The New “Arabian Nights”

[Mojtaba-Iraqi]

The New “Arabian Nights”
“Good for you.” “Why?” “For your Arabian fantasy.” “In what way?” “The Arabian nights; the court and the king.” “We don’t have such a thing.” “Drinking and dancing from dusk to dawn?” “No.” “Narrating tales and having ale?” “No.” “Slaves and odalisques?” “No.” “Harem and Scheherazade?” “No.”
This is a supposed conversation that may take place once you meet a westerner interested in the east, its history, literature, and culture, in a way that irritates an eastern conservative or salivates a more open young man, for underlying a variety of attitudes towards the east.
Such a belief has acquired its false validity in the nineteenth century with the translation of the “Arabian Nights”, in a time when the Western literature had begun to reach the bottom of its well of imagination, and its pillars feeling the shortage of the Western mind to provide stable and safe sources for writing literature. This Arabian effect is greatly emphasized and apparent in Romanticism, particularly in the London School poets (Lord Byron, Shelly, and Yeats) passing it through to the next generations.
Nevertheless, behind the veil, there are deeper interpretations of this fantasized belief of Arabian joy. This is so stabilized in the Western mind to the extent that an Arab is identified with nightlife, lust, and drunkenness (though this is approved by some contemporary Islamic missionaries in some countries of the Arab World). Thus, dozens of ‘orientals’ have made their debut, shedding light on this part of an Arabic life, and exposing the Arabian Nights’ life as a representative of the east, that of roistering and reveling. In short, orientals are concerned with showing the darker side of the east, while neglecting their own people’s shortcomings.
Accordingly, this has resulted in many negative consequences, chief among which is the concept of “otherness”. The easterners are considered the “other, or “inferior”, whose attitudes are weight on the scale of the standards of the occident, in a way that those coping with the occidental standards are acceptable, whereas those at odds with the western culture are considered outcast and are marginalized. In the pertain, the concept of “Eurocentricism” has emerged, implying the superiority of the west to the Arabs in particular, and the rest of the world in general, confronting the concept of “savages”, or as other merciful orientals prefer “noble savages” by which the Arabs are identified and described. Moreover, one of the reasons that the Arabic literature (contemporary) is not included in the circle of “universality” is because its standards are not aligned with those of its English peer.
In this respect, the Arabic literature is neglected. The Arabic culture is disgusting. The Arabic personality is inferior. The Arab world is moving downward. The Arabic consciousness is dying… dying. The Arabic consciousness is dead; dead. End.

[Frostball]

In my experience, living in the US, the last thing that an arab is associated with is nightlife, lust, and drunkenness. If anything it's extreme conservatism and extreme religiosity that comes immediately to mind. I highly doubt that everybody bases their opinion of the orient, or arab world, solely on one book.

[Jackson Richardson]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/839

[Jackson Richardson]

The OP is summarising Edward Said's influrential Orientalism.

[PeterL]

Nevertheless, behind the veil, there are deeper interpretations of this fantasized belief of Arabian joy. This is so stabilized in the Western mind to the extent that an Arab is identified with nightlife, lust, and drunkenness (though this is approved by some contemporary Islamic missionaries in some countries of the Arab World). Thus, dozens of ‘orientals’ have made their debut, shedding light on this part of an Arabic life, and exposing the Arabian Nights’ life as a representative of the east, that of roistering and reveling. In short, orientals are concerned with showing the darker side of the east, while neglecting their own people’s shortcomings.
Accordingly, this has resulted in many negative consequences, chief among which is the concept of “otherness”. The easterners are considered the “other, or “inferior”, whose attitudes are weight on the scale of the standards of the occident, in a way that those coping with the occidental standards are acceptable, whereas those at odds with the western culture are considered outcast and are marginalized. In the pertain, the concept of “Eurocentricism” has emerged, implying the superiority of the west to the Arabs in particular, and the rest of the world in general, confronting the concept of “savages”, or as other merciful orientals prefer “noble savages” by which the Arabs are identified and described. Moreover, one of the reasons that the Arabic literature (contemporary) is not included in the circle of “universality” is because its standards are not aligned with those of its English peer.
In this respect, the Arabic literature is neglected. The Arabic culture is disgusting. The Arabic personality is inferior. The Arab world is moving downward. The Arabic consciousness is dying… dying. The Arabic consciousness is dead; dead. End.


So in your eyes there is no sign that the golden age of Arabic culture and science will ever return. We remember that for hundreds of years the Arab world was the place where thinking, inventing, and so on were being done. Alas, Arab culture let itself become tied to fixed ideas.

So-ccalled Western" culture (whatever that is), and Arabic culture sprang from the same origin. It is sad that you think so lowly of Arabic culture.

[Mojtaba-Iraqi]

In my experience, living in the US, the last thing that an arab is associated with is nightlife, lust, and drunkenness. If anything it's extreme conservatism and extreme religiosity that comes immediately to mind. I highly doubt that everybody bases their opinion of the orient, or arab world, solely on one book.

To be honest, I've made my view according to what I'm experiencing nowadays. Though I'm highly effected by Said, Bhabha, Franz, Naipaul, and like, but this is something you really find out there in the Arab world.

[Mojtaba-Iraqi]

The OP is summarising Edward Said's influrential Orientalism.

Thank you for refering to the above link, because I did not really know that there is "New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson" since I have never come across this book. Second, Edward Said is not the only one who wrote in this field, and why should I deny that I'm influenced by Orientalism.

[Mojtaba-Iraqi]

So in your eyes there is no sign that the golden age of Arabic culture and science will ever return. We remember that for hundreds of years the Arab world was the place where thinking, inventing, and so on were being done. Alas, Arab culture let itself become tied to fixed ideas.

So-ccalled Western" culture (whatever that is), and Arabic culture sprang from the same origin. It is sad that you think so lowly of Arabic culture.

Once upon a time, we (the Arabs) had under control one great empire, but then the reign of terror have begun, and now, you are coexisting it. Yes, we have one culture, that of flesh and blood.

[JBI]

Once upon a time, we (the Arabs) had under control one great empire, but then the reign of terror have begun, and now, you are coexisting it. Yes, we have one culture, that of flesh and blood.

You mean which empire? I have family who is technically "arab" by living in those lands for thousands of years, yet they were told by their Egyptian government to get out of the Arab country. The same could be said for the Jews of any number of countries, who had been living there as "arabs" for thousands of years (in the case of Algeria, since before even Islam).

For someone who is ripping off Said's Orientalism, you missed one of the basic points that the so called "Arabia" is a more literary than actual construct. That was more or less his major point, that the place and the reference to the space are completely different, and one is diverse and multifaceted and changing, whereas the other is made constant and unmoving by the colonial imposition of identity on top of it. Your own ranting toward the so called Arab great empire is merely reinforcing the stereotype and the mentality, I am sure your empire had a sultan, with a Harem, and carpets, and slaves, and snake charmers, and lamps, and the lot. Right? Maybe he even had a storytelling girl, and maybe she was actually called Scheherazade?

You see what I mean now? There is no such thing as the "West". Likewise, there is hardly something actually called the "East", in that the geographic location is incredibly diverse. The closest one can come to it is to say linguistically Arabic (or Semitic language) speaking regions, but politically the presence of Persia and of Turkey in the region, as well as the development of indigenous and regional cultures disputes such vast characterization, let alone the religious diversity within the land, and the minority racial and cultural identities that exist even within specific countries. Your so called Arab empire is a political construct, not a cultural construct, the same way Rome was quite regional.


This same logic has been applied to China, Asia as a whole, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia to some degree. It all comes out of the idea of "civilizations". If we take "Western" as a civilization marker, we begin to create a myth of the Western man rooted in a so called "cultural background" (call it judeo-Christian or whatever nonsense) and start to try and look what makes Western people so special. That the "west" has been through internal war for the past 2000 years is beside the point. Likewise the so called "Russian" Westerners are problematic, in that geographically they are Eastern. The same can be said of our Greek ancestors who started the civilization with a geographic orientation toward Persia and Egypt, and the Jews who started the other part with a geographic orientation toward what we now regard as Arab lands, and a cultural orientation with other semitic, Mesopotamian and Persian cultures.

That being said, as a political ploy it works. China, a very diverse country, has systematically tried to wipe out all regional diversity in favor of a monomyth of Chinese identity, that has everyone in line as the greatest people on Earth. Western people now take pride in a "western" tradition, and "non-western" people like to criticize "western values", whatever those are (supposedly we are promiscuous, indulgent, and violent, not to mention, colonial, and a threat to women). This is beside the point that for the most part, other cultural traditions have been far more "open" and "indulgent" than most Christian countries (Catholicism was repressive from the beginning, but Protestantism on the whole moved it further by bringing in more brimstone). Likewise, all explorers of Asia had pointed out the curious quality of sexual mores - the first Western settlers of India enjoyed polygamy with their Local friends (some marrying numerous women), Marco Polo himself mentions how free and easy it is to get prostitutes in China (he comes women from China to Peaches), and notes how not only that, it is not even frowned upon. All the early photographs of Japan we have seem to be sexual in nature, with the open sex culture of somewhere like Edo being a focal point in Western imagination.

I am skeptical that people are actually so different, and I am dismissive of such arguments, as they do one of two things usually - One, make people feel proud about themselves (You western people don't understand..." or "We (the arabs) had under control one great empire, but then the reign of terror have begun, and now you are coexisting it. yes, we have one culture, that of flesh and blood." or other nonsense), or to do this: "you guys are worse because"... In reality, civilization discussion does not make any sense in the terms we have cut it out. Generally there has been a wide communication between cultures since Roman Times (Rome was linked all the way to China), and it was only a few unexplored places that were isolated (The Americas, Australia, the so called "new world", and various islands).

Now, from a literary perspective, I cannot help but feel one of the greatest contributions of Arabian Nights is creating this setting of mystery and magic. IF you compare this to the genres of Westerns, or Kung Fu Movies, or Chivalry, you get a better idea of the magic and imagination such a shared setting brings out. Said criticizes it on political grounds, but I am not sure he can convince me of the connection. Sure, Europeans have done some bad things to the Arabs in the past (and vice versa), but I am not sure it was because they thought muslims fly around on carpets. The actual "study" of the "Orient" was generally done by people who loved the topic they were researching, and ended up actual bestowing a sort of cultural dignity to the land that was conquered politically. Chinese art, for instance, before Western buyers started looking for antiques, was pretty much a buying and selling of luxury objects based on Ming Dynasty aesthetic codes and principles. The appreciation of something like Bronzes was actually quite minor in traditional China, and the love of really ancient works really only began once Western people began to historicize Chinese artwork. Architectural structures that had been standing for 1500 years had to be "rediscovered", as until Western people came, people just ignored them, and nobody even bothered to look for them.

In fact, those studying the "Orient", or what we call "Area Studies" generally tend to be against the exoticizing of their subject matter, and tend to be more practical. Generally it is the people who currently occupy lands who try to recreate their own mythology in orientalist terms, not the other way around. So as the above poster points out, he has taken the myth of Arabia to the fullest extent, and imagined himself its ethnic descendant. It's like a Chinese person imagining themselves as this mighty Confucian force of righteous cultured sages (one of my class mates), or another thinking Chinese people were all cultured connoisseurs of poetry and the fine arts (half my professors). For the most part, people everywhere were poor peasants who could not afford to eat, and when there was war, these poor peasants would be the first to die. That is the whole world's background history, for the most part - poor peasants starving to death, dying of illness, or in Childbirth, or waiting for the grand war that would wipe them out. You can add some religious nonsense on top, but for the most part, our origin is illiterate, culturally ignored, limited, delimited, and depressing. A Chinese girl may tell me "look how beautiful Chinese architecture is, aren't my people better than you" but I can wisely reply, "yes, but 100 years ago you would never have been allowed to leave your house, and you most likely would have been illiterate, and married off as a young girl to someone you never met, where you would sit with your bound feet in doors, not even being allowed to see your own front door."

[mal4mac]

Mojtaba-Iraqi, you seem to think that all Europeans are Victorian Jingos, and fellow travellers of Flashman. Try reading "Better Angels of our Nature" by Stephen Pinker. Modern Europeans don't hold that all Arabs are characters from the Arabian nights, fundamentalist conservatives, or drunken harem owners. Just as Europeans are a mixed bag, so are Arabs. All Europeans know this, apart from a few crazy extremists! Turn on UK TV & radio and you'll see Arabs of all kinds every day, from crook, to businessman, to female human rights activist, to schoolteacher, to politician, to scholar. Just like Europeans. No politician in the UK could now get away with saying Arabs are inferior, it's now so blatantly obvious that they are "just like us", "just" human beings like everyone else.

By the way, I think all imagination in all literatures is bottomless. The explosive growth of the novel in England happened after the first translations of the Arabian Nights came to Europe, and in the hands of the likes of Dickens and Eliot it hardly went into a downturn.

[JBI]

I think the big fear amongst the opposing side is the "just like us" does two things, and doesn't do one other thing. First, it doesn't make the final step of "they are us", second, it doesn't allow them to feel better or worse than others.

One of the things that dominates people's minds, what we call their "culture" with the possessive, is this occupation with one's artificial "difference" in culture. Cultural traditions are different, true, but ultimately people are not born with culture. a Chinese citizen today is no closer to Confucius than I am, in fact, I am more likely to be closer, since I read classical Chinese better than most.

[PeterL]

Once upon a time, we (the Arabs) had under control one great empire, but then the reign of terror have begun, and now, you are coexisting it. Yes, we have one culture, that of flesh and blood.

"Coexisting" is not the word that you meant. There is one race of humans, but there still are many cultures.

[Mojtaba-Iraqi]

Mojtaba-Iraqi, you seem to think that all Europeans are Victorian Jingos, and fellow travellers of Flashman. Try reading "Better Angels of our Nature" by Stephen Pinker. Modern Europeans don't hold that all Arabs are characters from the Arabian nights, fundamentalist conservatives, or drunken harem owners. Just as Europeans are a mixed bag, so are Arabs. All Europeans know this, apart from a few crazy extremists! Turn on UK TV & radio and you'll see Arabs of all kinds every day, from crook, to businessman, to female human rights activist, to schoolteacher, to politician, to scholar. Just like Europeans. No politician in the UK could now get away with saying Arabs are inferior, it's now so blatantly obvious that they are "just like us", "just" human beings like everyone else.

By the way, I think all imagination in all literatures is bottomless. The explosive growth of the novel in England happened after the first translations of the Arabian Nights came to Europe, and in the hands of the likes of Dickens and Eliot it hardly went into a downturn.

Yes brother, and I'm aware that you people have come to recognize the real Arabs and their nature, but the problem is that we (Arabs) think you (westerners) think you are superior to us. There is something deeply buried in our unconsciousness that the west is far more civilized and sophisticated than what we really are (and true to some extent).
As for the novel, we all are in your debt, English people, because you have exported this genre to the rest of the world.

[Mojtaba-Iraqi]

You mean which empire? I have family who is technically "arab" by living in those lands for thousands of years, yet they were told by their Egyptian government to get out of the Arab country. The same could be said for the Jews of any number of countries, who had been living there as "arabs" for thousands of years (in the case of Algeria, since before even Islam).

For someone who is ripping off Said's Orientalism, you missed one of the basic points that the so called "Arabia" is a more literary than actual construct. That was more or less his major point, that the place and the reference to the space are completely different, and one is diverse and multifaceted and changing, whereas the other is made constant and unmoving by the colonial imposition of identity on top of it. Your own ranting toward the so called Arab great empire is merely reinforcing the stereotype and the mentality, I am sure your empire had a sultan, with a Harem, and carpets, and slaves, and snake charmers, and lamps, and the lot. Right? Maybe he even had a storytelling girl, and maybe she was actually called Scheherazade?

You see what I mean now? There is no such thing as the "West". Likewise, there is hardly something actually called the "East", in that the geographic location is incredibly diverse. The closest one can come to it is to say linguistically Arabic (or Semitic language) speaking regions, but politically the presence of Persia and of Turkey in the region, as well as the development of indigenous and regional cultures disputes such vast characterization, let alone the religious diversity within the land, and the minority racial and cultural identities that exist even within specific countries. Your so called Arab empire is a political construct, not a cultural construct, the same way Rome was quite regional.


This same logic has been applied to China, Asia as a whole, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia to some degree. It all comes out of the idea of "civilizations". If we take "Western" as a civilization marker, we begin to create a myth of the Western man rooted in a so called "cultural background" (call it judeo-Christian or whatever nonsense) and start to try and look what makes Western people so special. That the "west" has been through internal war for the past 2000 years is beside the point. Likewise the so called "Russian" Westerners are problematic, in that geographically they are Eastern. The same can be said of our Greek ancestors who started the civilization with a geographic orientation toward Persia and Egypt, and the Jews who started the other part with a geographic orientation toward what we now regard as Arab lands, and a cultural orientation with other semitic, Mesopotamian and Persian cultures.

That being said, as a political ploy it works. China, a very diverse country, has systematically tried to wipe out all regional diversity in favor of a monomyth of Chinese identity, that has everyone in line as the greatest people on Earth. Western people now take pride in a "western" tradition, and "non-western" people like to criticize "western values", whatever those are (supposedly we are promiscuous, indulgent, and violent, not to mention, colonial, and a threat to women). This is beside the point that for the most part, other cultural traditions have been far more "open" and "indulgent" than most Christian countries (Catholicism was repressive from the beginning, but Protestantism on the whole moved it further by bringing in more brimstone). Likewise, all explorers of Asia had pointed out the curious quality of sexual mores - the first Western settlers of India enjoyed polygamy with their Local friends (some marrying numerous women), Marco Polo himself mentions how free and easy it is to get prostitutes in China (he comes women from China to Peaches), and notes how not only that, it is not even frowned upon. All the early photographs of Japan we have seem to be sexual in nature, with the open sex culture of somewhere like Edo being a focal point in Western imagination.

I am skeptical that people are actually so different, and I am dismissive of such arguments, as they do one of two things usually - One, make people feel proud about themselves (You western people don't understand..." or "We (the arabs) had under control one great empire, but then the reign of terror have begun, and now you are coexisting it. yes, we have one culture, that of flesh and blood." or other nonsense), or to do this: "you guys are worse because"... In reality, civilization discussion does not make any sense in the terms we have cut it out. Generally there has been a wide communication between cultures since Roman Times (Rome was linked all the way to China), and it was only a few unexplored places that were isolated (The Americas, Australia, the so called "new world", and various islands).

Now, from a literary perspective, I cannot help but feel one of the greatest contributions of Arabian Nights is creating this setting of mystery and magic. IF you compare this to the genres of Westerns, or Kung Fu Movies, or Chivalry, you get a better idea of the magic and imagination such a shared setting brings out. Said criticizes it on political grounds, but I am not sure he can convince me of the connection. Sure, Europeans have done some bad things to the Arabs in the past (and vice versa), but I am not sure it was because they thought muslims fly around on carpets. The actual "study" of the "Orient" was generally done by people who loved the topic they were researching, and ended up actual bestowing a sort of cultural dignity to the land that was conquered politically. Chinese art, for instance, before Western buyers started looking for antiques, was pretty much a buying and selling of luxury objects based on Ming Dynasty aesthetic codes and principles. The appreciation of something like Bronzes was actually quite minor in traditional China, and the love of really ancient works really only began once Western people began to historicize Chinese artwork. Architectural structures that had been standing for 1500 years had to be "rediscovered", as until Western people came, people just ignored them, and nobody even bothered to look for them.

In fact, those studying the "Orient", or what we call "Area Studies" generally tend to be against the exoticizing of their subject matter, and tend to be more practical. Generally it is the people who currently occupy lands who try to recreate their own mythology in orientalist terms, not the other way around. So as the above poster points out, he has taken the myth of Arabia to the fullest extent, and imagined himself its ethnic descendant. It's like a Chinese person imagining themselves as this mighty Confucian force of righteous cultured sages (one of my class mates), or another thinking Chinese people were all cultured connoisseurs of poetry and the fine arts (half my professors). For the most part, people everywhere were poor peasants who could not afford to eat, and when there was war, these poor peasants would be the first to die. That is the whole world's background history, for the most part - poor peasants starving to death, dying of illness, or in Childbirth, or waiting for the grand war that would wipe them out. You can add some religious nonsense on top, but for the most part, our origin is illiterate, culturally ignored, limited, delimited, and depressing. A Chinese girl may tell me "look how beautiful Chinese architecture is, aren't my people better than you" but I can wisely reply, "yes, but 100 years ago you would never have been allowed to leave your house, and you most likely would have been illiterate, and married off as a young girl to someone you never met, where you would sit with your bound feet in doors, not even being allowed to see your own front door."

This is one great comment; I'm honestly impressed, since I have read it more than one time. This seems to be a new attitude in postcolonial studies. I have one request please. Can you refer to some sources to support your ideas more (and if possible, the links for downloading the books), because I really need them. Thank you in advance.

[Mojtaba-Iraqi]

"Coexisting" is not the word that you meant. There is one race of humans, but there still are many cultures.

Thank you for the clarification.

[JBI]

This is one great comment; I'm honestly impressed, since I have read it more than one time. This seems to be a new attitude in postcolonial studies. I have one request please. Can you refer to some sources to support your ideas more (and if possible, the links for downloading the books), because I really need them. Thank you in advance.

Well, as a start read the afterword to the new editions of Orientalism, and what Said says about the Arab reaction to the book, which is interesting.

My other ideas are a mix of my own observation, and a general familiarity (that exceeds Said's) of Area studies, he being primarily educated in English literature in the European tradition. My general ideas come from a mix of Benedict Anderson, a general analysis of Nationalism, with lots of marxism thrown in and interaction with people who consider themselves fundamentally different to me.

Generally, we get this general idea of people using identity to push blame. German national identity is very much a product of inferiority to French neighbors, and nazisim is very much a product of not being able to live with the idea that somehow the Germans could lose (it must have been those Jews/commies/etc. amongst us). In many ways, the Arab world loves to use Orientalism to push the blame of Western Superiority on the West, without understanding flaws within its own societal structure. That's also generally what Franz Fannon is writing about.

Take something like the Classic Charlie Chan, who is very much a Chinese American cultural hero. Now because he was played by a white man, and doesn't speak proper English, and is too humble, is regarded as perpetuating a "Racist" stereotype, when ultimately he is portrayed as a terrific human being, who is both smarter than everyone else, and also stands against the racism thrown against him to win every time. Now some post-colonial theorist tells me Charlie Chan is racist, because it makes Chinese people look too soft, or some nonsense.

The whole thing is a farce. Take Disney's Aladdin, it was highly criticized for being racist upon release, when really it is a fantasy story. You don't see people going around criticizing Beauty and the Beast for its portrayal of French people. This whole Saidian nonsense is overblown.