Anti-Orientalism Orientalist

By An. Ismanto

Stereotypes and material subordination alone are not enough to preserve hegemony. The dominant group must utilize other much more subtle tools, i.e. academic ideas that are interwoven in such a way that forms a solid system and benefit the dominant group. Edward Said (2001:2) calls this system Orientalism.

Scientific truth is the goal of any academic enterprise. Thus, this kind of truth is a field of contestation which must be fought by every scholar. The only path that can be taken to achieve it is the scientific method, which is always presumed to be free of value. However, in the context of relations between the West with the East, this method has given the cultural and political burdens so that the Western profit more of it.

Orientalists in the past had been twisting the scientific method so that the device was claimed to come from and belong to the West. This claim was usually stabilized with reference to Rene Descartes who introduced rationalism in the philosophical thinking and pioneering the Enlightenment.

Because it came from and belonged to the West, then the West freely claims that this kind of truth was produced by the Western scientific method. As a result, there arises a lame oppositional relationship between the rational (Western) with a non-rational (Eastern). The rational was considered to be superior than the non-rational. The legitimate heir of the rational, and thus also became the superior, is the West.

During the colonial period, and in fact continues in the present postcolonial, the superiority claim of Western science was so rooted in academic institutions in various parts of the Eastern world. This claim was constantly stabilized with academic evidence which shows that the East did not really have a scientific tradition.

Ownership of a scientific tradition is very important. With the absence of a scientific tradition, all kinds of knowledge produced by the East can not be categorized as the science that can provide progress. If the East wants to be more “advanced” in the evolution of culture, then the East must totally follow the Western academic models and applies Western perspective in looking at itself.

Thus, there arises the academic concussion in the Eastern academics. Something easily understood intuitively by the Eastern academics suddenly become difficult when it must be understood with the rational-scientific framework.

New Orientalism

Actually, in the 1970s has emerged a change in the way of the East, especially the Malay culture, sees itself as an academic. In this new way off looking, the “Western`s scientific devices” was still being used, but the theses was different from previous theses that had been continuously profitable to and raised the West.

Previous Orientalism studies provided strong evidence about the pre-rational phase of cultures. However, the evidence had been discriminated in such a way that the whole population was only selected from samples that has something to do in accordance to the agenda of Western superiority. The problem is that this thesis then applied to look at Malay culture as a whole.

Syed Naguib Al-Attas (1972), by applying the rules of rational-scientific similar to Orientalists` in the past, directed his analysis on samples that had been removed by Western academics. The result is a new kind of Orientalist epistemology which was anti-Orientalism: rationalism, if interpreted as an attitude which focuses akliah (logic) power in the realm of intellectual and religious, have long been present in the Malays together with the presence of Islam in the Malay world.

Al-Attas admitted that the culture of Malays had once experienced a pre-rational phase, which was based on the artistry and intuitive aesthetic. In that phase, the Malays were basically people who did not have a philosophy or rationalism, but simply only art.

However, with the presence of Islamic philosophy, drawn from the treasury of Islamic scholarship that developed in the Middle East and Persian, Malay culture got a new scientific and rational runway. For Al-Attas, the evidence of the presence or the philosophical basis of rationalism can be found in literary works from the Classical Age in the history of Malay literature. The works of this period, in accordance with the VI Braginsky`s opinion (1998:1), became “the basis of Malay tradition”.

An important implication of this thesis is that the claim of Western superiority, which was based on the epistemology of rationalism, is cancelled because Melayu (Eastern) culture had proved that it has rationalism.

The most obvious implication of this thesis is in the field of literary history. The pioneer of modernity in Malay literary has to be pulled further back, no longer on Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir Munsyi (nor Merari Siregar) as is taught in literature classes in schools today. According to Al-Attas, the pioneer of literary modernity in Malay was Hamzah Fansuri, because rationalism that was based on Islam had been present in the poems of Hamzah Fansuri in the 17th century.

Abdullah`s leadership position had been sued by Amin Sweeney (2005), whom proves that Abdullah`s pioneering was an academic engineering by the Protestant missionaries that had been politically laden and euro-centrist. They promoted Abdullah for being able to apply the values of English (West) to describe and criticize Malay (East) in his works.

Meanwhile, Maimunah Mohd. Tahir (2007) sued the role of science in the creation of literary works. Eastern writers have been so accustomed to the aesthetics of Western literature which assumes that science can only be operated within the framework of literary criticism. As a result, the creation of literary works are considered not to require the presence of science. Continuing Al-Attas`s thesis about the role of Islamic philosophy in the creation of literary works from the Classical Age, Maimunah called to give science the central role in the domain of literary creation.

Looking at Ourselves with the New Orientalism

The epistemology which was built by Al-Attas is a new kind of Orientalism. Orientalism rules are applied precisely to produce thesis, at least, that parallels the achievement of Malay-Islamic thought and culture Malay-Islam (Eastern) with the achievement of Western thought.

Although the New Orientalism is not getting much applause, but it seems that the problem lies in the absence of a massive campaign to dismantle academic theses that clearly undermined the Malay (East), such as the thesis that modernity in the world only present in the Malay world (East) after the presence of the Western nations.

So, the challenge today is: dare, or dare not, the eastern academics to become the anti-Orientalism Orientalist, in the sense of daring to reject defected theses resulting from the application of discriminatory scientific methods by academic institutions which are constantly under the hegemony of the Western interests?***

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An. Ismanto, editor at MelayuOnline.com

Sumber: http://suarajagat.wordpress.com

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