Args to block out

Said oversimplifies east-west relations. he overlooks the intellectual power of people in the
orient
Science.Jrank.org <a href="http://science.jrank.org/pages/10519/Occidentalism-East-West-Dialogue-Other.html">Occidentalism - East-
west Dialogue And The Other</a>2001 Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad. Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Historiography.
Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave, 2001.

While the discussion of Occidentalism is often in juxtaposition with that of Orientalism, it can also
amount to a criticism of the latter. Edward Said's critique of Orientalist
writingshttp://science.jrank.org/pages/10519/Occidentalism-East-West-Dialogue-Other.html and studies
raised important questions about the Western hegemonic power in shaping the imagery of the "Orient."
But like the Orientalists, as Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi charges, Said, in presenting his thesis on the
Western discursive hegemony, underestimates and overlooks the intellectual power and contribution of
the people in the Orient. In his study of the Persianate writings in history and travelogue by Iranians and
Indians during the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Tavakoli-Targhi notes that prior to the spread of
European power, the Asians not only traveled to and wrote about Europe, contributing to Persianate
Europology, but they also helped the early European Orientalists to acquire a knowledge of the Orient. In
other words, in the exchanges between East and West, the East was not a passive, silent Other, as
portrayed by the Orientalists (and also, ironically, as endorsed by Edward Said). Rather, argues Tavakoli-
Targhi, the Persianate writers displayed equivalent intellectual capability to engage in cross-cultural
communications with their Western counterparts. That the Orientals contributed to the gestation of
Orientalism has also been noticed by Arif Dirlik in his study of South and East Asian history, although he
casts this contribution in a more critical light.

The Critique’s Obsession with Representations Blocks ANY Productive Change to

International Relations - It Creates an Unavoidable epistemological crisis
Morten Valbjørn, PhD in the Department of Political Science @ Aarhus, ‘4 [Middle East and Palestine:
Global Politics and Regional Conflict, “Culture Blind and Culture Blinded: Images of Middle Eastern
Conflicts in International Relations,” p. 67-8]]

As mentioned before, the relational perspective is a critique of both the neglect of the issue of Otherness by the IR
mainstream and the way in which proponents of an essentialist approach relate to the Other. For this reason, it would
be natural to assume that proponents of this second attempt to "culturalize" the study of international relations would
be particularly keen to address the question of how to acknowledge cultural diversity without committing the sins of
orientalism. Indeed, this is also what Said is stressing in the introduction to Orientalism: The most important
task of all would be to undertake studies in contemporary alternatives to Orientalism , to ask how one
can study other cultures and peoples from a libertarian, or nonrepressive and non-manipulative perspective. (1995:
24) However, he then goes on to add that " these are all tasks left embarrassingly incomplete in this
study" (Said, 1995: 24). Looking at other analyses based on a relational conception of culture, it becomes
apparent that the latter remark is very telling for this kind of understanding of culture as a whole
(e.g. Doty, 1993: 315). Despite a blank rejection of the universalism of IR mainstream and, at least in
principle, a recognition of the existence of different Others who are not only projections of own fantasies
and desires, in practice, proponents of this alternative approach nonetheless usually leave the question of
how to address and approach the actual cultural Other unanswered. This might very well be an
unintended outcome of the previously mentioned radical constructivism associated with this approach. Thus, by
stressing how the representation of the Other is intimately related to the construction of identities or a
subtle way of performing power, one risks being caught in a kind of epistemological and moral
crisis, characterized by a nagging doubt about whether it really is possible to gain any knowledge of Others or if
we are just projecting our own fantasies, and by a pronounced fear that our representations are silencing
voices so that we unwittingly are taking part in a subtle performance of power (Hastrup, 1992: 54). In
merely dealing with the relationship between the representcr and his representations, these
dilemmas can be "avoided." However, at the same time one writes off the opportunity to relate
to cultural diversity as anything but discursive products of one's own fantasies and projections. This is
precisely the critique that supporters of the relational understanding of culture have been facing. From this
perspective, it appears less surprising that Said has had so much more to offer on the dynamics of
Western representations of the Middle East than on real alternatives to the orientalist
depiction of the region. Unfortunately, this second bid for a culturalistic approach to the study of international
relations is not only aligned with a number of very welcome critical qualities that may enrich the study of
international relations. It is also related to a problematic tendency to overreact when it comes to
addressing the prevalent Blindness to the Self within IR mainstream and among subscribers to the essentialist
conception of culture. Thus, aspirations of promoting a larger self consciousness in the study of
international relation end up becoming self-centeredness, just as the attempt to promote a larger
sensitivity toward the Other in reality becomes oversensitivity to saying anything substantial
when it comes to actual Other. This is problematic, partly because we are left without any real idea as to
how to approach actual Middle Eastern international relations rather than Western
representations of these; and partly because there is the risk of losing sight of the material and very
concrete consequences that specific representations may engender (Krishna, 1993). Also, the
proponents of this second "culturalistic" alternative seem to be better at asking important and critical questions than
at offering attractive answers.
 AT- Orientalism K
The Alternative Irresponsibly Wishes Way the Real Possibility of Conflict for Metaphysical
Idealism
Wimal Dissanayake, @ University of Hawaii, ‘6 [China Media Research 2.4, “Postcolonial Theory and
Asian Communication Theory: Toward a Creative Dialogue,”
http://www.chinamediaresearch.net/vol2no4/060401_Wimal_Dissanayake.pdf]

There is no doubt that the writings of Fanon, Said, Spivak, Bhabha and their followers have made a significant
contribution to the shaping of the field of colonial studies. However, at the same time, their writings brought with
them several problems and dilemmas that need to be addressed. Critics of postcolonial theory maintain that it is
too much tied to Eurocentric ideas, most notably poststructuralism, lacks a political vision, pays
inadequate attention to questions of history, is far more preoccupied with problems and debates in the
metropolitan academe than the stark realities of the colonized countries, displays an elitism
especially in the impenetrable prose fashioned by some of the theorists such as Bhabha and Spivak. Let us take the
question of politics. Terry Eagleton (1994) says that “within postcolonial thinking we are allowed to
talk about cultural differences but not—or not much—about economic exploitation” (p. 12). Ella Shohat
(1992) makes the point that the term postcolonial as used in Western centers of learning serves to
distance more politically relevant terms such as imperialism and geopoltics. Commentators such as Ajaz
Ahmad, Arif Dirlik, E. San Juan, Benita Perry, Ngui Wa Thongo and Neil Lazarus make a strong case for
postcolonial theory to draw on the conceptual resources of Marxism. For example, Aijaz Ahmad, lamenting the
fact that postcolonial theorists ignore history, especially the struggle for survival of colonized
peoples, makes the following observation: “within this context, speaking with virtually mindless pleasure
of transnational cultural hybridity, and politics of contingency, amounts, in effect, to endorsing
the cultural claims of transnational capital itself. . . . it is not at all clear how the celebration of a
postcolonial, transnational, electronically produced cultural hybridity is to be squared with the
systematic decay of countries and continents, and with decreasing chances for substantial
proportions of the global population to obtain conditions of bare survival, let alone electronic
literacy and gadgetry (San Juan, 1998, p. 123). Here, Ahmad is drawing attention to not only the shallow politics
linked to postcolonial theory but also to the deficiencies in highly valorized concepts such as hybridity by
postcolonial theorists.
Similarly, E. San Juan points out the absence of a sense of history and the day-to-day problems experienced by
colonized peoples in their struggles, for instance. If postcolonial theory is to be representative and effective, these
problems should be addressed. San Juan (1998) makes the following observation: “Postcolonial theory, in brief,
can be read as metaphysical idealism masking its counterrevolutionary telos by denying its
own worldly interests and genealogy. It occludes its own historical determinacy by deploying
psychoanalytical and linguistic conceptual frameworks that take market/exchange relations for granted”
(p. 126). He goes on to make the comment that “lacking the dialectical mediation of the part to the whole that
historical materialism considers imperative for theorizing the possibilities for change and the sublation of
historically specific contradictions, postcolonial orthodoxy dissolves mediations and generates
exactly the predicament that it claims to prevent: the antinomy of transcendentlizing idealism
and mechanical determinism” (p. 128).
 AT- Orientalism K

The Critique Homogenizes all Descriptions as Imperial - Recentering a Static

Interpretation of the World
Raka Shome, Prof. in Comm. @ ASU, Radha S. Hegde, Prof. of Culture & Comm @ NYU, ‘2 [Communication
Theory 12.3, “Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Charting the Terrain, Engaging the Intersections,” p.
256-7]
Our discussion of postcolonial studies, so far, has been (deliberately) Anglo/Euro centered. That is, we have
focused, for the main part, on the emergence of this intellectual area in relation to the time frame of European and
Anglo colonialisms. This is, of course, necessary because European/Anglo modernities continue to remain one of
the dominant forms of colonial modernities and hence their legacy and responsibility must be confronted. But there
is more to the story of postcolonial studies and there is more to the scope of this intellectual area. For instance, the
historical relation between Japan and Korea, and Japan's economic stronghold in several parts of Asia, constitute
important examples of colonial dominance produced by modernities outside of Euro/Anglo modernity. Recent
scholarship within postcolonial studies has thus rightly begun insisting on the need to examine such other
modernities that are not framed by the historical time of Europe. Scholars such as Tani Barlow (1997), San Juan Jr.
(1999) and Timothy Mitchell (2000) have emphasized the importance of forging other lexicon through which to
understand modernities that are not modeled on the European framework. For instance, Barlow (1997) argues that
"if colonialism is said, in a categorical sense, to be best exemplified by the British Raj, and all other forms of
colonialism are understood in reference to that historical model, then not only are all other formations derivative but
conditions fundamentally unlike that originary design might indeed by inconceivable or unseeable" (p. 5). Clearly
there is a danger in normalizing one historical time or one narrative of modernity as being constitutive
of colonialism. Clearly there is a risk, at some level, of recentering the very narrative of European
modernity that postcolonial studies aim to unsettle. In recent times, postcolonial studies has shown a
growing engagement with other forms of colonial and national modernities that were forged through other histories
and other geographies. Such work is desirable and necessary. This diversity that needs to occur in postcolonial
studies cannot, however, eclipse the story of European modernity or deny its geopolitical and global dominance. For
at the end, as Dilip Gaonkar (1999, p. 13) has suggested, no discourse or interrogation of "alternative modernities"
or "other modernities" can escape acknowledging the dominance of Western modernity given that Western
modernity has traveled through cultural and economic relations, practices, and institutional arrangements to the rest
of the world. Thus, even to think about, and resurrect, stories of other modernities is, at some level, to think through
and against Western modernities (pp. 13-14). The need for exploring other modernities, the need for embracing
diverse perspectives on colonialisms that can remain sensitive to different contexts and times of
colonialism, means that rigorous postcolonial scholarship must remain attentive to the context of
colonialism. Taking postcolonial theories that emerged out of a study of a particular context of modernity or
a particular historical time and mechanically applying them to other contexts and times can be
problematic. It can be problematic because this can reproduce a dangerous acontextualism that is
sometimes seen in postcolonial studies (especially, scholarship that comes out of literary studies where the "text"
and "narrative" of colonialism become everything while the historical context disappears in the background).
Additionally, such acontextualism can flatten the story of modernities by implicitly denying any
change in its relations from one time to another, from one context to another. So, for example, the theoretical
perspective that Edward Said (1978) described as " Orientalism" works well to understand colonial formations in
earlier times when the WestEast, North-South, divide was still clear. But it does not work as well in
contemporary times, in which the lines separating the East from the West, and the North from the South, are
increasingly becoming porous under conditions of globalization. Similarly, the diasporic politics of "third space"
or "border lives" produced by migratory waves of decolonization, that was cogently theorized by Homi Bhabha
(1990, 1994), has more relevance to understanding postcolonial formations that emerged out of British
colonialism, which saw massive territorial displacements of migrants into metropolitan centers. But the theory of
"third space" does not work as well in regards to understanding the various diasporic politics of
contemporary times which are not always predicated on the migrations of colonized people.
 AT- Orientalism K

Orienttalists Knowledge is not Neccesiarly Bad – We Must Determine the Political Outcome
of the Knowledge [i.e. the plan]

Edmund Burke, Prof. @ Univ. of UCSC, ’98 [Theory and Society 27.4, “Orientalism and World History:
Representing Middle Eastern Nationalism and Islamism in the Twentieth Century,” jstor]
Said argues that because all knowledge is the product of its age and necessarily contingent, there can be no
knowledge unaffected by the auspices under which it comes to be. If this premise is accepted, it follows that there
can be no knowledge that is fully objective: thus, orientalism has no privileged claim to truth. However, Said and
his supporters go further, arguing that because orientalism as a species of discourse was fatally
entangled with imperialism, the knowledge it produced was inevitably distorted, if not willfully racist.
While there is much truth in these observations, they are lacking in complexity. Certainly, orientalism as a
discourse could not but reflect the views of the ambient culture in which it flourished. Thus some orientalists did
place themselves in the service of European empires; the fortunes of the field were frequently linked to imperialism;
and European assumptions of superiority to non-Europeans and of the progressive role of imperialism were
widespread. On the other hand, it is important to note that some orientalists opposed imperialism or
wrote favorably about Islamic culture and society; that some Middle Eastern nationalists were
themselves inspired by Western orientalist writings; and that nationalist and Muslim theological
positions have their own biases and assumptions. It is undeniable that as a species of Enlightenment
discourse, oriental- ism has been a carrier of basic Western notions of the European self and the non-
Western other that generated unfalsifiable propositions about the superiority of Europeans to non-Europeans. In this
way, orientalists participated in the elaboration of modern European cul- tural identity. However, it is only as
a result of the subsequent development of Western thought that it is possible to raise these
criticisms. We can now see that modernity was a global process rather than a manifestation of
European genius. This does not mean that orientalism's claim to scientific status is void, but that like other
forms of human knowledge, it is both contingent and subject to constant critique and reformulation as a
function of changing perspectives on the past. It is only through the evaluation of these issues that one can
understand orientalism as a form of intellectual inquiry.' I return to this discussion in the conclusion.

They are Overly Pessimistic – Orientalism is not necessarily Colonialist – Its Still Leaves
Room for Political Struggle

Edmund Burke, Prof. @ Univ. of UCSC, ’98 [Theory and Society 27.4, “Orientalism and World History:
Representing Middle Eastern Nationalism and Islamism in the Twentieth Century,” jstor]
Is is now time to rethink Said's central insight -that European knowledge of the Islamic other
sprang from a desire to facilitate colonial domination, and by extension the post-Enlightenment state's
efforts to quantify, map, and control. First, we can note that the knowledge-power relations involved were
basic to the liberal project as it emerged in Europe, and not necessarily an expression of forms of
colonial knowledge. Then there's the question of power. For, if Said gives us orientalism as a discourse
of power, he fails to endow it with a politics. If power is located everywhere, then it is
nowhere, and an ahistorical pessimism is justified. Crucially, critics of orientalism have no
explanation for nationalism and the end of empire . The way out lies in reconceiving the
Enlightenment project and in relocating nationalism in the complex genealogy of modernity. While the
Enlightenment had a repressive Foucauldian, knowledge-power strand, it is important to recognize
that it also had a progressive and revolutionary strand, and was thus the bearer of a promise of
human liberation based upon the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, the abolition of slavery, and
the idea of human rights.30 The interaction of these two strands of Enlightenment thought and politics did
much to shape the political and social as well as cultural struggles of post-revolutionary Europe. Anti-colonial
nationalism (and thus Islam- ism) is the child of this dual heritage as well.
 AT- Orientalism K

Turn: The Critique is a Stereotype of The Aff – We Productively use Representations to

End Foreign Interference – This is Substantially More productive Than the Narssitic
Criticism
Morten Valbjørn, PhD in the Department of Political Science @ Aarhus, ‘4 [Middle East and Palestine:
Global Politics and Regional Conflict, “Culture Blind and Culture Blinded: Images of Middle Eastern
Conflicts in International Relations,” p. 65-6]

The reason why the problems concerning Blindness to the Self is also relevant in this connection is not due to any
lack of awareness of the representer's place in representations of Otherness. Rather, the problem is to be found in the
manner in which this issue is addressed. The thorough self-consciousness associated with the relational conception
of culture is thus brought about by means of a radical constructivism, which, at least in its most outspoken versions,
seems to replace a possibly naïve subject/object separation by an almost solipsistic subjectivism equivalent to
Wight's "subject = fi" formula in the above. This radical constructivism is quite evident among IR's
"dissident thoughts" and can also be recognized in statements by Said such as: "Orientalism responded more to
the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West" (1995: 22).
However, first does it make sense to perceive representation as part of either a construction of identities or of some
kind of subtle performance of power, and, second, is it really possible to represent the Other at one's own discretion?
With regard to the first question, the almost unambiguously negative and rather monolithic depiction
of "Western" representations of the Middle East that can to be found among proponents of the
relational conception of culture seems to some extent to be based on a rather problematic
stereotyping, far from the more balanced accounts by, for instance, Rodinson (1974, 1987). By presenting the
orientalist scholarship in a very stereotyped and caricatured way, Said , for instance, almost ends up
doing to the orientalists what he accuses orientalist scholarship of having done to Middle Eastern
societies (Brimnes, 2000). Furthermore, it is anything but obvious that representations produced as
part of the performance of power must necessarily be regarded as unreliable and without value as
such. Halliday, among others, criticized this understanding and argued that the relationship between the
origin and the validity of a discovery is more ambiguous than one might think: "the very fact of trying to
subjugate a country would to some degree involve producing an accurate picture of it" (1995: 213).
Regarding the second question, advocates of the relational conception of culture easily leave the
impression that the way the Other is represented almost exclusively depends on the representer
while the represented appears more or less as an empty and passive object onto which all kinds of
conceivable fantasies and ideas can be projected. However, Bhabha, for instance, suggested that instead of
regarding the representation of Otherness as a "hegemonic monologue " where the Other is a passive
object on which all thinkable fantasies and conceptions can be projected-such as it sometimes seems to he the
case in the works of, for example, Said and Campbell-we might rather think of it as a hybrid dialogue ,
though seldom equal nor without power plays (Bhabha, 1997; Keyman, 1997; Brimnes, 2000). Furthermore, the
representation of Otherness has often had far more ambiguous effects than what this approach's advocates usually
would acknowledge. Sadiq al-Azm, for example, coined therefore the notion of "Orientalism in reverse." Here, the
classic essentialist and problematic Orient/Occident discourse allegedly used to legitimize imperialism
is reversed and applied to the struggle for an end of foreign interference. In the Middle Eastern
context, this is visible in Arab Nationalism, as well as among radical Islamist movements, in which the criticism of
foreign (in)direct influence is often based on the argument of an allegedly unique Islamic or Arab culture (Azm,
2000).
When advocates of the relational conception of culture seek to counter the prevailing lack of
selfconsciousness within the universalist IR mainstream, as well as among proponents of the essentialist conception,
it thus seems that they unintentionally have turned into what most of all appears as a narcissist self-
centeredness. Apparently they lack enough concern for how the representation of Otherness is not only
about the representer's projections, desires, fantasies, and so on. This kind of (over)reaction also seems
to influence their ability to relate to Otherness in a more substantial way.

Representation arguments flawed—both contradictory and exclude legitimate inquiries into the
Middle East.

Warraq 07 (Ibn, Founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Study and senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, “Defending the West: A
Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism” pg. 43-44)

One of Said's major theses is that Orientalism was not a disinterested, scholarly activity but a political
one, with Orientalists preparing the ground for and colluding with imperialists : "To say simply that Orientalism was a
rationalization of colonial rule is to ignore the extent to which colonial rule was justified in advance by Orientalism, rather than after the fact" (p. 39). The Orientalist
provides the knowledge that keeps the Oriental under control: "Once again, knowledge of subject races or Orientals is what makes their management easy and
profitable; knowledge gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control" (p. 36). This
is combined with Said's thesis, derived from the Coptic socialist thinker Anwar Abdel Malek, that the Orient is always seen by the Orientalists as unchanging,
uniform, and peculiar (p. 98), with Orientals reduced to racist stereotypes and seen as ahistorical "objects" of study "stamped with an otherness ... of an essentialist
character" (p. 97, quoting Malek). The Orientalists have provided a false picture of Islam: "Islam has been fundamentally misrepresented in the West" (p. 272).

Said adds Foucault to the heady mix; the French guru convinced Said that Orientalist scholarship took
place within the ideological framework he called "discourse" and that "the real issue is whether indeed
there can be a true representation of anything , or whether any and all representations, because they are representations, are embedded
first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representee If the latter alternative is the correct one (as I believe it is), then
we must be prepared to accept the fact that a representation is eo ipso implicated, intertwined, embedded, interwoven with a great many other things besides the

'truth,' which is itself a representation" (p. 272). It

takes little thought to see that there is a contradiction in Said's major
thesis.47 If Orientalists have produced a false picture of the Orient , Orientals, Islam, Arabs, and Arabic society—and, in any
case, for Said there is no such thing as "the truth"— then how could this false or pseudoknowledge have helped European

imperialists to dominate three-quarters of the globe? "Information and con trol," wrote Said, but what
of "false information and control"? To argue his case, Said very conveniently leaves out the important
contributions of German Orientalists, for their inclusion would destroy —and their exclusion does indeed totally destroy—
the central thesis of Orientalism, that all Orientalists produced knowledge that generated power , and that
they colluded and helped imperialists found empires. As we shall see, German Orientalists were the greatest of all scholars of the

Orient, but, of course, Germany was never an imperial power in any of the Oriental countries of North
Africa or the Middle East. Lewis wrote, "[A]t no time before or after the imperial age did [the British and French] contribution, in range, depth, or
standard, match the achievement of the great centers of Oriental studies in Germany and neighbouring countries. Indeed, any history or theory of Arabic studies in

Europe without the Germans makes as much sense as would a history or theory of European music or philosophy with the same omission."48 Would
it have
made sense for German Orientalists to produce work that could help only England or France in their
empire building? Those omitted are not peripheral figures but the actual creators of the field of Middle
Eastern, Islamic, and Arabic studies: scholars of the standing of Paul Kahle, Georg Kampffmeyer, Rudolf Geyer, F. Giese, Jacob Barth, August
Fischer, Emil Gratzl, Hubert Grimme, Friedrich Schulthess, Friedrich Schwally, Anton Baumstark, Gotthelf Bergstrasser; others not discussed include G. Wustenfeld,
Alfred Von Kremer, J. Horovitz, A. Sprenger, and Karl Vollers. Though Theodor Noldeke, Johann Fiick, G. Weil, Carl Heinrich Becker, E. Sachau, and Carl Brock-elmann
are mentioned, their work and significance are not discussed in any detail; Noldeke, whose Geschichte des Qorans (1860) was to become the foundation of all later
Koranic studies, is considered one of the pioneers, along with Goldziher, of Islamic studies in the West.

Turn—Orientalism’s flawed account empowers militants and fundamentalists.

Warraq 07 (Ibn, Founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Study and senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, “Defending the West: A
Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism” pg. 49-50)

For a number of years now, Islamologists have been aware of the disastrous effect of Said's Orientalism
on their discipline. Professor Herbert Berg has complained that the latter's influence has resulted in "a fear of asking and answering potentially embarrassing
questions—ones which might upset Muslim sensibilities."69 Professor Montgomery Watt, one of the most respected Western
Islamologists of the last fifty years, takes Said to task for asserting that Sir Hamilton Gibb was wrong in saying that the master science
of Islam was law and not theology. This, says Watt, "shows Said's ignorance of Islam ." But Watt rather unfairly adds, "since he is from a Christian
Arab background."70 Said is indeed ignorant of Islam, but surely not because he is a Christian, since Watt and Gibb themselves were devout Christians. Watt also

decries Said's tendency to ascribe dubious motives to various writers, scholars, and statemen such as Gibb and Lane, with
Said committing
doctrinal blunders such as not realizing that non-Muslims could not marry Muslim women. 71 R. Stephen
Humphreys found Said's book important in some ways because it showed how some Orientalists were indeed "trapped within a vision that portrayed Islam and the

Middle East as in some way essentially different from 'the West.'" Nonetheless,
"Edward Said's analysis of Orientalism is
overdrawn and misleading in many ways, and purely as [a] piece of intellectual history, Orientalism is a
seriously flawed book." Even more damning, Said's book actually discouraged, argues Humphreys, the very idea
of modernization of Middle Eastern societies. "In an ironic way, it also emboldened the Islamic activists and
militants who were then just beginning to enter the political arena. These could use Said to attack their
opponents in the Middle East as slavish 'Westernists,' who were out of touch with the authentic culture
and values of their own countries. Said's book has had less impact on the study of medieval Islamic history—partly because medievalists know
how distorted his account of classical Western Orientalism really is."72

No link—Western values actually promote openness to the other.

Warraq 07 (Ibn, Founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Study and senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, “Defending the West: A
Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism” pg. 70)

Western civilization has ever been open, to a greater or lesser extent, to the Other : to other ideas, other customs,
and other people. Though the idea of the unity of mankind did not at first play a great part in their thought, it nonetheless originated

with the Greeks, gathered momentum, and led to the cosmopolitanism of the Cynics and the Stoics
during the Hellenistic period. Not being burdened with either violent nationalism or racism,43 the Greeks with their keen, inquiring minds were
able to rethink their other prejudices when their geographical knowledge increased, and they arrived at fresh theoretical conclusions and finally moved in the

direction of the idea of a common fellowship linking all mankind.44 The

Greeks were equally open to new ideas from the outside.
Greek philosophy is said to have been greatly influenced by the Vedic culture of India.45 But by far the
greater influence of course came from the ancient civilizations of the Near East and also Egypt. Walter
Burkert, Rudolf Wittkower, and M. L. West have shown the importance of the cultural encounters with
the Orient in the formation of the civilization we call Classical .46 As Burkert wrote,

The West rules—European self criticism has solved slavery, imperialism, and human rights.

Warraq 07 (Ibn, Founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Study and senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, “Defending the West: A
Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism” pg. 75-76)

The greatest critics and critiques of the Western tradition are to be found in the West. Modern
denunciations of the West by third-world intellectuals such as Frantz Fanon and Edward Said rely on analyses provided by such
Western thinkers as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Antonio Gramsci, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques
Lacan, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The method of critical analysis developed in the West and exemplified by
philosophers such as Marx testifies, in the words of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., "to the internally redemptive potentialities
of the Western tradition."71 Europe has been guilty of terrible crimes, but what civilization has not been? Confining ourselves to the
twentieth century, the sins of the West are no worse than the crimes and follies of Asia (the Rape of
Nanking, when Japanese soldiers killed more than three hundred thousand unarmed civilians;72 the crimes of Mao, resulting in the deaths of well
over 70 million Chinese in peacetime;73 Pol Pot, who caused the deaths of 1.7 million people—one-fifth of the population—in Cambodia;74 the massacre of
more than a million Muslims of East Pakistan [now Bangladesh] by the Muslims of West Pakistan),75 or Africa (under Idi Amin's regime in Uganda, an estimated

three hundred thousand people were killed;76 the massacres in Rwanda left eight hundred thousand people dead; 1.8 million killed in the
Sudan,77 including at least three hundred thousand in Darfur)78 or the Middle East (the killing of more than a million Armenians by the Turks;79 the crimes of
Saddam Hussein;80 Hafez Assad's 1982 attack on the Syrian town of Hama, in which, according to the Syrian Human Rights Committee, between thirty thousand to
forty thousand civilians died or remain missing;81 the massacre of Palmyra [Tadmur] Prison in Syria;82 as many as 2 million people have died since 1979 in Iran

because of the policies of the Islamic Republic).83 And

yet there persists a profound difference between the West and the
Rest. Western intellectuals, writers, historians, politicians, and leaders have themselves chronicled the follies of the West and have forced
Westerners to fundamentally rethink their policies , ideas, and political and social behavior, thereby bringing about change.
Profound self-reflection and courageous acts of self-criticism have brought about movements that have led to the
abolition of slavery, the dismantlement of empire, and legislation to defend the human rights of women
and minorities and to defend freedom of inquiry and expression. 84

Arabic anti-Westernism has stalled democracy and intellectual progress in the eastern world.

Warraq 07 (Ibn, Founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Study and senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, “Defending the West: A
Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism” pg. 82-83)

And yet something

went wrong. From the 1950s onward, liberal ideas of freedom, democracy, and
representative government were no longer in evidence , and "the idea of taking responsibility for the ills of one's own society lost out
to the ease of blaming everything on evil foreigners."113 Hence the need for and the importance of intellectuals like al-Afif al-Akhdar and Tarek Heggy. Al-Afif al-

Akhdar, a Tunisian intellectual, wrote a blistering critique of the Arab world, lamenting that while
the rest of the world was embracing
modernity, knowledge, and globalization, the Arabs were regressing to the Dark Ages. Why was human knowledge
growing except in the Arab world, where all one found was illiteracy, ideological fear, and mental paralysis? "Why," wrote Akhdar, "do expressions of tolerance,
moderation, rationalism, compromise, and negotiation horrify us, but [when we hear] fervent cries for vengeance, we all dance the war dance? Why have the
people of the world managed to mourn their pasts and move on, while we have ... our gloomy bereavement over a past that does not pass? Why do other people

love life, while we love death and violence, slaughter and suicide, and call it heroism and martyrdom?" Arabs
suffer from both an inferiority
complex, leading to self-hatred and "national humiliation whose shame can be purged only by blood,
vengeance, and fire," and a sense of superiority and the belief that they were chosen by God to lead
humanity—in which case why would they want to borrow anything from their inferiors? Despite the Koran's
description of the Arabs as the best nation in the world, their history was a chronicle of failures in the last two centuries, which, combined with a "deep-culture of

tribal vengefulness," led to "a fixated, brooding, vengeful mentality," driving out "far-sighted thought and self-criticism." Arabs should learn from
the Japanese, who understood the "vital necessity to emulate the enemy ... becoming like him in modern knowledge, thought and politics, so as to reshape
the traditional personality and adapt it to the requirements of the time. "114 Tarek Heggy, an Egyptian intellectual who studied law and
management an worked for many years for the Shell Oil Company, wrote, "We have dug ourselves into a cave, cut off from the rest of humanity thanks to a static
mind-set that ignores the realities of our time and the new balances of power. .. . We remain locked in a fantasy world of our own making ... a world in which
anachronistic slogans are still widely regarded as sacrosanct, immutable constants. This has resulted not only in our growing isolation from the outside world and in
alienating our former allies, but in a disastrous internal situation marked by a pattern of lost opportunities and a climate inimical to democracy and development."

Arab intellectuals have failed to create "a cultural climate and system of values in keeping with the
requirements of the age"; instead we now have "an intellectualy barren and culturally stagnant
landscape which has moved Egypt further away from its dream of catching up with the developed world
than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century. "115 Unfortunately such courageous self-criticisms are rare, and liberal Arab
intellectuals "are few in number and face determined oppostion from regimes that continue to control the media and other institutions."116 Arab liberal thought

remains "fragmented, advocated by largely isolated individuals and with little systematic expression.... As
a result, the liberal case is heard by
only a tiny portion of Arabs, its small space hedged about with the thorns of its enemies. "117

Even if the West is racist, Muslims lose the blame game.

Warraq 07 (Ibn, Founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Study and senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, “Defending the West: A
Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism” pg. 251-252)

The situation is similar as regards racism. While the West has taken great steps to legally ban all kinds of discrimination on
the basis of race in all aspects of modern Western societies, to the extent of a reverse discrimination against whites, the rest of the world
remains vehemently and openly racist. A hatred of Jews is widespread in the Islamic world, often
encouraged by the state: as, for instance, in the state funding of the film of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery taken seriously by all
Muslims. This Jew hatred has little to do with the Israeli-Arab conflict, and, like slavery, is deeply ingrained

in Islamic culture sanctioned by the Koran , and encouraged by the example set by Muhammad in his frequent attacks and massacres of
Jewish tribes, families, and individuals. Mein Kampf is very popular in the Muslim world, and during World War II, the

grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, met with Adolf Hitler to ask for German help in exterminating the
Jews of the Muslim world. As Kenneth Timmerman notes, "I was stunned to learn the story of Haj Mohammad Amin al-Hussein .. ,"34 " Not only did he
meet with Hitler in Berlin in 1941: he became the Arabic voice of Nazi Germany in all their broadcasts to the Arab world, exhorting Muslims to murder Jews
and enact Hitler's final solution. Not by coincidence, one of his greatest students is Yasser Arafat , who in moments of weakness claims

(wrongly, I believe) that he is Haj Mohammad Amin's nephew."35 One can scarcely imagine one politician in the West surviving

in office if he or she made racist remarks in the way the Malayasian prime minister, Mahathir Muhammad, regularly
does. In October 2003 he said to an Islamic conference: "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They
get others to fight and die for them."36

East Asian states openly encourage racism—constructing non-natives as “the Other” and establishing
racial binaries.

Warraq 07 (Ibn, Founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Study and senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, “Defending the West: A
Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism” pg. 260-261)

The racism of the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians of the subcontinent is not frequently discussed, but is amply
documented historically and is extant. The visit of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to China in April 2005 led to
some repugnant racist attacks on her , as a courageous article by Martin Jacques in the Guardian, pointed out.63 The introduction alone to a
pioneering work edited by Frank Dikotter makes for eye-opening reading.64 This is a necessary corrective to the politically correct

posture that deliberately ignores the "racialised identities in East Asia" that have led to discrimination
there.65 Kang Youwei, the celebrated Chinese philosopher of the late nineteenth century, wrote of black Africans who, "with their iron faces, silver teeth,
slanting jaws like a pig, front view like an ox, full breasts and long hair, their hands and feet dark black, stupid like sheep and swine," should be whitened by
intermarriage—provided, of course, one could persuade a white girl to marry such "a monstrously ugly black." These views have prevailed to this day. As Dikotter

writes, "[Official
policies endorsing racial discrimination and leading to abuses of human rights can be found
in most East Asian states. Myths of origins, ideologies of blood and theories of biological descent have
formed a central part in the cultural construction of identity in China and Japan since the nationalist movements of the
late nineteenth century. Naturalised as a pure and homogeneous 'Yamato race' in Japan, or as a biological descent group from the 'Yellow Emperor' in China,

political territories have been conflated with imaginary biological entities by nationalist writers."66 Both
Japan and China created "the
Other," defined in terms of "civilization" and "barbarism," racialized into binary oppositions between
"advanced" and "backward" groups of people. For the Japanese, the Chinese were a different race, while they themselves were culturally
and biologically unique. In the context of Japanese colonial expansion to Korea and China, "it was assumed that the differences in economic and political capacities
of the peoples of East Asia were the result of natural or biological laws: colonial populations were regularly contrasted with Japanese modernity. 'Spiritual and
physical purity' were said to be the attributes which marked the Japanese as the 'leading race' in their divine mission in Asia. In war-time Japan, a sense of unique
purity—both moral and genetic—was central to the notion of racial separateness in which other population groups were dehumanised as beasts and ultimately as

demons. In both China and Japan, other population groups were also ranked according to their presumed attributes."67 The state disseminated
these racial theories by means of school textbooks, anthropology exhibitions, and travel literature, and
certainly found a popular audience receptive to them. As Dikotter emphasizes, the pseudoscientific theories helped
self-definition but also produced the racially excluded Others , notably "Blacks" and "Jews," even though these groups were not heavily
represented in China and Japan. Nonetheless, they are central in the racial taxonomies drafted in China and Japan in the twentieth century.68 Writing in the late
1990s, Dikotter felt that in East Asia, in contrast to other regions, "there is no clear sign that the hierarchies of power maintained through racial discourse are being

questioned." Talk of Japanese biological uniqueness and purity seems to dominate discussions. Blacks
and blackness have become symbols
of the savage Other, and are reflected in such essays as "We Cannot Marry Negroes" by Taisuke Fujishima. An influx
of foreign workers has led to fears of racial contamination, and the Japanese government refused to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination. A similar situation prevails in China, where African students on university campuses are periodically attacked since they are imagined as belonging to
an inferior species.69 Theories of racial purity are used to legitimize discrimination against social groups, such as the Tibetans and Uighurs. Dikotter concludes on a

somber note: "In an

era of economic globalisation and political depolarisation, racial identities and racial
discrimination have increased in East Asia, affecting both the human rights of marginalised groups and
collective perceptions of the world order . Official policies endorsing racial discrimination and leading to abuses of human rights can be found
in most East Asian states."70

Embracing realism as the alternate creates a pragmatic, reasoned opinion on foreign policy
avoids the concepts of Orientalism by putting things in an unbiased perspective
Desch, Michael C Professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making and Director of the Scowcroft
Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. 2008 “America's Liberal
Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in U.S. Foreign Policy” International Security 32.3.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v032/32.3desch.html

Changing America's Liberal domestic political culture is likely to be extremely difficult. In a Hartzian vein, I
suggest instead that the United States needs a foreign policy based on realism, a decidedly non-Liberal way
of looking at the world, to provide a check on some of its excesses abroad and at home as it wages the war on
terrorism. To begin, realists take seriously the threat from international terrorism, but they also put it in
perspective. Fewer people have been killed since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in the war against al-Qaida as a percentage
of the population (0.0009), than in the American Civil War (1.78), World War II (0.29), or even Vietnam (0.03). Indeed, terrorism ranks
very low as a cause of death among Americans in the period from 1995 to 2005 (3,147), well behind car accidents (254,419), workplace
injuries (59,730), influenza (19,415), and even complications from hernias (16,742).170 Realists are also skeptical of the
Bush administration's claim that the United States faces a more dangerous adversary in al-Qaida than it did
from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. After all, the Soviets had a huge nuclear arsenal capable of ending life on the planet as
we know it, while the most reasonable worst-case scenarios today are that al-Qaida might acquire one or two crude radiological "dirty
bombs." The United States is fighting World War IV, as some neoconservatives aver, only in the very limited sense that al-Qaida is
based in a number of different countries.171 In other words, realism counsels prudent caution—not panic—in the U.S.
approach to the global war on terror.172 Realists also have a more balanced perspective on al-Qaida's
motives than do Liberals. Rather than seeing Osama bin Laden and his allies as mindless religious fanatics
bent on destroying the American way of life, realists understand that he and his followers are pursuing a
limited political agenda to end the U.S. military presence in the Middle East.173 And realists understand that al-
Qaida's tactics—particularly suicide terrorism—make strategic sense for a [End Page 40] weak nonstate actor that has no other choice
than to wage asymmetric warfare.174 To be sure, realists recognize that important U.S. interests are at stake in the war on terrorism that
must be defended, but they are less inclined than Liberals to regard al-Qaida as implacable and invincible. Unlike Liberals, realists also
understand that radicalism is not always a destabilizing force. Despite hair-raising rhetoric about the possibility of winning a nuclear war
during the 1950s, even Mao Zedong's China behaved rationally once it developed nuclear weapons a decade later.175 Today, realists
understand that nationalist movements, though often radical, can help to make the international system more
benign. This is because nationalism is the impetus for balancing behavior among states, which helps maintain
the balance of power.176 In other words, realists do not harbor as great a fear of radicalism as do Liberals.
Realists do not create right/wrong dichotomies, and understand the middle option of the
United States as a world power, under realism the problem of the United States
overpowering hegemony is solved
Desch, Michael C Professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making and Director of the Scowcroft
Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University .2008 “America's Liberal
Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in U.S. Foreign Policy” International Security 32.3.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v032/32.3desch.html

it has been the conservative realists in the U.S. military, not liberal civilian politicians, who
It is also not surprising that
have been most consistently committed to upholding the Geneva Conventions and maintaining the norm
against torture. True, the basis of this commitment has been pragmatic (military professionals support the Geneva Conventions
because they understand that they benefit U.S. troops) rather than principled.177 Regardless of their rationale, realists are less
likely than Liberals to place their enemies beyond the pale of civilization. Realists have also been far less
enthusiastic about U.S. efforts to achieve hegemony than either liberals or the Bush administration. While some nonrealists have made
principled arguments about why the world would be better off under U.S. domination, it has been realists, arguing largely on pragmatic
grounds, who have most consistently urged restraint and caution.178 They fear that as the United States grasps for the mantle of world
domination, it will generate opposition around the world, resulting in greater international tension and conflict.179 As Reinhold Niebuhr
observed in a somewhat different [End Page 41] context, realism "ought to persuade us that political controversies are
always conflicts between sinners and not between righteous men and sinners. It ought to mitigate the self-
righteousness which is an inevitable concomitant of all human conflict."180 Realists understand that the rest of the
world does not see the United States as a benign hegemon despite its good intentions.181 "One reads about the world's desire for
American leadership only in the United States," observed an anonymous British diplomat, but "everywhere else one reads about
American arrogance and unilateralism."182 Finally, Liberalism vacillates between isolationism when it cannot change the world and
messianism when it can. The common impulse linking these two otherwise different foreign policies, according to Hartz, is that
Liberalism leads the United States "either to withdraw from 'alien' things or transform them: it cannot live in comfort constantly by their
side."183 Realism, in contrast, provides the United States with the basis for a consistent and sustained policy of
engagement with the rest of the world based on the principle that it can pursue its national interests without
having either to remake the rest of the world in its image or retreat from the international system entirely.
Critical realism solves both worlds of the Aff and the K by opposing previous doctrines
through gaining understanding of the specify of the current situation
Steinmetz, George, Cambridge University Press, 1.1998. “Critical Realism and Historical Sociology”
Comparitive Studies in Society and History Vol. 40, No. 1 pp. 170-186http://www.jstor.org/stable/179393
Positivism, theoretical realism, and conventionalist idealism are not related to one another linearly along a single dimension. They differ
in terms of their emphasis on ontology versus epistemology, their acceptance of unobserved theoretical entities, and their stance on
judgmental relativism. But all three positions would agree that what most historical social scientists are actually doing is
methodologically flawed-either they are too scientific or not scientific enough, too wedded to the notion of explanation or to an
indefensible form of explanation. The confusion felt by many social scientists around these issues can be seen in the
search for a general theory such as rational choice and in the acceptance of arguments against a multicausal,
contingency-based approach to historical explanation (see Kiser and Hechter 1991). Yet, as we will see below,
multicausal, contingency-based approaches are the most appropriate ones for capturing the ontological
specificity of social reality. Critical realism offers a defense and a clarification of the practices of "actually
existing historical sociologists." Critical realism provides a powerful rebuttal to the positivist doctrine of
uniform covering laws and also provides arguments against judgmental relativism (Bhaskar 1979:73, 1986:64). And
while Bhaskar has presented his system primarily as an alternative to positivism and conventionalism, it also provides an incisive
critique of theoretical realism." Theoretical realism disparages explanations which invoke unique, nonrepeatable constellations of causal
mechanisms in accounting for specific historical conjunctures. In sharp contrast, critical realism suggests that explanations of this sort
are not inferior but in fact more adequate to the "open" and ontologically stratified structure of reality (both natural and social) outside of
the experimental laboratory.

Depictions of a violent west ignore the fact that the East is as well

Warraq (Ibn, Founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Study and senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, 2007 “Defending the West:
A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism” pg. 260-261)

The racism of the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians of the subcontinent is not frequently discussed, but is amply
documented historically and is extant. The visit of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to China in April 2005 led to
some repugnant racist attacks on her , as a courageous article by Martin Jacques in the Guardian, pointed out.63 The introduction alone to a
pioneering work edited by Frank Dikotter makes for eye-opening reading.64 This is a necessary corrective to the politically correct

posture that deliberately ignores the "racialised identities in East Asia" that have led to discrimination
there.65 Kang Youwei, the celebrated Chinese philosopher of the late nineteenth century, wrote of black Africans who, "with their iron faces, silver teeth,
slanting jaws like a pig, front view like an ox, full breasts and long hair, their hands and feet dark black, stupid like sheep and swine," should be whitened by
intermarriage—provided, of course, one could persuade a white girl to marry such "a monstrously ugly black." These views have prevailed to this day. As Dikotter

writes, "[Official
policies endorsing racial discrimination and leading to abuses of human rights can be found
in most East Asian states. Myths of origins, ideologies of blood and theories of biological descent have
formed a central part in the cultural construction of identity in China and Japan since the nationalist movements of the
late nineteenth century. Naturalised as a pure and homogeneous 'Yamato race' in Japan, or as a biological descent group from the 'Yellow Emperor' in China,

political territories have been conflated with imaginary biological entities by nationalist writers."66 Both
Japan and China created "the
Other," defined in terms of "civilization" and "barbarism," racialized into binary oppositions between
"advanced" and "backward" groups of people. For the Japanese, the Chinese were a different race, while they themselves were culturally
and biologically unique. In the context of Japanese colonial expansion to Korea and China, "it was assumed that the differences in economic and political capacities
of the peoples of East Asia were the result of natural or biological laws: colonial populations were regularly contrasted with Japanese modernity. 'Spiritual and
physical purity' were said to be the attributes which marked the Japanese as the 'leading race' in their divine mission in Asia. In war-time Japan, a sense of unique
purity—both moral and genetic—was central to the notion of racial separateness in which other population groups were dehumanised as beasts and ultimately as

demons. In both China and Japan, other population groups were also ranked according to their presumed attributes."67 The
state disseminated
these racial theories by means of school textbooks, anthropology exhibitions, and travel literature, and
certainly found a popular audience receptive to them. As Dikotter emphasizes, the pseudoscientific theories helped
self-definition but also produced the racially excluded Others , notably "Blacks" and "Jews," even though these groups were not heavily
represented in China and Japan. Nonetheless, they are central in the racial taxonomies drafted in China and Japan in the twentieth century.68 Writing in the late
1990s, Dikotter felt that in East Asia, in contrast to other regions, "there is no clear sign that the hierarchies of power maintained through racial discourse are being

questioned." Talk of Japanese biological uniqueness and purity seems to dominate discussions. Blacks
and blackness have become symbols
of the savage Other, and are reflected in such essays as "We Cannot Marry Negroes" by Taisuke Fujishima. An influx
of foreign workers has led to fears of racial contamination, and the Japanese government refused to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination. A similar situation prevails in China, where African students on university campuses are periodically attacked since they are imagined as belonging to
an inferior species.69 Theories of racial purity are used to legitimize discrimination against social groups, such as the Tibetans and Uighurs. Dikotter concludes on a

somber note: "In an

era of economic globalisation and political depolarisation, racial identities and racial
discrimination have increased in East Asia, affecting both the human rights of marginalised groups and
collective perceptions of the world order . Official policies endorsing racial discrimination and leading to abuses of human rights can be found
in most East Asian states

The Kritiks totalizing claims cause misrepresentation –

Graham Huggan Research in African Literatures 36.3 2005 Leeds University (Not) Reading
Orientalismhttp://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.uchicago.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v036/36.3huggan.html

Some of Ahmad's criticisms—and there are many—are as follows: that Said's attempt to write a
counterhistory to the European literary tradition that might be posed against, say, Erich Auerbach's Mimesis (1946) falls
into the same elitist humanism from which its inspiration is taken (163–64); that this ideal humanism
contradicts Said's awareness of the complicity of European humanism in the history of European colonialism,
and thus runs the risk of turning Orientalism not into a strategically counter historical, but a fundamentally
antihistorical work (167); that Orientalism is methodologically muddled, "denouc[ing] with Foucaultian vitriol what [it also] loves with
Auerbachian passion," and "alternately debunking and praising to the skies and again debunking the same [canonical European] book[s],
as if he had [somehow] been betrayed by the objects of his passion" (168); that it duplicates the tactics of Orientalism (the
method) by refusing to take on board the numerous ways in which non-Western intellectuals have responded
to, resisted, or refuted the dominant representations of the Orient in the West (172); that Orientalism (the book)
remains confused as to whether Orientalism (the method) is a historical byproduct of colonialism or whether it is a constitutive element
of "the European imagination," from the Greeks to the present day (181); that it is equally confused about whether
Orientalism is an interlocking set of discursive representations or an accumulated record of
misrepresentations in the narrowly realist sense (185–86); and that it goes so far as to make a virtue out of these and other
conspicuous inconsistencies, raising contradiction to the level of a method, and providing the rationale for "saying entirely contrary
things in the same text, appealing to different audiences simultaneously but with the effect that each main statement cancels out the
other" (175).
Permutation solves – taking concrete action to reverse imperialism is a prerequisite
Bilgin, IR Professor at Bikent, ‘5 (“Regional Security in the Middle East: A Critical Perspective” p 60-
61)
Admittedly, providing a critique of existing approaches to security, revealing those hidden
assumptions and normative projects embedded in Cold War Security Studies, is only a first step.
In other words, from a critical security perspective, self-reflection, thinking and writing are not enough in
themselves. They should be compounded by other forms of practice (that is, action taken on the
ground). It is indeed crucial for students of critical approaches to re-think security in both theory and practice by
pointing to possibilities for change immanent in world politics and suggesting emancipatory practices if it is going to
fulfil the promise of becoming a 'force of change' in world politics. Cognisant of the need to find and
suggest alternative practices to meet a broadened security agenda without adopting militarised or
zero-sum thinking and practices, students of critical approaches to security have suggested the
imagining, creation and nurturing of security communities as emancipatory practices (Booth 1994a;
Booth and Vale 1997).
Although Devetak's approach to the theory/practice relationship echoes critical approaches' conception of theory as a
form of practice, the latter seeks to go further in shaping global practices. The distinction Booth makes between
'thinking about thinking' and 'thinking about doing' grasps the difference between the two. Booth (1997:114) writes:
Thinking about thinking is important, but, more urgently, so is thinking about doing…. Abstract
ideas about emancipation will not suffice: it is important for Critical Security Studies to engage
with the real by suggesting policies, agents, and sites of change, to help humankind, in whole and in
part, to move away from its structural wrongs.
In this sense, providing a critique of existing approaches to security, revealing those hidden
assumptions and normative projects embedded in Cold War Security Studies, is only a firs t (albeit
crucial) step. It is vital for the students of critical approaches to re-think security in both theory
and practice.

The way orientalism manifests itself is as important – criticizing US imperial presence in

other nations in the best starting point
Rotter, History Professor at Colgate, 2K (October “Orientalism and US Diplomatic History” Vol 105,
No 4)
For diplomatic historians, the link between cause and effect is crucial, and this constitutes another area
of disagreement with Said. In a perceptive 1995 Diplomatic History essay, Melvyn P. Leffler complained that " the
post-modernist emphasis on culture, language, and rhetoric often diverts attention from questions
of causation and agency." The problem with discourse theory specifically "is that although we might learn
that seemingly unconnected phenomena are related in some diffuse ways, Twe do not necessarily get much
insight into how relatively important these relationships are to one another. " And Leffler quotes
Patrick O'Brien: "'Foucault's study of culture is a history with beginnings but no causes.'" Leffler does not mention
Said, but insofar as Said employs Foucauldian analysis in his work, the criticism could apply to him as well.13
14
If most historians continue to believe that establishing the cause of things is a meaningful part of their
enterprise, even more insistently do diplomatic historians hold to this principle. That is because so much is at
stake: most scholars of U.S. foreign policy are interested in expansionism, imperialism, and
ultimately war. Given the field of analysis, the dismissal of cause seems irresponsible, for people
should try to understand what causes imperialism and war, and where power has such solemn
consequences it seems trivial to equate it with knowledge. Power, say diplomatic historians, is
economic and military superiority, not narrative authority. Imperialism is not just an attitude.
War is not preeminently a discourse.

Alternative doesn’t solve without the aff – we make theoretical criticism effective
Bilgin, IR Professor at Bikent, ‘4 (“Whose Middle East” International Relations, Vol 18 No 25)
From a Critical Security Studies perspective, the choice is not between adopting a top-down or a bottom-
up approach to security. Students of Critical Security Studies need to rethink security in the
‘Middle East’ from both top-down and bottom-up43 with an eye on the practical implications of
their own thinking on the subject of research (the theory–practice relationship). Although the
securitization of such a wide range of issues may not be considered desirable by some (for fear of ‘securitizing’
issues and thereby rendering them intractable),44 from another perspective, keeping the security agenda open
is a must if one is serious about moving beyond state-centric conceptions and practices of
security.45 After all, the issues discussed above are all security concerns for some. Having considered
these four competing approaches to conceiving regional security and constructing it in their own image, it could be
argued that it is highly unlikely that their proponents will come to an agreement on one common perspective. If they
cannot agree on the definition of the region, one may ask, how could they ever agree on common security policies?
This is where the argument comes full circle, for conceiving the relationship between the representations
of regions and the conceptions and practices of security as mutually constitutive enables one to
make the theoretical move and argue that an alternative conception of security could give rise to
a new perspective of regional security that would be acceptable to all – a perspective that aims at
moving towards stable security maintained not because of the threat and use of force, but due to
mutual satisfaction with the existing situation; that is security practised together with the others,
not at their expense.46

Only the permutation solves – pragmatism achieves the alternative while solving the case
impacts – the alternative results in destruction
Gayman 99 (Cynthia, Penn State Journal of Speculative Philosophy, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal-
_of_speculative_philosophy/v013/13.2gayman.html)
However, even as postmodernism can challenge the positive values inherent in pragmatic method--meliorism,
reconstruction, community, instrumentalism, pluralism--since even careful inquiry can be subverted by
domination, pragmatism challenges postmodernism pessimism: the privileging of
"oppositionality and difference . . . commits 'the fallacy of selective emphasis ' detailed by Dewey."
As Stuhr remarks, "This is a seductive error, offering us, now fortified by an appreciation of difference, the easy
solace of traditional idealism: self-transformation and self-transcendence (and becoming other than what one is)
through self-understanding and self-awareness" (108). Pragmatism would argue against arbitrary and false
self-assertion as the only hope against domination and totalization, for the fact of social
constitution of selves does not preclude recognition of or respect for difference and oppositionality.
Instead, socially constructed selves can join together as a pragmatic community of inquirers who
refuse to support inhumane social practices , thereby de-structuring institutional domination and
creating the communally recognized value of individual human dignity. Stuhr thus conjoins
deconstructive critique with pragmatic instrumentalism, whose means are political and moral action. [End Page 148]
In Stuhr's view, pragmatism and postmodernism together constitute a theoretical and practical challenge to beliefs
and practices in view of a reconstructive vision of the future. But on what basis will such a future be envisioned? Is
self-conscious critique an adequate basis for determining which forms of social domination are more or less
harmful? Does such critique indicate whose interests a desired end best serves or how a chosen means of action can
be determined as moral? If answers to such questions remain provisional, for no absolute justification exists
for any particular action, this is not to say "there is sufficient reason for doing nothing at all"
(114). On the contrary, "because there is no reason to think fuller individuality and fuller community
are impossible, therefore there is sufficient reason for undertaking the reconstruction of experience
by means of intelligent criticism--criticism that is always partial, perspectival, and provisional"
(114). This embrace of life's inherent contingency makes Stuhr's pragmatism a hard philosophy, for no ground of
certainty provides rest for the birth and nurturance of the real. But perhaps even the urge to philosophize is born less
of wonder than of fear. As Dewey recognized, "the quest for certainty" leads epistemological and moral inquiries to
discover order in the nature of experience or find structure intrinsic to human understanding. But if reality is less
assured and more contextually determined , if it demands more courage in the face of the ever-not-quite ,
this does not mean that the truth of human meanings and moral values are relative to mere
agreement or are a matter of social and political expediency. The hard philosophy of genealogical
pragmatism demands that inquiry be directed to open-ended truths or truths-in-process, to the
complexities of everyday experience, and to a never-ending critical assessment of choices finalized or mistakes
made.