giImagining
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giImagining
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The Mediterranean East has long been our closest and most contrasted alternative; it is contiguous both in geography and imagination. Alternatively mysterious, menacing, enticing or repulsive; at once deserted and swarming, barbaric and refined; sometimes violent, sometimes indolent; a place of enchantment, escape, or exasperaton--but always present and always 'other.'
Imagining the Middle East is a fascinating and highly challenging study of the two-way relationship that has always existed between the West and the East; it is monumental in its desire to deal with Europe's contemplation of the Orient. The author reviews and analyses the Western attempt to mythologize the Middle East as "Other" from antiquity through the centuries to the Gulf War and its aftermath.
Theirry Hentsch examines how the Western perception of the Middle East was formed and how we have used these perceptions as a rationalization for setting policies and determining actions. He sees our ideas of the 'other' and our ethnocentrism not simply as innocent myopia but as our whole way of viewing the world. He believes that the Middle East serves as a mirror of Western consciousness, as a point of reference--changing form, contradictory, varying to the dictates of circumstance. The book concludes with the consequence of this imaginaton on the Gulf War and its aftermath.
Humanistic readers, possessing greater scope for serious thought about perspectives on world affairs, can benefit from probing Hentsch's ideas. --Humanist In Canada
The contours of Hentsch's darkly eloquent critique bring us toward a philosophy of cultural and identity politics...For those who want to understand the world of plural identities and the tactics of "appropriation,' this is a very rich and necessary book. --Montreal Gazette
Argues that the West has always used the Middle East to represent the darker parts of itself and that war is an attempt to contain the imagined threat of the dangerously exotic...the book makes some telling points. --The Sunday Times, UK
Hentsch indeed has contributed a thought-provoking and exhaustively researched work. The Canada Council Governor General's Award for Fred Reed's English translation is well-deserved......a thorough and valuable account. --Arab Studies Quarterly
At once complex, historical, philosophical and lyrical.
--From My BookshelfThis remarkable book...could be seen as advancing our understanding beyond professor Edward Said's Orientalism..and should be essential reading for all those who formulate policies in th West. --Crescent
In the Conclusion, Hentsch comments on "Operation Desert Storm" and the failure of the West to transcend its image of the Middle East...a stimulating work. --Journal of Palestine Studies
In lush, long paragraphs, Hentsch shows how in era after era the freest-thinking Western men (invariably) are imprisoned by ethnicity, class and nationality, and by the need to make a human heirarchy with their modern Western selves at the top. --Canadian Forum
In the best of worlds, no certification of "expertise" on the Middle East would be granted to anyone who had failed to read and understand what Hentsch has to say. It should be required reading for all of us.
--Middle East Studies Association BulletinAn important meditation on the Western encounter with the nearer Orient over two millennia and more...amply rewarding.
--Middle East Policy CouncilDr. Thierry Hentsch teaches Internatonal Relations at the University of Quebec in Montreal and is a well-known specialist on the Middle East.
POLITICS/WORLD
218 pages, index
Paperback ISBN: 1-895431-12-3 $19.99
Hardcover ISBN: 1-895431-13-1 $48.99
L.C. No. 91-72982