Addressing actually-existing orientalism

I wondered briefly if I ought to write this blog post at all. I actually wouldn’t be considering it if several coincidences hadn’t occurred in fairly rapid succession. Firstly, orientalism is actually a topic that I’ve engaged with several times on this blog, starting here. I had spent some time talking about this topic directly in one of my more recent entries, attempting to defend the Pre-Raphælite Brotherhood from certain charges of orientalism, on the grounds that their Romantic engagement ‘eastward’ came not out of a desire to essentialise or mythicise an artificial distinction between virtuous progressive Western republicanism and decadent Eastern despotism. Instead, the interventions of Ruskin and Morris attempted to recover something of value from the Byzantine and Arabic artistic forms that had been lost in the Renaissance transition to modernity – here as always, I have been ready to look to certain instances of self-reflection within the West that speak to its health and life, and distinguish these clearly from the destructive forms of culture, motivated by the libido dominandi, that seek to ‘rewrite’ the West and impose its brand of intellectual conformity on the East.

It just so happens that another blogger, a Catholic fellow named Chase Padusniak who blogs at the Patheos outlet Jappers and Janglers, wrote an article on the same topic, a kind of j’accuse levelled ostensibly at converts to all forms of Eastern Christianity, but in actuality specifically at a certain kind of convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. In it, despite a professed ‘great love’ for the Orthodox, Padusniak takes aim at those ‘convertodox’ who, driven by a politically-motivated dissatisfaction with the West, construct a mental stereotype of the East as a theologically- and politically-pure Shangri-La within which the ‘right kind’ of theopolitics prevail. In itself, I have no problem with this general line of critique, and I can support its application in certain circumstances. In fact, I have levelled similar critiques of these tendencies within Orthodoxy myself, and militated against them. Coming, as I do, from Episcopalianism rather than from evangelicalism or from traditionalist Catholicism, these critiques may be a bit easier for me to make (though, of course, I have plenty of barely-examined convert ‘baggage’ of my own).

If not for a certain second coincidence, I wouldn’t have to call Padusniak’s article out here as fundamentally duplicitous, mean-spirited and self-serving. For a bit of background: I also happen, as a personal project, to be seriously researching the Arab world’s transition to modernity – in part to challenge some of my own theopolitical preconceptions; in part to build a better understanding of a tradition which had adopted me and my family.

One of the books I am currently reading in this project is Michael Provence’s scholarly monograph The Great Syrian Revolt, which details the French mandatory occupation of Syria and Lebanon in the wake of the First World War, and the circumstances which led the Druze chieftain Sultân al-Atrash to lead the ultimately ill-fated (but seminal, as far as Arab nationalism is concerned) 1925 revolt against French rule. To put it mildly, Provence’s sympathies are clearly engaged on behalf the rebels, and clearly not on behalf of the French colonial administration. This, with good reason. French rule in Syria was disastrous. ‘The destruction visited on Syria’s cities, towns and villages was unprecedented,’ Provence writes. ‘The mandate government used collective punishment … wholesale executions, house demolitions, utilisation of tanks and armoured vehicles in urban neighbourhoods, population transfers from region to region, and round-the-clock ærial bombardment of civilian populations. While these ghastly methods have continued to characterise conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere, it was the distinction of the mandatory government of France to have used them first.’

One of the themes presented by this book is that the revolt showed the Syrian Arab population not to be as divided as the French government presupposed, and not in the same ways as the French routinely assumed. On the other hand, Provence being an even-handed scholar, he does not seek to ignore or paper over the sectarian divisions either. He does not ignore the fact that the French government made it a matter of policy to favour Uniates – Byzantine Catholics of the Maronite and Melkite jurisdictions – over other local Christian populations, and Christians generally over Muslims, Alawites, Druze, Jews and other religious groups. This was done for primarily ideological – and indeed, orientalist – reasons. As Provence writes:

The policy of separation aimed to exploit divisions in Syrian society and break Syria into easily managed geographically and religiously separate pieces. The architects of this policy were French colonial officers with a particular right-wing, pro-Catholic political bent. The colonial policy that they designed in Morocco and brought to Syria mixed indirect rule with a heavy measure of unself-conscious paternalism. It favoured traditional elites over those with modern education and nationalist ideas, the countryside over the city, Uniate Christians over Orthodox Christians and all Christians over Muslims and sought to emphasise divisions within society and so develop each segment independently of others, thereby facilitating colonial rule and curtailing organised challenges before they could emerge. At the base of the conception of colonial rule was a romantic notion of timeless and changeless “Oriental” society, best governed with fatherly “love” for the colonial citizens. Combined with paternalistic love was an emphasis on the material and economic advantages of colonial rule.

We can see all the hallmarks of Dr Sa‘îd’s classical definition of orientalism here, right down to the Whiggish-historical mandate to civilise the foreigner which the French government had assumed for itself. Naturally, the Uniate Christians so favoured by French policy in 1925 tended to support the French mandatory government even as it was destroying their fellow Syrians by the brutal methods mentioned above. On the other hand, Orthodox Christians, being lower in the social pecking order, tended to support the anti-colonial, broadly non-sectarian Arab nationalist rebels. There are indeed important exceptions which Provence discusses in detail, including Maronites who joined and lent their wholehearted support to the revolt, but in the broad strokes, this is the historical fact he alludes to. Having mentioned this historical fact in a Facebook post, however, brought Padusniak down something fierce on my wall. Ignoring wholesale the context in which my original comments were made, he began hurling accusations my way of being ‘ahistorical’ and then dismissing me, astoundingly, as a naïve ‘pan-Slavist’ for failing to condemn Russia and the Eastern Roman Empire in the exact same terms and with the exact same vehemence that I condemned France, even though neither Russia nor the Eastern Roman Empire is substantively related to the 1925 Revolt in question. When all you have is a hammer, as they say…

In this context, Padusniak’s indictment of ‘orientalism’ appears as self-serving, and even as a form of Freudian projection. Despite a bit of legalistic arse-covering at the beginning of his blog post, this charge of ‘orientalism’ coming from a Catholic is substantially aimed only at us Orthodox, for whom he professes a peculiarly-French sounding ‘great love’. As we can see, even those of us who substantively agree with him about these tendencies in Orthodoxy are to be attacked in the same terms. Thus selectively applied, however, Padusniak’s analysis becomes completely useless to any sort of reflection on the ways in which actually-existing orientalism in Western governing ideologies shaped the history of the East or, indeed, the present situation in the countries directly affected – where the old French mandatory-colonial masters are again intervening against an Arab nationalist authority for rather similar paternalistic reasons, although the recipients of their colonial largesse have changed. And my criticisms of the French and their local clients – either then or now, it seems – are therefore attacked as ‘ahistorical’. Oy vey, indeed.

For the record, because I know the subject will surface no matter what else I say: I do not hold Russia blameless. They have their own interests in the Middle East which could stand to be scrutinised to a greater degree than they are, by the appropriate people. I do happen to think these interests are better-articulated than our own are, and that they have somewhat more of the force of justice behind them where Syria is concerned. But I do not live in Russia; I am not in any degree responsible for the Russian government’s actions. Though I am an Orthodox Christian, I live here in the West, and I am a citizen of a Western government – a government allied to France, a government whose own policy in the Middle East has been profoundly misguided for a very long time. It is this policy which needs most urgently to be questioned and changed. If a concept of orientalism is advanced in our own political context, which cannot question or change such a policy, it is of no use whatsoever.