The Great Issues Forum kicks off its 2009 program with a penetrating essay by Laila Lalami on the scope of Edward Said's Orientalism. The essay begins:
Notwithstanding the recent attacks against Edward Said’s Orientalism (See, for instance, Robert Irwin's Dangerous Knowledge), the book’s central argument remains fundamentally sound. To put it simply, Said argued that European imperial power over the area usually labeled the Orient was preceded, justified, and supported by a vast body of literary, cultural, and political knowledge, in the form of stories, novels, ethnographies, and essays. This body of knowledge was not based solely on empirical (and hence falsifiable) observations; rather, it was premised on the idea that the Western self was, by definition, rational, healthy, normal, and therefore superior, while the Eastern other was irrational, unhealthy, abnormal, and thus inferior. Since the self was known to be superior and the other was known to be inferior, the exercise of political power by the former over the latter was not only natural, but also a matter of ethics and responsibility.