Re: Weber's Genteel Racism

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx 12/06/00 11:40AM >>
The main theoretical ground of Aijaz Ahmad's critique of Said's
_Orientalism_ is that Said, despite his nod of recognition in the
direction of Gramsci, fails to take a historical materialist approach
to the critique of Orientalism.  Said writes: "Almost from earliest
times in Europe the Orient was something more than what was
empirically known about it" (55).  Said goes on to produce his
"evidence" that Orientalism existed "from earliest times in Europe"
by turning to ancient Greek drama:

*****   Two of the most profoundly influential qualities associated
with the East appear in Aeschylus's _The Persians_, the earliest
Athenian play extant, and in _The Bacchae_ of Euripides, the very
last one extant.  Aeschylus portrays the sense of disaster overcoming
the Persians when they learn that their armies, led by King Xerxes,
have been destroyed by the Greeks.  The chorus sings the following
ode:

Now all Asia's land
Moans in emptiness.
Xerxes led forth, oh oh!
Xerxes' plans have all miscarried
In ships of the sea.
Why did Darius then
Bring no harm to his men
When he led them into battle,
That beloved leader of men from Susa?

What matters here is that Asia speaks through and by virtue of the
European imagination, which is depicted as victorious over Asia, that
hostile "other" world beyond the seas.  To Asia are given the
feelings of emptiness, loss, and disaster that seem thereafter to
reward Oriental challenges to the West; and also, the lament that in
some glorious past Asia fared better, was itself victorious over
Europe. (Said 56)   *****

Now, Said's reading of _The Persians_ is patently anachronistic.  The
Athenians who staged _The Persians_ did not possess what Said calls
"the European imagination."  They thought of themselves in terms of
class, gender, city state, and Hellene; "Europe" as (we think) we
know it did not exist in ancient Greece, much less "the European
imagination"!

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CB: This absolute separation of modes of production/historical epochs from each 
other
does not square with the historical materialism of _The Communist Manifesto_. 
Nothing
wrong with asserting this position, but it is not accurate that it is the same 
as the
approach of Marx and Engels in historical materialism.  When they say "history 
is a
history of class struggles" it is clear from what follows that they are 
treating the
European territory as a unit for the history they refer to.  Ancient Greece is 
not
identical with capitalist Europe, but it has a historical relationship to 
capitalist
Europe that is like a kernel to a flower. Rome and Middle Ages are intermediate
phases. Marx and Engels do recognize a connection between the class struggles of
ancient Greece and the class struggles of capitalism, as all part of a history 
with
some unity ( relative to other areas with their own histories of class 
struggles).

"Class struggles" is not synonmous with contingent process. Marx and Engels 
intend to
elucidate laws of historical development by this, with "laws" referring to 
determined,
not chance, elements of history. They want to indicate that there _was_ some 
tendency
in the long term to modern European capitalism from the class struggles of 
ancient
Greece. When they say that history is a history of class struggles, they do not 
mean
that history is series of accidental and unconnected events, but something of 
the
opposite. Somewhere Engels puts it that Marx's accomplishment was to discover 
the laws
or necessary developments in history amidst the welter of seemingly accidental
occurrences.

The term "law" is very frequently used by Marx. Each time he does that he is
emphasizing and developing non-contingencies or necessities in the historical 
process.


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