Decadent Orientalisms presents a sustained critique of the ways Orientalism and decadence have formed a joint discursive mode of the imperial imagination. Attentive to historical and literary configurations of language, race, religion, and power, Fieni shows the importance of understanding Western discourses of Eastern decline and obsolescence together with Arab and Islamic responses in which the language of decadence returns as a characteristic of the West. Taking seriously Edward Said’s claim that Orientalism is a “style of having power,” Fieni works historically through the aesthetic and ideological effects of Orientalist style, showing how it is at once comparative, descriptive, and performative. Orientalism, the book argues, relies upon decadence as the figure through which its positivist scientific claims become redistributed as speech acts—“truths” that establish dominance. Rather than attending to Orientalism as a repertoire of clichés and stereotypes, Decadent Orientalisms considers the systemic epistemological consequences of the diffuse, yet coherent network of institutions that have constituted Orientalism’s power.

Decadent Orientalisms presents a sustained critique of the ways Orientalism and decadence have formed a joint discursive mode of the imperial imagination.Rather than attending to Orientalism as a repertoire of clichés and stereotypes, Fieni reads both Western and Islamic discourses of decadence to show the diffuse, yet coherent network of institutions that have constituted Orientalism's power.

This study examines the relationship between ideas about decadence and the discourse of Orientalism in French and Arabic literature and society since the nineteenth century. By tracing the genealogy of French Orientalism in the Arab world, this dissertation shows how colonial modernity emerges from these imbricated discourses of power, and how Orientalist notions of decadence become an internalized feature of postcolonial society. An analysis of the "secular" reformist ideas of Ernest Renan, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Farah&dotbelow; Ant&dotbelow;un, and 'Abd al-Rah&dotbelow;man al-Kawakibi demonstrates that Arabic and Islamic intellectuals were only able to secure their own modernity by first confessing to their decadence. I show how language itself, in works by the Lebanese writer Ah&dotbelow;mad Faris al-Shidyaq and the Frenchman Celine, is made to enact specific historical transformations and to exhibit symptoms of generation and corruption suffered by a supposedly "authentic" social body. The carnivalesque novels of these two authors ultimately make visible the limits of the colonial discourse of the symptom. In describing the passage from colonial decadence to postcolonial decadence, this dissertation narrates the fate of Orientalism as a decadent engine of colonial modernity. I argue that language politics in independent Algeria represents the "success" of the Orientalist discourse that was disseminated in both the Maghreb and the Near East during the time of colonial rule, but which now functions autonomously and internally, as different factions accuse the others of being both decadent and inauthentic. I analyze an Algerian francophone novel, L'invention du desert, by Tahir Djaout, and an Algerian novel in Arabic, al-Zilzal (The Earthquake), by Tahar Wattar in order to illustrate the agonistic relationship between two ways of imagining post-colonial Algeria. Finally, I explore contemporary French debates surrounding immigration, secularism, and the role of mass media, contextualizing these issues within the discursive structures of Orientalism and decadence as they have been elaborated in earlier chapters. My reading of two novels by the Franco-Tunisian writer Abdelwahab Meddeb argues that the "virtual secularization" of the sacred Arabic script in the author's French texts inscribes the practices of global Islam into the circuits of Europe as a radical "cure" for postmodern decadence.

Decadence and Orientalism in England and Germany, 1880-1920 examines the Orientalist portrayal of Middle Eastern cultures in Decadent Literatures in England and Germany at the turn of the century. This book argues that the role of Orientalism in literary Decadence uniquely exposes its paradoxical engagement with other cultures. In bringing together two fin-de-siècle European literatures, this comparative study makes a case for the transnational, if not imperial, nature of Decadence. The East emerges as an 'indispensable' mediator between various versions of European Decadence. The book examines the role of the East with specific reference to selected English and German authors: starting from Oscar Wilde's Victorian vision of Egypt and Arthur Symons's and Violet Fane's image of Constantinople, it moves to Paul Scheerbart's and Else Lasker-Schüler's Decadent Babylon and Assyria and concludes by turning to Stefan George's exclusion of the East from his poetic practice. The geographical reach of the East focuses on regions of the Eastern Mediterranean and Northern Africa. The cultural translation of specifically the Middle East into different European national contexts gains new—sometimes oppositional—meanings, avoiding a one-sided representation of both the East and the two national literatures that absorbed it. In arguing for a Decadent cosmopolitanism as a model of heterogeneous inclusivity that reaches beyond the binaries established by Edward Said's Orientalism, the present book brings twenty-first century theories of cosmopolitanism into dialogue with art history and literature to uncover striking synergies and interdependences between the different manifestations of Decadence in England and Germany.

During the decolonization period after World War II, Edward Said and other scholars identified and fought against Orientalism: the theory and practice of representing the East in Western thought. The 37 essays and excerpts reprinted here provide students and other readers with a cross-section of the debate that has followed. They are not indexed. c. Book News Inc.

Uncovers the roots of Americans' construction of the "Orient" by examining the work of nineteenth-century authors

Now reissued with a substantial new afterword, this highly acclaimed overview of Western attitudes towards the East has become one of the canonical texts of cultural studies. Very excitingâ¦his case is not merely persuasive, but conclusive. John Leonard in The New York Times His most important book, Orientalism established a new benchmark for discussion of the West's skewed view of the Arab and Islamic world.Simon Louvish in the New Statesman & Society âEdward Said speaks for interdisciplinarity as well as for monumental erudition¦The breadth of reading [is] astonishing. Fred Inglis in The Times Higher Education Supplement A stimulating, elegant yet pugnacious essay.Observer Exciting¦for anyone interested in the history and power of ideas.J.H. Plumb in The New York Times Book Review Beautifully patterned and passionately argued. Nicholas Richardson in the New Statesman & Society