Neo-Orientalism and the Neo-Imperialism Thesis: Post-9/11 US and Arab World Relationship

Abstract

Post-9/11 American neo-Orientalist representations pervade today's politics and journalism about the Arab World. Since the first emergence of the Middle East representation in American writings of the nineteenth century, one can assume that nothing has changed in representations of the Middle East in the US. This article explores a twenty-first century phenomenon called “neo-Orientalism,” a style of representation that, while indebted to classical Orientalism, focuses on “othering” the Arab world with the exclusion of some geographic parts, such as India and Turkey, from the classical map of Orientalism. Although neo-Orientalism represents a shift in the selection of its subject and locale, it nonetheless reproduces certain repetitions of and conceptual continuities with its precursor. Like classical Orientalism, neo-Orientalism is a monolithic discourse based on binarism between the superior American values and the inferior Arab culture.

A “New Middle East” Following 9/11 and the “Arab Spring” of 2011?—(Neo)-Orientalist Imaginaries Rejuvenate the (Temporal) Inclusive Exclusion Character of Jus Gentium

“…This prompted scholars from the North and South to declare that metropole centers of power continue to transform cultural differences into legal differences thus reviving an interest in a wave of neo-Orientalism as mode of representation (Tuastad 2003;Anghie 2004;Merskin 2004;Mamdani 2004;Al-Azmeh 2009;Altwaiji 2014;Kerboua 2016;Ventura 2016;Al-Kassimi 2020). The year 2001 has inaugurated a century where the metropole uses its sovereign privileges to fabricate an artificial threatening enemy to sanction waging a just war by creating a hegemonic version of reality-using symbolic power-that distorts the actual lived experiences of Arab civilization (Tuastad 2003;Merskin 2004;Altwaiji 2014;Ventura 2016). Arabs are victims of symbolic power in the way race war discourses arrogate terrorism a priori as a cultural trait endemic to Arabs prompting Altwaiji to declare that this is "imperial stereotyping" and racism of the highest rank (Altwaiji 2014, p. 314).…”

“…The concept of neo-Orientalism is indebted in part 8 to Edward Said's 1979 work entitled Orientalism with scholars involved in the recent resurgence admitting that while Orientalism has operated in diverse historical paradigms, it has consistently emphasized and constructed threatening cultural(ist) assumptions made by the West of the Orient (Beckett 2003;Attar 2007;Al-Azmeh 2009;Altwaiji 2014;Kerboua 2016;Ventura 2016). Therefore, just like imperialism and colonialism are not policies of the past since they both "Orientalize" the colonialized subject and in the process transform cultural differences into legal differences, Orientalism has in the past and continues in the present to produce distorted images of the Arab as resistant to (Western) modernity (Anghie 2004;Mamdani 2004;Mahmood 2006;Samiei 2010;Altwaiji 2014;Kerboua 2016). Samiei (Samiei 2010(Samiei , p. 1148 cautions about an increasing academic trend adhering to a non-anachronic legalhistorical reading asserting that Orientalism "as an ideology .…”

“…Therefore, Orientalism of the 18th and 19th century has some similarities to the neo-Orientalism of post 9/11 in that Western civilization (re)produced and (re)formulated specific disciplines of knowledge (i.e., Anthropology and International Law) in both historical periods which enabled it to transform cultural differences into legal differences thus legally sanctioning the West having the power to dominate and transform the "exotic" Arab Bedouin. In other words, domination over the Arab body ensued after jurists, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists produced reductionist (neo)-Orientalist imaginaries emphasizing Arab civilizational inferiority, then, succeeding such deterministic imaginaries, engaged in a "humanitarian intervention" (Anghie 2004;Altwaiji 2014;Kerboua 2016;Ventura 2016).…”

“…Bernard Lewis is an important link between Orientalism of the past and neo-Orientalism of the present with his reductive discourse imagining Arabs as temporally backward and allergic to liberal secularism 14 . While Lewis has several disciples such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Jared Kushner who agree with the claim that "Muslim countries have the most terrorists and the fewest democracies in the world" (Pipes 2008), Lewis's work often engages in hypostatization by equating Arabs with Islam and linking the deterioration of Arab societies on the idea that Arabs did not adopt Western epistemology which, according to him, is the only reason-based philosophical theology leading to modern civilized status (Beckett 2003;Mamdani 2004;Attar 2007;Al-Azmeh 2009;Altwaiji 2014;Kerboua 2016;Al-Kassimi 2020). This is evident when he says, "according to Islamic law and tradition, there were three groups of people who did not benefit from the general Muslim principle of legal and religious quality-unbelievers, slaves and women" (Lewis 2003, p. 67).…”

“…This is coupled with "modern" sectarian geostrategic objectives seeking to redraw and re-engineer Arabian geography and demography populating abstract colonial borders thereby transforming the region into a modern, sociable, and civil "New Middle East" (Kumar 2012, p. 233). According to (Kumar 2012, p. 43), and Gopal and Lazarus (2006), the pre-emptive and preventative legal doctrines developed after 9/11 are more accurately described as redemptive measures since the violence and domination legally sanctioned effectively replaced "other historical precedents of the 20th century, including the Second World War and the Cold War" with the green scare replacing the red scare (Mamdani 2004;Al-Azmeh 2009;Samiei 2010;Altwaiji 2014;Kerboua 2016). It is culture talk or race war discourses, or more precisely, neo-Orientalism colluding with racism, Islamophobia, and selective prejudice that has been at the crux of the legal developments affecting Arabs and Muslims (Al-Azmeh 2009;Kumar 2012;Al-Kassimi 2020).…”