by Kevin Walker
University of California, Berkeley
1991
In 1978 a book by Edward Said was published called Orientalism. In it, Said characterizes a perception of the "East" (meaning the Arab Middle East from Morocco to Iran) by the "West" (meaning Europe and the United States) which is essentializing and simplifying, a view that holds the East to be "an object of knowledge and domination" (1978:2). This view, he shows, has prevailed in a great deal of Western art, scholarship, literature and news coverage for many years, up to the present. Since Said's book appeared, many anthropologists and social scientists have embraced his concept and applied it to a wide range of data, and it became the center of a heated debate within Middle East studies. Generally, the theory is accepted, and the debate is over what should replace Orientalist scholarship in studying the Middle East. Said's theory (henceforth called anti-Orientalism) has become a powerful "meme" to use Richard Dawkins's term. What makes it such an attractive idea to scholars?
The recognition of Orientalism is related to many other memes unleashed in the 1960s, largely from the work of Clifford Geertz, Michel Foucault and others, all of which attack the foundations of "objective" Western science. These theories are alternately called "subjectivist", "interpretive" or "post-modern." A central theme is that anthropologists and other social scientists have claimed (explicitly or not) to be detatched "Selves" whose study of "Others" is presumed to be free of bias; yet this can't be so because inherent judgements creep into their observations, interviews and interpretations. This subjectivist meme complex has been effective in pushing objectivist memes out of the social sciences. Yet for all the words written on subjectivism perhaps no one has looked at it in a memic evolutionary context. It is useful to trace two memic paths: first, that of the Self and Other, and second, the meme complex which recognized and countered the first.
The most basic form of "otherness" is biological: the difference between males and females. This is the essential binary opposition, the basis for most forms of life on earth, and perhaps in it can be found the roots of other categorizations of otherness. It is the nature of all organisms, according to Darwin, to differentiate; genetic variation produces an endless number of distinct "Others."
Proceding from here, it can be seen that as the number of individuals of a particular species increases, competition ensues, mainly in the form of male competition for females. Genetic relatedness and kin selection result in distinct social groups, which in many cases compete with other social groups, especially when land or resources are scarce. Many species, particularly several nonhuman primates, are territorial: they protect their home range from other groups or individuals. Also, Edward O. Wilson suggests that a basic fear of "strangers" may be genetically based. In human infants, this fear is nearly universal, transcending cultures and geographical areas.
In humans, otherness takes many forms. For example, most people automatically regard Neanderthals as strange and primitive, probably a different species than our own, based on the appearance of their skulls. And differences in appearance are an important form of perceptions of otherness. It is believed that Neanderthals existed contemporaneously with anatomically modern Homo sapiens; it is not known whether the two interacted, but if they did, it seems likely that they did not regard eachother as equals, based on their differential morphology.
As for modern humans, regardless of whether they evolved in one place, or separately in Asia, Africa and Europe, what is certain is that distinct races and cultures evolved in different areas; races and cultures which "naturally" regarded eachother as different, based on appearances and customs. Separate languages evolved as well, and in every known language there are words that distinguish "insiders" from "outsiders".
Language, in fact makes the distinction quite clear, for a "self" cannot exist without an "other," an "us" without a "them" and so on. Binary oppositions, as Levi-Strauss and others have shown, are ways of simplifying reality. From a memic point of view, since human brains can only process and store a limited amount of information, categorizations allow economy of thought. Linguistic units, words and concepts serve this function.
The problem of studying other cultures goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. As they expanded their empire through trade and militarism, Herodotus saw that socio-cultural difference raised a question over the Greeks' linguistic distinction between the "natural" and "conventional".
It is clear that both Orientalism and anti-Orientalism arose in the Middle East itself. "The theological conflicts between the Abrahamic faiths produced the first set of systematic and global theories of 'otherness' as the morally and ontologically corrupt" (Turner 1989:629).
When European cultures evolved to a point that they began travelling abroad, the explorers "naturally" saw the inhabitants they encountered as "others" based on physical appearance and customs; in them they saw elements of their own past, hence these others were deemed "primitive". Objectivist science spread through a kind of memic "founder effect" in which a relatively small group of European scholars spread their ideas in a fairly small meme pool. Just as albinism occurs in isolated Alpine villages, so did a kind of memic albinism dominate the meme pool for a long time. And there may indeed be a genetic link: Europeans' "objectification" of other cultures may be rooted in males' biological need to protect their females from "outsiders" and keep their gene pool as small as possible: a kind of kin selection on a broader scale.
The recognition of the inherent subjectivity of objectivism is a relatively recent meme complex. Some of the first "anti-objective" memes came early from Max Weber and Franz Boas, both of whom gained experience studying a wide variety of cultures. Weber especially has been cited extensively, which shows the power of his memes. (He was hardly free of bias, and, for example, associated the West with male traits, and the East with female traits.)
The decolonization process which followed World War I speeded subjectivism. Communications technologies spread from the West to other regions, showing inhabitants of widely separated regions how they viewed eachother. Also, the "albinism" of science -- the monopolization of the field by the cultures that created it -- began to break down. More diverse people entered scientific fields, at first adhering to the empirical Scientific Method, but beginning in the 1960s, questioning the very framework itself. In a process similar to genetic screening, Geertz, Foucault and others isolated certain recessive memes which were contingent on authors' and scientists' particular histories and cultures. Subjectivism, a kind of polymorphic memic trait, holds Western science to be an ideology, not unlike religion, literature, or political doctrine.
Orientalism is one memic variant of the subjectivist complex. Weber charted the rise of rationalism in the West, and how this led to "objective" science and its "natural" view of the East as "irrational." As European countries abandoned their Middle Eastern colonies, many intellectual ties were cut, and the United States began to fill the void. There arose a need for knowledgable experts on the region, and the U.S. government began to fund anthropological fieldwork and Middle East studies departments in universities (then called Oriental Studies). Universities are, after all, meme laboratories, and professors are memic engineers.
The anti-Orientalism meme evolved in a kind of punctuated equilibrium, dominated by two bursts. The first occured in 1963, when an article by an Arab scholar began a wave of criticism of Western studies of the Middle East, studies that he said characterized "the Orient and Orientals as an 'object' of study, stamped with an otherness, of an essential character" (Abdel-Malek 1963:107). But the anti-Orientalist meme during this time originated in, and flowed between, Arab scholars, for the most part. The meme migration in the 60's and 70's was largely one-way, from West to East: Arab scholars adopted the memes of Geertz and others, but did not see their own ideas flow back to the West.
It wasn't until 1978 that the meme gained wide recognition here. That year was a watershed because two books on the subject were published, Said's Orientalism and Bryan Turner's Marx and the End of Orientalism; also that year, a ground-breaking conference on "indigenous anthropology" was held.
This provides an interesting case study for memic selection. Orientalism was popular even among non-academics because Said was perceived as less "militant," and he was better connected to Western universities and media; his colorfully jacketed book was published by a major publishing house with good distribution and marketing services. Turner's, on the other hand, is rather plain in comparison, published by a small London house; and his theory, while nearly identical to Said's, is paired with the theorist perhaps most stigmatized in the West.
It is little surprise that Said's book was very popular here, and Turner's, in the Middle East. The intellectual climate in each place was and is vastly different. While the meme has existed since Abdel-Malek's article, it was recessive until the intellectual environment facilitated its proliferation. The 1978 conference on indigenous anthropology was both a cause and effect of the new climate. In the Middle East, newly oil-rich countries began to fund indigenous studies. But in Mideast universities, foreign languages were not encouraged and anthropology was identified with colonization. There was a view that "since the West could be challenged economically, it could also be challenged intellectually" (Shami 1989:653). The anti-Orientalism meme has, since 1978, been critiqued, refined, applied and reworked, but generally accepted. What made it so appealing, and why did it take 15 years to gain its appeal?
Meme theory provides some answers. "Cultural variation begins when new memes arise as ideas, actions, or perceptions of outside events. Selection among variant memes, and retention of the selected ones, also involves a more or less conscious evaluation and investment of attention. And so does the transmission of the retained meme" (Csikszentmihalyi 1988:115). A "good" meme, Dawkins says, has some psychological appeal; it helps one cope with the world (physical or social). Such memes become internalized, and may in fact change the physical structure of a brain. To be successful, they must not only survive in a book or object, but affect people's consciousness.
This is the case with both Orientalism and anti-Orientalism. It provided some satisfaction to Western minds to set the East apart as an Other, and this even served to justify colonization in many cases. But as diverse peoples have integrated, physically and through communications technologies, it gives some mental satisfaction -- and to more people -- to say that the East and West are no better than one another. This meme has the added appeal of blending well with other, similar memes of the subjectivist complex.
It was also advantageous for the anti-Orientalism meme to co-opt the term "Orientalism," which previously had referred to Middle East studies; so too does it now, but it refers specifically to studies which are "stamped with otherness" and so on. Also, by embodying an entire concept in a single word, this makes for economy of thought and storage, just as the terms "yuppie" or "meme" do.
In fact, many such memes are contingent on language; conversely, subjectivist memes expose this fact: they show that language has so evolved that it no longer resembles the things it names. Unlike genes, memes are not fixed in an individual: they can be replaced by more powerful or contradictory ones. And as the term "Orientalism" shows, meanings of individual words can change. Microevolution (in individuals) is as important for memes as macroevolution (in populations over generations). Like objective science before it, subjectivism appeals because it helps shape one's worldview.
But human will is not the ultimate controller of memes. Just as human behavior is bounded by genes, which are in turn shaped by external factors, memic selection is bounded by the intellectual climate. "Fitness" is relative; it changes with the environment. Some cultures discourage competing memes, and others encourage them; ours encourages overproduction of memes, and at the point of saturation, selection occurs. Thus, while the anti-Orientalist meme may have sprung from Abdel-Malek's mind (probably from a recombination of other memes), Said's and Turner's mutations were more adaptable to the intellectual climate of their time. This climate is what Noam Chomsky calls the "bounds of thinkable thought" or what Daniel Hallin calls the "sphere of legitimate controversy" (1986:117), and is shaped by political, ideological and cultural factors. In the sciences as well as the arts, traditionally, a small group of "experts" has defined the range of acceptable variation, and the credibility of new memes. The intellectual revolution begun in the 1960's, however, challenged the definition of who is an "expert."
Once a meme is accepted into the meme pool, it can multiply on its own, independently of human biology, as Csikszentmihalyi observes (1988:125). Theoretically, memes could evolve counter to genetic evolution. Norman Mailer makes the claim that feminism (another variant of the subjectivist complex) could have the effect of making sex unpalatable to people, thus checking population growth.
Csikszentmihalyi goes even further to say that the coevolution of memes and genes can go from symbiotic to parasitic. For example, people create more powerful weapons just for the sake of superceding previous ones; we create new materials, technologies and ideas without realizing their use but simply creating them for their own sake. In this way, he says, memes use humans as a medium for their own multiplication. Put another way, recombinations of memes can produce emergent properties which are the result of human action but not human design. The only way to counter this is through human will or changes in the environment, (physical or intellectual).
Subjectivism seeks to recognize, understand and in some cases reduce difference between previously "marginalized" groups; it is also a function of the increased visibility of such groups: cause and effect become meaningless. Geertz said that placing himself in his ethnographies made his type of science more objective. But the fact is that these strategies can never be completely free of Western influence, since they are contingent on the same languages, and in many cases the same methods and presuppositions, as empirical, objectivist science.
In addition, by discrediting evolutionary theory, they ignore important facts observable by anyone. Furthermore, they offer no alternative to evolution. Laura Nader (1988) believes that an objectivist orthodoxy has been replaced by a subjectivist one, (like the "nativist" backlash which followed Said's book), and suggests dialogue on both sides and between disparate fields. I would add altruism: Dawkins has shown its biological benefits; the intellectual climate would also benefit by it. Subjectivist memes have spread so far and so fast due in part to their saturation: the more memes in the environment, the better their chances for "success".
It can be seen that "otherness" is linked to human biology. Attempts to reduce difference can only produce an "equality" which is artificial. This is not to say that males or Westerners are inherently superior. On the contrary, subjectivist memes have importantly allowed recognition of viewpoints previously unseen. But instead of trying to impose a new orthodoxy of equality of groups, we should celebrate individual difference. Anti-Orientalist memes haven't necessarily pushed out Orientalist ones, for the West still "manages" the affairs and dialogue of the Middle East, as seen in two recent events, the Gulf War and the Arab-Israeli peace conference. But the latter event demonstrates that dialogue is the first step; altruism is the second.
Abdel-Malek, Anouar 1963 "Orientalism in Crisis" Diogenes 44 (Winter), 107-8.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 1988 "Memes vs. Genes: Notes from the Culture Wars" The Reality Club. John Brockman,Ed. New York: Lynx Books.
Dawkins, Richard 1976 The Selfish Gene. New York: Pantheon.
Hallin, Daniel 1986 The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley: UC Press.
Nader, Laura 1988 "Post-Interpretive Anthropology" Anthropological Quarterly v. 61 n. 4
Said, Edward W. 1978 Orientalism. New York: Random House.
Shami, Seteney 1989 "Socio-Cultural Anthropology in Arab Universities" Current Anthropology v.30, n.5 (Dec.), 649-654.
Turner, Bryan S. 1978 Marx and the End of Orientalism. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Turner, Bryan S. 1989 "Research Note: From Orientalism to Global Sociology" Sociology v.23, n.4 (Nov.), 629-638.