Orientalism - autonomous learning

264 ORIENT ALISM
Orientalism Now
265
all the expectations created for them by their national traditions, by
the politics of their nations, by the internal history of their national
"schools" of Orientalism.
Sylvain Levi put the distinction between the two schools
trenchantly:
The political interest that ties England to India holds British work
to a sustained contact with concrete realities, and maintains the
cohesion between representations of the past and the spectacle
of the present.
Nourished by classical traditions, France seeks out the human
mind as it manifests itself in India in the same way that it is interested
in China.74
It would be too easy to say that this polarity results, on the one
hand, in work that is sober, efficient, concrete, and on the other, in·
work that is universalistic, speculative, brilliant. Yet the polarity
serves to illuminate two long and extremely distinguished careers
that between them dominated French and Anglo-American Islamic
Orientalism until the 1960s; if the domination makes any sense
at all, it is because each scholar derived from and worked in a
self-conscious tradition whose constraints (or limits, intellectually
and politically speaking) can be described as Levi describes them
above.
Gibb was born in Egypt, Massignon in France. Both were to
become deeply religious men, students not so much of society as of
the religious life in society. Both were also profoundly worldly; one
of their greatest achievements was putting traditional scholarship to
use in the modem political world. Yet the range of their workthe
texture of it, almost-is vastly different, even allowing for the
obvious disparities in their schooling and religious education. In his
lifelong devotion to the work of al-Hallaj-"whose traces," Gibb
said in his obituary notice for Massignon in 1962, he "never ceased
to seek out in later Islamic literature and devotion"-Massignon's
almost unrestricted range of research would lead him virtually
everywhere, finding evidence for "l'esprit humaine atravers l'espace
et Ie temps." In an oeuvre that took "in every aspect and region of
contemporary Muslim life and thought," Massignon's presence in
Orientalism was a constant challenge to his colleagues. Certainly
Gibb for one admired-but finally drew back from-the way
Massignon pursued
themes that in some way linked the spiritual life of Muslims and
Catholics [and enabled him to find] a congenial element in the
veneration of Fatima, and consequently a special field of interest
in the study of Shi'ite thought in many of its manifestations, or
again in the community of Abrahamanic origins and such themes
as the Seven Sleepers. His writings on these subjects hlwe acquired
from the qualities that he brought to them a permanent significance
in Islamic studies. But just because of these qualities they are com­
posed, as it were, in two registers. One was at the ordinary level
of objective scholarship, seeking to elucidate the nature of the
given phenomenon by a masterly use of established tools of
academic research. The other was at a level on which objective
data and understanding were absorbed and transformed by an
individual intuition of spiritual dimensions. It was not always easy
draw a dividing line between the former and the transfiguration
that resulted from the outpouring of the riches of his own
personality.
There is a hint here that Catholics are more likely to be drawn to a
study of "the veneration of Fatima" than Protestants, but there is
no mistaking Gibb's suspicion of anyone who blurred the distinction
between "objective" scholarship and one based on (even an elaborate)
"individual intuition of spiritual dimensions." Gibb was
right, however, in the next paragraph of the obituary to acknowledge
Massignon's "fertility" of mind in such diVerse fields as "the
symbolism of Muslim art, the structure of Muslim logic, the intricacies
of medieval finance, and the organization of artisan
corporations"; and he was right also, immediately after, to characterize
Massignon's early interest in the Semitic languages as giving
rise to "elliptic studies that to the uninitiate almost rivalled the
mysteries of the ancient Hermetica." Nevertheless, Gibb ends on a
generous note, remarking that
for us, the lesson. which by his example he impressed upon the
Orientalists of his generation was that even. classical Orientalism
is no longer adequate without some degree of committedness to
the vital forces that have given meaning and value to the diverse
aspect~ of Eastern cultures. 75
That, of course, was Massignon's greatest contribution, and it is
true that in contemporary French Islamology (as it is sometimes
called) there has grown up a tradition of identifying with "the
vital forces" informing "Eastern culture"; one need only mention