Showing papers on "Orientalism published in 2005"

Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism

Abstract: Introduction 1. In the beginning 2. Islam, the West and the rest 3. Orientalism and empire 4. The American century 5. Turmoil in the field 6. Said's Orientalism: a book and its aftermath 7. After Orientalism? Afterword.

The Re-invention of Africa: Edward Said, V. Y. Mudimbe, and Beyond

Abstract: Edward W. Said and V. Y. Mudimbe are both whistleblowers against ideolo- gies of Otherness, which Mudimbe calls "alterity" and Said has made famous as "Orientalism." Said traces "the invention of the Orient" back to the West- ern quest for "the Other" while Mudimbe traces "the invention of Africa" back to similar Western explorations. In reality Africa has been re-invented in different stages. The fi rst stage saw North Africa as part of the classical Mediterranean world; the second concerned Africa's interaction with Semitic peoples; the third was stimulated by the birth of Islam and its expansion both north and south of the Sahara; the fourth came with the impact of European capitalist penetration and subsequent colonization; and the fi nal phase was its globalization. In the fi nal analysis, the essay reaffirms that Edward W. Said and V. Y. Mudimbe are bulwarks against the exotic "Orientalization of Africa." They have sought to contain the forces of "Otherization" in North- South relations.

Orientalisms in the Americas: A Hemispheric Approach to Asian American History

Abstract: Erika Lee takes a hemispheric approach to Asian American history, looking at the multi-national immigration restrictions on the Chinese in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. In her article, she looks specifically at how notions of Orientalism that originated in the U.S. not only crossed its northern and southern borders, but also were embraced, unquestioningly, by Canadians and Mexicans to advance their respective nation-building agendas. Arguing that the seemingly national issue of immigration is best understood in a transnational context, Lee opens up new areas of scholarly inquiry by exploring how racialization and public policy related to immigration have been an interlinked, global phenomenon.

Orientalism and the Jews

Abstract: In spite of growing globalization there remains in the world a split between the West and the rest. The manner in which this split has been imagined and represented in Western civilization has been the subject of intense cross-disciplinary scrutiny, much of it under the rubric of "orientalism." This debate, sparked by the 1978 publication of Bdward Said's Orientalism identifies the "Orient" as the Islamic world and to a lesser extent Hindu India. "Orientalism" signifies the way the West imagined this terrain. Going beyond Said's framework, Kalmar and Penslar argue that orientalism is based on the Christian West's attempts to understand its relations with both its monotheistic Others - Muslims and Jews. According to the editors, Jews have almost always been present whenever occidentals imagined the East; and the Western image of the Muslim Orient continues to be formed in conjunction with Western perceptions of the Jewish people. Bringing together essays by an array of international scholars in a wide range of disciplines, Orientalism and the Jews opens exciting new fields in Jewish history and Post-Colonial studies.

The War on Terror, Feminist Orientalism and Orientalist Feminism: Case Studies of Two North American Bestsellers

Abstract: Since the 11 September 2001 events and US initiation of its war on terror, ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ has attracted major attention and become the center of many political controversies. A main focus...

Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism

Abstract: MODERN HISTORY AND POLITICS Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism, by Zachary Lockman. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xxi + 272 pages. Maps. Notes to p. 292. Bibl. to p. 303. Index to p. 308. $65 cloth; $22.99 paper. The Middle East studies field has been engaged in a process of self-examination since the early 1970s. In the United States, this questioning originated in the discontent of a younger generation of scholars, influenced by the civil rights struggle, the New Left, anti-Vietnam War protest and the feminist movement, not just with area studies but with modernization theory more broadly defined. The idea, increasingly prominent as the 1970s progressed, that scholarly knowledge all too often reflected power relationships rather than dispassionate inquiry, was energized by Edward Said's Orientalism, published in 1978. Said viewed Orientalism both as a discourse that developed over many centuries of contact between the Orient and the Occident, as well as an institutionalized practice manifested primarily in the university. Said's work raised serious questions not only about the conceptualizations of the Middle East used by Western scholars, and their intentions when conducting research, but ultimately about the legitimacy of area studies itself as an institutional framework for generating cross-cultural knowledge. The proliferation of studies over the past quarter century centered around the concept of "Orientalism" makes Zachary Lockman's, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism, a welcome addition. Although it professes to offer only an introduction to the debates surrounding Orientalism, Contending Visions presents a comprehensive history of the issues surrounding the rise of Islamic and then Middle Eastern studies in Europe and especially in the United States, as well as an insightful discussion of the critiques of the field that arose during the 197Os and after. Lockman begins with an lengthy and nuanced discussion of the rise of Islamic studies, both in Europe and the United States. After analyzing the relations between Islam and the West in chapters 2 and 3, both in the Middle East and in Spain, he is particularly concerned to show in Chapter 4, "The American Century," that the rise of Middle Eastern area studies in the United States after 1945 coincided with the development of the Cold War. According to Lockman, the proliferation of Middle Eastern studies programs in American universities had as much to do with the desire to thwart Soviet power as to understand the region's social, political, and cultural complexities. Thus the main motive for funding Middle East area studies was to prevent the region from falling under Soviet influence, both because of its oil resources and strategic geographical location. Lockman is especially good in his exposition of Said's Orientalism, and the academic and political reactions to it. While a work of great import, Orientalism nevertheless suffers from a number of flaws. That Said was largely unable to explain German Orientalist interest in the Middle East despite the lack of German colonies in the region (or even the strong American concern with the region during the 19th century, also before major political and economic interests had developed) undermines his argument that knowledge of the Middle East produced in the West was correlated with colonial interests. Sadiq al-'Azm's assertion that Said never breaks with Orientalist ontology, thereby creating an "Orientalism in reverse," is another important criticism that Lockman deftly explains. Lockman is not as strong when discussing the impact of modernization theory on Middle East studies. …

Der andere Orientalismus: Regeln deutsch-morgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert

Abstract: This book presents the first systematic overall view of the genesis and form of what has long been discussed by researchers under the heading of "German Orientalism". Focussing historically on the early 19th century, the author sketches the literary, academic and political conditions under which the modern German image of the Orient has been constituted, and in the process proposes a fundamental theoretical revision to the key text in oriental research, Edward Said's "Orientalism". It also offers detailed individual studies on Goethe's 'West-ostlicher Divan', Hauff's fairy-tales and the oriental fantasies at the Prussian court map out the possible boundaries of an orientalist aesthetic.

Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu

Abstract: The issue of how European images of the East were formed, used, and contested is far from simple. The concept of oriental despotism allowed early-modern Europeans to distinguish themselves from the most powerful and impressive non-European civilizations of the Ottoman Middle East, Persia, India, and China on grounds which were neither fundamentally religious nor linked to sheer scientific and technological progress, but political and moral. However, it would be incorrect to treat this as a pure European fantasy based on the uncritical application of a category inherited from Aristotle, because both the concept and its range of application were often hotly contested. By assessing the way travel accounts helped transform the concept from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, this article argues that oriental despotism was not a mental scheme that blinded Europeans to the perception of the true Orient, but rather a compelling tool for interpreting information gathered about the Orient, one which served a common intellectual purpose despite important differences of opinion in Europe about the nature of royal power.

The Production of the Muslim Woman: Negotiating Text, History, and Ideology

Abstract: Chapter 1 A Semiotic Reading of Islamic Feminism: Hybridity, Authority, and the Strategic Reinvention of the "Muslim Woman" in Fatima Mernissi Chapter 2 Isabelle Eberhardt, ou "La Roumia Convertie": A Case Study in Female Orientalism Chapter 3 The "Muslim Woman" and the Iconography of the Veil in French Feminism and Psychoanalysis Chapter 4 Body, Home, and Nation: The Production of the Tunisian "Muslim Woman" in the Reformist Thought of Tahar al Haddad and Habib Bourguiba Chapter 5 The House of the Prophet as a Technology of Power: Reinventing Domesticity and the Sacred in the texts of Al Ma'arri, Al Naluti, Djebar, and Rushdie

“Different than Us”: Othering, Orientalism, and US middle school students' discourses on Japan

Abstract: This study critically examines the discourses of Japan as employed by young people in the United States. In particular, it analyses the free writings of US middle school students that were collected at three schools with different community environments (rural, urban, and suburban). The study identifies the features and styles of the discourse(s) that occur in the students' writings, examines the ways the discourse of Othering and Orientalism operate in these texts, and explores the specificity of contemporary American identity formation in relation to the imaginary boundary between Japan (“them”) and the United States (“us”).

The Holy Land in English Culture 1799-1917: Palestine and the Question of Orientalism

Abstract: Introduction: Holy Lands 1. Christian walks to Jerusalem: English Protestant culture and the emergence of vernacular Orientalism 2. The Land and the books: High Anglo-Palestine Orientalism and its limits 3. Popular Palestine: The Holy Land as printed image, spectacle, and commodity 4. Eccentric Zion: Victorian culture and the Jewish restoration to Palestine 5. Homesick crusaders: Propaganda and troop morale in the Palestine campaign, 1917-18 Epilogue: The Holy Places revisited

Orientalism, nationalism, and ethnic diversity in late imperial russia

Abstract: Questioning Edward Said's controversial perception of European Oriental studies as a facilitator of imperialism, this article analyses the views and policies promoted in late imperial Russia by academics specializing in Oriental studies, as they debated how best to integrate ethnic minorities in the country's eastern borderlands. The article argues that, themselves influenced by the pervasive impact of nationalism on European scholarship, between the 1870s and the 1917 Revolution these academics proposed policies which are best understood as aimed at nation-building (i.e. fostering a sense of community and unity among the population of a state) rather than at imperial domination of the minorities by the Russians. Identifying the origins of the academics' support for cultural and linguistic pluralism as fully compatible with pan-Russian nationalism, the article demonstrates that the Bolshevik nationalities policies of the 1920s were strongly influenced by the views of academic Orientalists and the pre-revolutionary Russian intellectual tradition to which the latter belonged.

Euro‐Orientalism and the Making of the Concept of Eastern Europe in France, 1810–1880*

Abstract: The counterpart of the liberal-bourgeois narrative of Western civilization is the narrative of its “others,” for in every binary construction of identity the excluded “other” and the self that gained consistency by means of that exclusion depend on each other; both identities are part of the same discourse. I have analyzed in other works how Russia was used as a fundamental “other” through which a Western identity was constructed, at least in France. As part of that process, a particular account of Russia’s history and a peculiar description of its society emerged. Between about 1740 and 1860, Russia was constructed as a “land of absence,” a historical entity characterized not by what it is but by what it lacks—that is, by the absence of certain elements that were considered fundamental to civilization, development, modernity, or simply freedom. At different times, the allegedly missing elements were an independent nobility and intermediate bodies able to check the power of the sovereign; urban development and a large bourgeoisie or middle class; and a strong and independent civil society. Not by chance, those were the quintessential elements of Western European (or, simply, Western) civilization, the source of Western “exceptionality” and “superiority.” In the liberal-bourgeois narrative of Western success, the history of Russia was constructed as a narrative of failures due to the absence of Western ingredients. This narrative framework often came to be extended to the Slavic nations in general, which were also constructed as “lands of absence.”1

Secular Divination: Edward Said’s Humanism

Abstract: Any continuation of the conversation with Edward Said would have to include the question of humanism and its many discontents. Humanism for Said was always a dialectical concept, generating oppositions it could neither absorb nor avoid. The verywordused to cause inhimmixed feelings of reverence and revulsion: an admiration for the great monuments of civilization that constitute the archive of humanism and a disgust at humanism’s underside of suffering and oppression that, as Benjamin insisted, make them monuments to barbarism as well. Said’s last book, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, is, among other things, his attempt to trace the evolution of his own thinking from his training as an academic humanist in the philological tradition of Auerbach and Spitzer, through the antihumanist period of French theory in the U.S. academy since the sixties, to the present moment of posthumanism, when humanism looks to many like a dead issue, not even requiring or generating an interesting opposition any more (unless the posthuman is to be understood as a dialectic moment of humanism rather than some irrevocable cancellation of it). Said is perhaps uniquely situated to trace this process because he, among all the academic intellectuals of the sixties and seventies generation, seemed to simultaneously absorb and resist the arrival of antihumanism in the form of what is loosely called French theory. Said’s engagement with Foucault in Beginnings and Orientalism was persistent and deep, leading James Clifford to

Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity

Abstract: Introduction: Native Studies The Middle Ages as Genre: Theories of Romance and Origins The Middle Ages as Genealogy: The Occult History of Britain The Middle Ages as Spectacle: Medievalism and Orientalism in the World's Fairs The Middle Ages as Method: History and Carnival

The orientalization of gender

Abstract: Said’s critique of Orientalism provokes a comprehensive review by post-colonial theorists of the bulk of western knowledge regarding non-western countries. This Orientalist literature buttresses the colonial notion of a civilizing mission, which is also supported by many western feminists who provide theoretical grounds to such colonialist perceptions. Such post-colonial feminists as Gayatri Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, and Rajeswari Rajan analyze western feminism’s ideological complicity with Orientalist and imperialist ventures.

From despotism to democracy : reporting Iraq's January 2005 election in the Australian and Middle Eastern print media

Abstract: It is only in recent times that the magnitude of Ancient Mesopotamia’s contribution to language, agriculture, modern thought and urbane society has begun to be understood. Most relevant to this study is the governance of Mesopotamia’s early city-states by a political system that Jacobsen has termed ‘Primitive Democracy’ where “…ultimate political power rested with a general assembly of all adult freemen” (Jacobsen, 1977; 128). Yet, despite this, the coverage of Iraq in the Western media since its creation at the end of the First World War and particularly since the first Gulf War, has tended towards Orientalism (Said, 1978) by trivialising this nation and thereby reinforcing the hegemony of the West over the ‘backward, barbaric’ East. This paper examines this issue further by comparing and contrasting the representations of the Iraqi election of January 30, 2005 in four of Australia’s leading daily newspapers (The Australian, The Courier-Mail, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald) with four Middle Eastern English language papers (The Daily Star from Lebanon, Andolu Agency and Dunya both based in Turkey, and the eponymous Kuwait Times). In essence, it finds that while the Australian media posits democracy as a Western concept and asserts a discourse of US hegemony, the Middle Eastern papers are more contemplative, focusing on the impact that this election could have throughout the region.

Edward Said and Michel Foucault: Affinities and Dissonances

Abstract: Edward Said played a key role in introducing Foucault's work to academics in the United States. While this initial appreciation of Foucault's thought was also reflected in his own work, it was not to last, however. Said's growing disenchantment with Foucault's thinking is reflected in the many essays he wrote and the interviews he gave over the years following the publication of Orientalism. At the same time, while Said's reflections point to his reasons for rejecting a Foucaultian approach to texts and the world, they also reveal a number of misunderstandings regarding Foucault's purpose. Said would eventually rectify these misperceptions and offer an eloquent and succinct analysis of Foucault's contribution to contemporary critical theory in the last essay he wrote on the French thinker.

Nordic Orientalism: Paris and the Cosmopolitan Imagination 1800-1900

Abstract: This book explores the appropriation of Oriental imagery within Danish and Norwegian 19th century nation-building. The project queries Edward Said's binary notion of Orientalism and posits a more complex model describing how European counties on the periphery -- Denmark and Norway -- imported oriental imagery from France to position themselves, not against their colonial Other, but in relation to central European nations. Examining Nordic Orientalism across a century in the context of modernisation, urbanisation and democratisation the study furthermore shows how the Romanticists' naive treatment of the Orient was challenged by increased contact with the 'real' Orient.

Beyond the exotic: How ‘Eastern’ is Aida ?

Abstract: Various commentators on Aida express disappointment that the music for the opera’s main characters is not more distinctive, i.e., does not make much use of the exotic styles that mark the work’s ceremonial scenes and ballets. Others argue that exotic style is mostly confined to female, hence powerless, characters. Much of this commentary draws on the same limited selection of data and observations: the exotic style of those few numbers, the opera’s plot, and the circumstances of the work’s commissioning (by the Khedive of Egypt).The present study aims to broaden the discussion. Most unusually, it dwells on various aspects of words and music that are not in themselves ‘markers’ of exoticism or Orientalism but that nonetheless here manifestly announce traits of this or that character (or group) and thereby communicate indelible impressions of what Egyptians and Ethiopians supposedly ‘are like’ (or were like in an earlier era). For example, the music of the priests is mostly not, as commentators regularly claim, marked by imitative counterpoint; rather, it engages in several distinct archaicising tendencies, some of which characterise the priestly caste (and hence the Egyptian government) as rigid and menacing.In addition, this study calls on such varied evidence (rarely if ever examined in this regard) as costume designs, directions in the disposizione scenica for the opera’s first Italian production, relevant remarks by Verdi and early commentators (including two Egyptians writing in 1901 and a late interview with Verdi about European imperialism), some early sound recordings, and Western fears/knowledge of the Wahhabist strain of Islam then expanding across the Middle East. While such a multifaceted exploration certainly cannot be definitive, it can point to new possibilities for exploration.

Are We Prisoners of Shangrila? Orientalism, Nationalism, and the Study of Tibet

Abstract: This essay examines the consequences of Said's critique of orientalism for Tibetan studies, particularly in relation to Lopez's claim that we are all "prisoners of Shangrila." The paper takes up this critique in relation to Lopez's treatment of the present Dalai Lama, arguing that although his critique is useful, it exaggerates the scope and power of orientalism, and in the process ends up de-historicizing and reifying Tibetan culture into a closed totality that either remainsunchangedorbecomesdebasedthroughtheinterventionoftheWest.This, the essay argues, leaves little room for alternatives to orientalism, both in the West and among Tibetans, and thus ends up repeating the exclusionary gesture that this critique had sought to debunk. There is no need to extol the importance of Edward Said's Orientalism for the study of Asian cultures in the contemporary world. 1 Even the rather conservative discipline of Buddhist Studies bears the mark of the critique inaugurated by Said. 2 In recent years, this critique has been directed toward the study of Tibetan culture and its appropriation by the West, chiefly through the work of Donald Lopez and his Prisoners of Shangrila.3 Lopez lucidly applies Said's insights (as well as those of Foucault and Bourdieu) to analyze the ways in which Tibet has been appropriated in Western culture. Although Prisoners has been discussed in several forums,4 I believe that a further assessment of this work can be helpful for conceptualizing

Not) Reading Orientalism

Abstract: Since its publication in the late 1970s, Orientalism has been subject to a wide variety of not always friendly interpretations, prompting Edward Said to offer one or two additions, correctives, and sideswipes of his own. This essay looks-highly selectively, as it must-at recent patterns of reception for Orientalism, arguing that the book has been "re-Orientalized" by its readers, and might even be considered to be Orientalist itself. The essay will focus on provocative crossdisciplinary readings by Aijaz Ahmad, Meyda Yegenoglu, and David Cannadine, as well as on even more provocative responses to his own work, and to responses by others, from Said himself. It will consider the divergent claims made by appreciators and detractors of Orientalism, claims sometimes apparently made less on the strength of what has been than what hasn't been read.

Hegemony, imperialism, and the construction of religion in east and southeast asia1

Abstract: Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism portrays the high tide of nineteenth-century imperialism as the defining moment in the establishment of a global discursive hegemony, in which European attitudes and concepts gained a universal validity. The idea of “religion” was central to the civilizing mission of imperialism, and was shaped by the interests of a number of colonial actors in a way that remains visibly relevant today. In East and Southeast Asia, however, many of the concerns that statecraft, law, scholarship, and conversion had for religion transcended the European impact. Both before and after the period of European imperialism, states used religion to engineer social ethics and legitimate rule, scholars elaborated and enforced state theologies, and the missionary faithful voiced the need for and nature of religious conversion. The real impact of this period was to integrate pre-existing concerns into larger discourses, transforming them in the process. The ideals of national citizenship and of legal and scholarly impartiality recast the state and its institutions with a modernist sacrality, which had the effect of banishing the religious from the public space. At the same time, the missionary discourse of transformative conversion located it in the very personal realm of sincerity and belief. The evolution of colonial-era discourses of religion and society in Asia since the departure of European imperial power demonstrates both their lasting power and the degree of agency that remains implicit in the idea of hegemony.

Artists, Audience, and Ambivalence in Marco Polo’s Divisament dou monde

Abstract: This study seeks to restore the visual dimension of the late medieval experience of Marco Polo's Divisament dou monde by examining the two most famous and lavishly illustrated copies, Bodley 264 and French 2810, both executed in the fifteenth century for courtly patrons. Although the images in these manuscripts differ stylistically and iconographically in significant ways, it is suggested that they accomplish the same ideological objectives of making Eastern court culture coherent to a Western audience, upholding traditional conceptions of the exotic East, and eliciting wonder. Particular importance is attached to portrayals of the Great Khan, the Tartars, and Mongolian cities, for which artists supplied models that often contradicted the text. It is argued that these artistic contradictions were necessary in order to meet patrons' demands for the marvelous, and that their ultimate effect was to encourage ambivalent attitudes towards the East that comprised a fundamental aspect of medieval Orientalism.

Said, Orientalism, and Japan

Abstract: The first Japanese translation of Edward W. Said's Orientalism appeared in 1986. The theory of Orientalism, once brought into the East Asian context, becomes more complicated. There is no doubt that Japan is geographically situated in the Orient, but, in a political sense, it has tried to become a "Western" nation. Thus, the country has characteristics of both the Orient and the Occident. What does Japanese Orientalism ask in return? How does the discussion of Japanese Orientalism contribute to the general theory? This article offers an analysis of, and perspectives on, the impact of Said's work on Japanese intellectuals. I. The Japanese Reception of Said The name of "Edo-wa-a-dou Sa-yi-yi-dou" is very popular among Japanese intellectuals today. While strolling down the aisle of bookshelves labeled "contemporary thoughts" in major Japanese bookstores, you can easily find piles of translations of Said's works, although you may sometimes encounter a bookshelf mistakenly entitled "Se-ddo" or "Za-yi-yi-dou." The first Japanese translation of Edward W. Said's Orientalism (1978) appeared in Japan in 1986, published by Heibonsha Ltd., eight years after the publication of the original in English. Thereafter, various translations of Said's work successively emerged one after the other. (1) Apart from these books, there are numerous translations published in a variety of Japanese magazines and proceedings and not referred to in this article. Moreover, special issues of journals have been devoted to Edward W. Said. Examples include the March 1995 and November 2003 issues of Gendai Shiso (Contemporary Thoughts) and the March 1995, November 2003, and January 2004 issues of Eigo Seinen (The Rising Generation). Since Said's publication in Japan, his postcolonial theory and writings on the Islamic world have attracted considerable attention among Japanese scholars, who mainly fall within three categories: students of Middle East studies, researchers within Japanese studies interested in the relationship between Japan and other Asian countries in the Modern period (although Said seldom mentioned East Asia in his writings, it seemed possible for them to apply Said's theory to the history of the Japanese Empire that possessed colonies for over fifty years), and scholars of European studies who were also interested in Said's postcolonialism as his theoretical works had already become a common language within that field. Members of the Department of English Literature were especially influenced by Said and other postcolonial theorists. In addition, Said's various articles on the problem of Palestine were widely welcomed as basic introductory information among the wide range of enthusiastic readers. What then are the characteristics of the Japanese reception of Edward W. Said? What are the meanings of Said's theory of Orientalism in a Japanese context? First, it should be noted that Said's Orientalism has not evoked the same strong antipathy from Japanese conservatives that it did in the West. On the contrary, most Japanese intellectuals, whether Marxist or conservative, are sympathetic towards Said's unsparing criticism toward the West. Being an Eastern nation, Japan has been exposed to strong political and militaristic pressure from such Western powers as Britain, the United States, and Russia since the early stages of modernization. At the same time, Japanese intellectuals have always been aware of the prejudiced representation of the Orient by the Occident and that Western discourse on the East was deeply connected to the former's power structure. Said's Orientalism endorsed what the Japanese had instinctively felt from the time of their first encounter with the West. A significant example is what the Japanese aesthetician, Tenshin Okakura (1862-1913), writes about a century ago in The Awakening of Japan (1905): Has not the West as much to unlearn about the East as the East has to learn about the West? …

Constructing Italian Africa: Geography and Geopolitics

Abstract: In recent years the discipline of geography has undergone a thorough engagement with some of the murkier aspects of its histories. In particular, impelled by broader interdisciplinary poststructural and postcolonial initiatives, geographers have interrogated and exposed ever more of the entwined and entangled complicities between geographical knowledges and European imperialisms.1 Elements of this work found inspiration in Edward Said’s Orientalism, which not only reworked western understandings of the colonial encounter and its construction of colonial Others, but also recognized the profound roles of geographical knowledges within these complex and shifting matrices of power, culture, and knowledge.2 Indeed, when Said revisited these themes in Culture and Imperialism, he was still more explicit: Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.3