since the Palestinian-American thinker Edward Said published his book of the same name in 1979. However, Hallaq provides a critique of Said's criticism to complement an intellectual dialogue that lasted for more than 4 decades.

In this regard, Al Jazeera Net interviewed the thinker Wael Hallaq about the contents of his book, which was published in its original title (Restating Orientalism A Critique of Modern Knowledge) by the prestigious Columbia University Press in 2018, to be translated through the Arab Network for Research and Publishing, and here it should be noted that Professor Hallaq has Several important books have occupied the academic arena because of their novelty and depth of discussion. Among these books are "The Impossible State... Islam, Politics and the Moral Predicament of Modernity", "What is Sharia", "History of Jurisprudential Theories in Islam" and "The Rise of Islamic Jurisprudence", We leave you with the dialogue:

The book "Orientalist Palaces.. A Method of Criticizing Modern Science" was published by Columbia Press in 2018 (Al-Jazeera)

• The book asks Orientalism again, why?

  Was it because what Edward Said offered about him was not enough?

  Or does Said's criticism of Orientalism include in itself epistemological and methodological problems that deserve criticism?

I think the answer is both.

The first is the quantitative dimension, while the other embodies the qualitative dimension.

Essentially, Said was not only a liberal by virtue of his belief in the goodness of the Enlightenment mind, in fact he condemned his rejectionists.

This is partly the reason for his disdain, if not contempt for religion and the religious.

Edward Said believed in the universality of secularism, and he believed that modern rationality was an informed criterion for common sense.

Which I oppose, and I think that this proposition is not only European in concept, but is also utilitarian and goes deep into materialism, instrumentalism and annihilation, and therefore it is completely destructive thought.

Said believed in the universality of secularism, and he believed that modern rationality was an informed indicator and criterion for common sense.

Which I oppose, and I think that this proposition is not only European in concept, but is also utilitarian and goes deep into materialism, instrumentalism and annihilation, and therefore it is completely destructive thought;

The proof of this is that we have partially or completely destroyed everything we have touched in the past century and a half, since the Industrial Revolution (beginning in the 18th century) produced its fruits.

I think many would agree that the twentieth century was perhaps the most violent century in human history, even surpassing the nineteenth century, which witnessed the expansion of destructive colonialism throughout the world.

Here it is sufficient to look at the environment and the ecology of the earth, as well as the disintegration of family, social and societal systems, and the gradual rise of physical and mental diseases and other matters.

Said presents a shallow conception of the dialectic that combines modern knowledge and power, and reduces the logic of empire to some political action, so that he believes that all empires throughout history operate and dominate in the same way.

Moreover, Said's liberal and secular critique gave the humanities and social sciences an easy way out, which made postcolonial studies - a field that was established in the wake of Said's contributions - navigate the surface of things without digging deeper

The structure of logic that underlies Said's famous book, Orientalism, is to a large extent part of the problem.

Said presents a shallow conception of the dialectic that combines modern knowledge and power, and reduces the logic of empire to some political action, so that he believes that all empires throughout history operate and dominate in the same way.

Moreover, Said’s liberal and secular critique gave the humanities and social sciences an easy way out, which is why postcolonial studies, a field that was established in the wake of Said’s contributions, navigate the surface without digging deeper, giving academics a new opportunity to persist and elicit assumptions. Old and worn in a new way, but the fundamentals of the system remain.

Saeed could not understand the depth of the problem;

It has nothing to do with having good knowledge (in the moral sense) corrupted by authority.

Our knowledge is, in essence, corrupted in its essence, because it is derived from a defective form of reason and political reason

• In your book “Oriental Palaces” you talked about what you called Orientalism’s complicity with the authorities. How did Orientalism emerge as a product of specific cultural and intellectual formations for colonial Europe, according to a biased and perverted course?

Here again, like most contemporary critics, Said could not understand the depth of the problem;

It has nothing to do with having good knowledge (in the moral sense) corrupted by authority.

This ideal of pure knowledge that we sell to our students in universities and academic institutions is a myth we need to be able to live with the fact that our knowledge is, in essence, corrupted in its essence, because it is derived from a defective form of reason and political reason, which relentlessly seeks to control “pure knowledge.” , which is actually called academic knowledge.

There is no difference in the structure of modern epistemology (which produced academia) and political reason, both of which are morally questionable.

In other words, Orientalism is in no way different from any other academic field or discipline, and it is one of the main criticisms I have leveled against Said, who naively believed that the field of Islamic studies had some special problems that other fields were either innocent of or less tainted.

Even in his latest book, Culture and Imperialism, he extended his criticism to include some non-Orientalist areas, but he remained deeply loyal to the mind of the Enlightenment.

We must change our assumptions and premises about the knowledge that Europe has produced and spread dominantly throughout the world in the past three or four centuries;

Any knowledge that we still live with.

The knowledge that Europe produced is intrinsically linked to colonialism;

Where she was supportive according to a dialectical approach with the dominance of the self and the other.

There can be no modern Europe without colonialism, because the Europe we know is the servant of a certain mentality that could not have been conceived or operated in the world outside the logic and power of colonialism, which are two different things.

This is knowledge intrinsically linked to colonialism;

Where she was supportive according to a dialectical approach with the dominance of the self and the other.

There can be no modern Europe without colonialism, because the Europe we know is the servant of a certain mentality that could not have been conceived or operated in the world outside the logic and power of colonialism, which are two different things.

Orientalism is not just a separate form of knowledge, used as an exception to distort and control the world as Edward Said envisioned;

But Orientalism is just the most obvious facet of the universality of knowledge formed through the exclusive interest in controlling and subjugating people.

Therefore, Orientalism is not just a separate form of knowledge, used as an exception to distort and control the world as envisaged by Edward Said;

But orientalism is just the most obvious facet of the universality of knowledge formed through the exclusive interest in controlling and subjugating people.

It is also the most direct discourse about the Other, and after Orientalism anthropology comes in second place.

However, engineering, medicine, business, economics, law, history, and even philosophy are Orientalist knowledge as much as Orientalism itself.

Orientalism is like power, it is everywhere.

• I said that Orientalism is just another weapon that Europe used in its war against the other, but it is a war that does not always aim at destruction, but rather aims mostly at re-arranging existence.

  Can you explain this idea further?

It is clear that modern forms of destruction are not intentional, at least in their infancy, when they appeared in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

I think the Enlightenment on the whole had good intentions at its outset, but at the very least it does not embody an emancipation, especially when we persevere in our ways despite knowing intimately that we are on the wrong path.

We have known for more than half a century that our ways of perceiving and operating in the world are flawed, and yet we largely continue to do the same things.

The forms of knowledge in Europe were destructive because they insisted on taking a negative and anti-nature view, and my use of the concept of "nature" here is complex.

Europe has never been complacent, and as I emphasize in the book, European thought was imbued with a matrix of self-loathing.

To answer your question more directly, forms of knowledge in Europe were destructive because they insisted on taking a negative and anti-nature view, and my use of the concept of "nature" here is complex.

Europe has never been complacent, and as I emphasize in the book, European thought was imbued with a matrix of self-loathing.

Thus, inasmuch as Christian Europe resented itself and wanted to change its nature, it did the same with the colonies, in the process of producing the same Christian styles in reassembled secular forms.

That is why I insisted in the palaces of Orientalism that the unique project of modern colonialism began in Europe and not in the colonies.

Where Europe occupied itself before occupying others.

• In the book, I devoted an entire chapter on the theory of the "destructive author", and therefore because of its various roles and tasks, is the destructive author the one who performs the required critical practice?

Destructive author theory has many functions, and plays different roles in different contexts.

However, it is generally intended to challenge our notions and theories about what it means to study in academia and what it embodied as a knowledge product at its peak.

I hold that the destructive author is a rare species in terms of his affiliation and position marked by a kind of negativity.

The knowledge system of modernity is based on a political theology that does not allow the subversive author to easily emerge, which is why the author is destructive;

The destructive author is the real critic, as he is the person who engages in refutation (critique) instead of engaging in criticism (criticism).

In the case of modernity, we have known for at least three-quarters of a century that our system is bankrupt and ruined, yet we have not been able to admit our bankruptcy and accept that we need to bring about systemic change.

As far as I know, since Nietzsche, contradictory sounds are rare, in the sense I use here;

Denunciation is a purely systematic and structural practice, not concerned with dealing with the details that fall within the larger structures (a lot of writing about very small matters) as well as the basics of the system.

In the case of modernity, we have known for at least three-quarters of a century that our system is bankrupt and destroyed, yet we have not been able to admit our bankruptcy and accept that we need to bring about systemic change.

I think this absurd denial explains much of the backlash the book received.

The Euro-American tradition continues to believe in the founding concepts of modernity, despite the environmental, social and psychological catastrophes caused by the remnants of modernity.

• The book witnessed different forms of reception, some welcomed it and there were also those who strongly protested against it. What is the reason for this discrepancy in the reception of the book?

In general, it was well received.

Nevertheless, the few critical voices, especially the stinging ones, always stem from scholars who are discontented with my diagnosis of European history, its Enlightenment, and its formations stemming from and instrumental reason.

In fact, I sympathize somewhat with these critics;

It is difficult for some to see a slave set fire to his master's house.

The disseminated postcolonial studies in the humanities and social sciences have become a superficial parody of Said's analysis, so our denunciation of Said's work is more a condemnation of the human and social sciences than an attack on Said's own work.

• As you know, four decades have passed since Edward Said's book, which gave us a specific deal with Orientalism, as well as the emergence of a new field known as "post-colonial studies". What is your assessment of this legacy left by Said?

  What is the importance of postcolonial studies?

In fact, I was not really interested in Said's work himself;

His book was published more than forty years ago, but the reason I take it so seriously with regret is that the book continues to play a pioneering role that effectively guides and contains the entire academic discourse, and here I am not aware of any work that directly and deliberately contradicts its basic premises and philosophical assumptions such as What happened with Edward Said's thesis;

In other words, disseminated postcolonial studies in the humanities and social sciences have become a superficial parody of Said's analysis, so a disqualification of Said's work is more a condemnation of the human and social sciences than an attack on Said's own work.

• What can be learned from the reformulation of Orientalism and the reformulation of the individual?

  Can knowledge be rid of its biases?

Knowledge is a way of seeing and doing things;

It is a way of living, it is not just theory and abstract discourse.

Accordingly, the invocation of knowledge leads one to produce good things as well as to produce bad things.

One can define the good life, in order to make things better for himself and for others;

In other words, knowledge is like a knife that becomes in the hand of a skilled chef a tool that allows the production of delicious dishes, but the same knife, if it comes into the hand of a criminal, becomes an instrument of murder.

Hence, the knife holder is the one who determines how to use it as well as its purpose.

Orientalism is a type of knowledge to which the same generalization of who bears it and who bears it applies.

The bearer of knowledge is always a human subject.

If we create a thinking moral self, we obtain a self to produce actions that reflect these traits and traits.

I am not sure that those who think of themselves as resisting orientalism and its discourse (such as Edward Said) are qualified to see the extent to which they are immersed in the discourse they are trying to undermine.

Orientalism accumulated a lot of knowledge about a century and a half ago.

But the humanistic subjective character of the Orientalist skewed in favor of authoritarian and arrogant modes of existence, I am not sure that those who consider themselves to be anti-Orientalists and its discourse (such as Said) are qualified to see how engrossed they are in the discourse they are trying to undermine.

What is required is the creation of different Orientalist selves, a generation that can comprehend the necessity of what I called cognitive humility;

It is humility that allows learning from others, as well as accepting the other, and then studying things in order to bring about moral self-education, not studying things for control and control.