Dangerous Knowledge

出版者:The Overlook Press

作者:Robert Irwin

页数:376

出版时间:2006-11-2

价格:USD 35.00

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9781585678358

图书标签:历史社会文學理論

The publication of Edward Said's hugely influential Orientalism in 1981 called into question the entire history of the Western study of Islamic culture, condemning this scholarly tradition as one that presented inaccurate and deliberately demeaning representations of Islamic peoples and institutions—so much so that the words "Oriental" and "Orientalist" have come to take on the most negative connotations.

But what is Orientalism, and who were the Orientalists, and how did Western scholars of Islamic culture come to be vilified as insidious agents of European imperialism? In Robert Irwin's groundbreaking new history, he answers this question with a detailed and colorful story of the motley crew of intellectuals and eccentrics who brought an understanding of the Islamic world to the West. In a narrative that ranges from an analysis of Ancient Greek perceptions of the Persians to a portrait of the first Western European translators of Arabic to the contemporary Muslim world's perceptions of the Western study of Islam, Irwin affirms the value of the Orientalists' legacy: not only for the contemporary scholars who have disowned it, but also for anyone committed to fostering the cross-cultural understanding which could bridge the real or imagined gulf between Islamic and Western civilization. Dangerous Knowledge is a both riveting and entertaining history, a bold argument, and an urgent redress of our conceptions about Western culture's relationship with its nearest neighbor.

读后感

Elie Kedourie (quoted by Saul Bellow) A proper Orientalist statement A rash, a malady, an infection spreading from Western Europe through the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, India, the Far East, and Africa, eating up the fabric of settled society to leave it w...

Unwise men in the East A schism has divided the world of Oriental scholarship into two adversarial camps for a whole generation. Robert Irwin's new book has not been designed to add oil to these troubled waters: it is more like a petrol-bomb lobbed into the...  

Unwise men in the East A schism has divided the world of Oriental scholarship into two adversarial camps for a whole generation. Robert Irwin's new book has not been designed to add oil to these troubled waters: it is more like a petrol-bomb lobbed into the...  

Unwise men in the East A schism has divided the world of Oriental scholarship into two adversarial camps for a whole generation. Robert Irwin's new book has not been designed to add oil to these troubled waters: it is more like a petrol-bomb lobbed into the...  

Unwise men in the East A schism has divided the world of Oriental scholarship into two adversarial camps for a whole generation. Robert Irwin's new book has not been designed to add oil to these troubled waters: it is more like a petrol-bomb lobbed into the...