Europe Knows Nothing about the Orient: A Critical Discourse (1872-1932)

by Zeynep Çelik, Aron Aji (Translator), Gregory Key (Translator)

A century before the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism , a passionate discourse emerged in the Ottoman Empire, rebutting politicized Western representations of the East. Until the 1930s, Ottoman and early Turkish Republican intellectuals, well acquainted with the European political and cultural scene and charged with their own ideological agendas, deconstructed tired clichés about “the Orient.” In this book, Zeynep Çelik recontextualizes Eurocentric postcolonial studies, unearthing an important episode in modern Middle Eastern intellectual history and curating a selection of primary texts illustrating the debates.

Genres: History

256 pages, Paperback

Published May 20, 2021

Reviews

[Irine Kaplan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful reader for those one who interested in history of oriental studies. All texts were written between 1872 and 1932 by different Turkish authors, who were polemicized with European scholars and travelers. Basically, their texts are anticipating Edward Said's Orientalism.