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We allow justly that the Holocaust has permanently altered the consciousness of our time. Why do we not accord the same epistemological mutation in what imperialism has done and what Orientalism continues to do? Think of the line that starts with Napoleon, continues with the rise of Oriental studies and the takeover of North Africa, and goes on in similar undertakings in Vietnam, in Egypt, in Palestine and, during the entire 20th century in the struggle over oil and strategic control in the Gulf, in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Afghanistan. Then think contrapuntally of the rise of anticolonial nationalism, through the short period of liberal independence, the era of military coups, of insurgency, civil war, religious fanaticism, irrational struggle and uncompromising brutality against the latest bunch of ‘natives.’ Each of these phases and eras produces its own distorted knowledge of the other, each its own reductive images, its own disputatious polemics.
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