Summary
Gertrude Bell, Oriental expert and agent of empire, whose remarks on the Arabs and on Damascus Said quotes in Orientalism as examples of the expert style in which “the Arab” is given an aura of apartness and collective self-consistency that wipes out any traces of individual Arabs with narratable life histories (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.234, 239-240 / printed p.225, 230-231).
Details
- Bell belonged to the band of Oriental experts — with T. E. Lawrence, D. G. Hogarth and St. John Philby — posted to the Orient as agents of empire and formulators of policy because of their intimate and expert knowledge of the Orient and of Orientals; in them Orientalism and an effective praxis for handling the Orient received their final European form (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.234 / printed p.225).
- Bell, as quoted: in all the centuries the Arab has bought no wisdom from experience; he is never safe, and yet he behaves as though security were his daily bread — Said’s gloss is Bell’s Arab: centuries of experience and no wisdom (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.237, 239 / printed p.228, 230).
- On life in Damascus, Bell attributed her terms with its people in great part to being English, to the success of British government in Egypt, to the defeat of Russia and to Curzon’s vigorous policy in the Persian Gulf and on the India frontier: no one who does not know the East can realise, in her phrase as quoted, how it all hangs together — political good sense, Said comments, taught in that phrase that in the East it all hangs together (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.237-238, 240 / printed p.228-229, 231).
- Bell is named among the experts — Blunt excepted — who, despite believing their vision individual and self-created, expressed the traditional Western hostility to and fear of the Orient, and for whom the main issue was preserving the Orient and Islam under the control of the White Man (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.246-247 / printed p.237-238).
Related pages
Orientalism (1978), Orientalism, T. E. Lawrence, William Robertson Smith