Essay writing

In the last decades of the last century, postmodernism manifested itself (according to F. Huang, editor - in-chief of "Modern China" - belatedly compared to other fields of humanities) and in Oriental studies, causing lively discussions. This is usually associated with the publication of Ed's book. Said's " Orientalism "[Said, 1978] ¹ . Said's publication," provocative "in its content [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p.96; Minear, 1980, p. 507], received a great response and, according to A. Dirlik, had a noticeable impact on cultural studies of the" third world " in Europe and the United States. In my opinion, this statement should also be supplemented by an indication of the significance of such an influence on social thought and science in the "third world" countries themselves: the essence of Said's basic concept-orientalism as an instrument of imperialist expansion-naturally finds sympathetic attention in the hearts and minds of people who have experienced the consequences of such expansion firsthand ^.2 Although Said's postmodern monograph mainly analyzes British and French literature on the Middle East, the book attracted the attention of American researchers and other regions of the East, in particular US sinologists.

This interest is probably due not only to the fact that Said also concerns (albeit in the most general form) American policy in the East after World War II; the main thing, in my opinion, is that the author formulates his opinion on a number of issues of methodology of modern study of the East in the West. These questions have been at the center of the theoretical thinking of Western Orientalists for several decades. Said's book seems to have provided a significant incentive for such thinking. Interest in the methodological problems of orientalism was so great that the journal of the American Association of Asian Studies initiated a symposium to discuss the book shortly after the publication of Said's book. It is noteworthy, however, that the journal published the points of view not of Middle Eastern researchers, but of scientists studying China (as well as Japan and India), which is quite understandable: Sinologists, perhaps earlier than other Orientalists, were faced with the fact that previous theoretical approaches do not provide a key to understanding complex and contradictory processes of change in China after graduation

¹ Due to the peculiarities of the interpretation of Ed. The term "orientalism", i.e. the science of the East, Oriental studies, is used by Said, and the latter in the following presentation, when it comes to the interpretation of this concept, is transferred by the English term, without translating its meaning into Russian.

² In the literature, it is noted that in the PRC, postmodern criticism actually merges with postcolonial criticism. [Xu Ben, 2001]; on the peculiarities of the spread of postmodernism in Chinese fiction [Zavidovskaya, 2003]; on postmodernism in Taiwanese historiography [Du Weilian, 2002; Lu Jianzhong, 2002]

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World War II ³ . The popularity of the Eurocentric modernization theory began to fade as early as the 1960s, and it gradually became apparent that the modernization of countries freed from colonial dependence did not necessarily mean their Westernization ^.4 Prior to the publication of the symposium materials, R. A. Kapp, editor of the Sinologist journal, while criticizing Said's constructions, pointed out that orientalism is important for raising questions that are (or should be) central to the self-assessment of Asian scholars who professionally study another culture (Carr, 1980).

The inconsistency of the proposed point of view - a serious criticism and recognition of the significance of Said's book - is quite understandable: by this time, the systemic crisis of the "Modern civilization" in the form that it took in modern times had fully emerged [Neklessa, 2000], the need for self-reflection was becoming more and more obvious in circles involved in humanitarian knowledge, and postmodern theories have become widespread ⁵ . It was into this atmosphere that Said "broke in", highlighting in his monograph one of the most vulnerable features of the" Modern civilization " - colonial expansion - and thereby giving a new impetus to the reflections of US Sinologists on the methodological problems of their science. However, the 1980 symposium was characterized not by "self-reflection", but rather by criticism of Said.

In subsequent years, "self-reflection", outside of direct connection with Said's orientalism, began to manifest itself in American Sinology in the form of publications by a number of scientists who expressed concern about the methodological failure of the analysis of events in China (Berezny, 2001). Meanwhile, the crisis of" Modern civilization " was growing, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dynamic but extremely contradictory development of the PRC were increasingly demanding new approaches to their analysis. This probably explains the return of US Sinologists to discussing Said's book two decades after its publication, in the framework of the symposium " Theory and Practice in Modern Studies of Chinese History. Paradigmatic problems" [Modern China, 1998, N 3]. Two years earlier, an article by A. Dirlik [Dirlik, 1996 (2)] appeared with a detailed analysis of orientalism in the interpretation of Said.

Said's book opens with a very important thesis for the author, which is repeated many times in different versions on many pages and generally expresses the essence of his concept: The East is almost a European invention, and orientalism is a method of dealing with the East, based on its special place in the European-Western experience, and as an integral part of European civilization and culture expresses and represents it even ideologically as a form of discourse with its supporting institutions, vocabulary, science, imagery, doctrines, and even colonial bureaucracy and colonial styles [Said, 1978, pp. 1-2].

Although, as we will see below, American Sinologists have been critical of a number of aspects of this concept, its central point, according to A. Dirlik, is recognized as indisputable: Oriental studies are an integral part of the Eurocentric conceptualization of the world, fully developed during the XIX century, which placed Europe at the center and top of development

³ It is hardly an accident that the materials of a symposium on Chinese Studies and social sciences were published in 1964 in the same journal of Asian Studies in the United States. It was recognized that in order to study the changes taking place in China, "traditional" sinology should refer to the methodologies offered by modern social theories. [Levenson, 1964; Huan, 1998, (2)]

⁴ However, this theory turned out to be very tenacious, and it is still widely used as a positive approach in both foreign and Russian publications. For a critique of modernization theory from various points of view, see Cohen, 1984; Dirlik, 1996 (2).

⁵ Approx. 62 articles (Neckless, 2000) contain a fairly detailed list of publications by Western authors on postmodernism.

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and it has positioned the entire world in space and time in accordance with the criteria of European development [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p. 100] ⁶ .

Of undoubted interest for understanding Said's approaches to the analysis of orientalist problems are the methodological principles that he followed, as Said puts it . ⁷ F. Huan reasonably pointed out the influence of "postmodernism and deconstructionism in the shell of new-fangled cultural studies" [Huan, 1998 (2), p.193].

As you know, "disassembly "(deconstruction) and " assembly "(reconstruction) are one of the manifestations of postmodernism in cultural studies. For Said, this method is one of the structure - forming ones in the construction of orientalism, which was already manifested in the fact that the author consciously limited the range of literature he used: he did not rely (in his own words) on the entire mass of materials that make up the " orientalist canon "[Said, 1978, p. 11], ⁸ but suggested "methodological alternative": orientalism, as Said presents it, does not relate to the real East, but to the internal logic of orientalism itself, its ideas created by scientists regarding the East, regardless of the relationship or lack of such a relationship with the "real" (these are Said's quotation marks) East ⁹ . The limitations of the analyzed material and its obvious subjectivist selectivity did not prevent the author from presenting his interpretation of orientalism as something indisputable. In an unambiguously categorical form, he asserts that orientalism is "a system of ideological fictions that can be discussed and analyzed as a corporate institution for doing business with the East by formulating statements, views, judgments about the East, studying it, settling in the East, dominating it, in short-orientalism is the Western school of domination, restructuring and power over the East" [Said, 1978, p. 3] (my italics-L. B.) ¹⁰ .

Another "methodological principle" is connected with this kind of interpretation: ideas and culture cannot be seriously understood or studied without taking into account the configuration of power (meaning the forces of the "three largest empires" - British, French and American), which must also be studied. There is no doubt that the" configuration of power " noted by Said should indeed be studied, but, as we know, it did not remain unchanged, which also affects modern Oriental studies; by ignoring this indisputable fact, Said thereby devalued his second "methodological principle". The same can be said about the third principle: orientalism, according to Said, is especially valuable as a sign of Euro-Atlantic power over the East, and not as a true discourse about the East, which is claimed by academic and scientific institutions in the West; the extreme politicization of all orientalist literature is noted [Said, 1978, p .7,10] ^.11

⁶ F. Huan calls westocentrism one of the four pitfalls that lie in wait for a researcher of Chinese history; the others are uncritical application of theories, the use of ideology, and culturalism (including sinocentrism) [Huan, 1998 (2), p. 183-184].

⁷ Said's previous publication [Said, 1975] deals specifically with issues of methodology.

⁸ The limitations of the material that served as the basis for Said's "provocative" conclusions were also reflected, as the participants of the 1980 symposium noted, in its geographical inferiority: Said refers only to Islam in West Asia, but does not take into account the situation with Islam in other countries, not to mention the fact that the experience of orientalism in the study of India is ignored, China, and Japan [Kopf, 1980, p. 496].

⁹ The author makes B. Disraeli's aphorism as one of the epigraphs to the book: "The East is a career"; according to Said, Disraeli's formula is precisely related to the internal logic of orientalism, created by "a galaxy of scientists in the West, and not in the East itself" [Said, 1978, p. 15].

¹⁰ Several years after the publication of the monograph "Orientalism", Said, repeating the essence of the definitions of Oriental studies cited above as an instrument of colonial expansion," softened " his definition: orientalism is a scientific discipline specializing in the study of Eastern cultures and traditions [Said, 1986, p.21]. This "softening" was probably a tribute to the criticism that his book was subjected to.

¹¹ The author refers not only to orientalist scientific (in the strict sense of the word) research, but also to any printed publications about the East (journalism, fiction, etc.). Apparently, this gives Said reason to call his work multi-genre; he believes that history, culture and literature should be studied together.

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A. Dirlik, without going into the analysis of these "methodological principles", pointed out two features of the epistemology of orientalism, as they are presented to Said. Its central point, according to Dirlick, is the statement that modern regional studies are direct heirs of Orientalist traditions in Euro-America, and one of the epistemological foundations of orientalism is, according to Said, "universalizing historicism": the history of different countries is placed on a scale that is homogeneous in space and time, in which Euro-America appears as a model of progress due to the development of European rationalism, and Eastern societies are in a kind of" paradigmatic backwardness " [Said, 1986, p.212, 223-224]. At the same time orientalist epistemology in Said's analysis also turns out to be clearly culturalist ¹²: Eastern societies are endowed with a single feature that is considered essential, which is also insufficiently justified in the most important texts; this culturalist significance homogenizes Asian societies in space and time and thereby ignores the differences between them, giving them some common features that are characterized as Eastern. This kind of homogenization, Dirlik notes, does not take into account the living experience of culture, subject to temporary changes, and culturalism appears as a desocialized and dehistorized conceptualization of culture; Eastern societies do not have real modernity, since the present simply reproduces the past [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p. 97-98] ¹³ . Another postulate of orientalism's epistemology, Dirlick states, is associated with" Euro-American power over the East": expansion is the starting point of a new epistemology of world reconstruction, and orientalism as" intellectual imperialism " is an integral part of this process [Said, 1978, pp. 116-1120].

Both Dirlik and Huang (and, perhaps, almost all the participants in the discussion) stated that for Said, orientalism is generally just a discourse in the interpretation of this concept by the French structuralist M. Foucault ^.14 For Said, Dirlik notes, orientalism as a discourse is an epistemology of power and as such is integrated into the European consciousness (and subconsciousness) [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p. 96-97]. M. Dalby, a participant in the 1980 symposium, notes that in Said's orientalism there is no history of the East in the generally accepted sense, there is no narrative It exists only as a structural relationship in contrast to "us", "others" are devoid of history, the contrast between orientalism's Orient and the "real world" is emphasized again and again, Said, Dalby continues, like Foucault, considers orientalism only as a discourse, as an "interpretation in the real world". in its own right" (Dalby, 1980) ¹⁵ .

These are the general opinions of some US scholars about Said's proposed "methodological alternative" to orientalism.

¹² The same opinion is shared by F. Huan (1998 (2), p. 198).

¹³ For a similar approach, see also [Fabian, 1983].

¹⁴ This refers to one of the postmodernist points of view, which denies the continuity of the historical process, rejects the historicism that has developed in modern times (the change of "models-epistemes": Renaissance, classical rationalism, modernity) and suggests instead the identification of certain "discursive formations" that determine the actions of people in the past and present; all this is linked in Foucault with the need to analyze the power-knowledge relationship (Said explains Foucault's concept in detail in a special paper on the methodological principles professed by the author of Orientalism [Said, 1975].

¹⁵ The same point was made by another participant of the symposium, the Japanese scholar D. Kopf, who emphasized this statement in the title of his article [Kopf, 1980]. However, in a discussion in 1998, A. Wakeman, who generally shares the hermeneutical interpretation of history, seems to have tried to show the possibility of combining this approach with a "normal" story about the course of history (Wakeman, 1998).

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It is not surprising that this kind of interpretation of Oriental studies aroused objections in American academic circles. The latter did not address the part of Said's concept that generally stated the influence of ideology and politics (and the circumstances of scientists ' lives) on their scientific activities - US sinologists themselves unequivocally recognized this ¹⁶ . In general, Said's statement of the connection between orientalism and colonial expansion was not disputed, but only in relation to the XIX - beginning of the XX century, in the "height," as F. A. Abramovich put it. Juan, - imperialism." Objections were raised to the extension of such assessments to the twentieth century as a whole, and this, according to Dirlick, is the central point of the concept of Said, who presented modern Oriental studies as a direct continuation of the Orientalist tradition in Euro-America. Huang contrasts Said's conclusions with a fundamentally different assessment of twentieth-century Western orientalism, which, as the scientist believes, has become mature, rigorous, empirically grounded, diverse, and less stereotyped. Of course, he admits, there may still be evidence of the influence of imperialism and Western-centered ideology and theory, but there is much more evidence of the opposite: a strict scientific approach, alternative conceptualization and "even a deeply emotional and intellectual identification with the subject of study", the vast majority of sinologists are sinophiles, sometimes more in love with the culture being studied than with their own, and In any case, they cannot be relegated, as Said does, "to the role of slanderers on the subject of their research" [Huan, 1998 (2), p. 195] ¹⁷ .

It is essential for understanding Said's methodology to clarify his vision of the subject of research: describing the influence of orientalism, within the framework of Western culture, on the East. It turns out, however, that the approach adopted by him does not involve an analysis of the orientalist texts themselves, their internal content. Said is interested (quite in the postmodern spirit of "disassembly" and "assembly") only in the external side, more precisely - the external position (externality), the position of the author, orientalist, in relation to what he studies and describes and thanks to which the Orientalist, poet or scientist, make the mysterious East speak for the West [Said, 1978, p. 20-21].

The mere interest in the position of an orientalist author regarding the text he is studying cannot raise objections, it is a mandatory element of any historiographical research. But the refusal to compare the researcher's position with the content of the text under study makes Said's approach one-sided, reflecting, in my opinion, the extreme subjectivism of his interpretation of orientalism noted above.

Said explains his emphasis on the author's exteriority in relation to the text also by the fact that the written evidence about the East that constantly circulates in discourse and cultural exchange is "not' truth '(Said's quotation marks), but only representations". Their value, reliability, and apparent reliability are not well founded and cannot depend on the East, they do not reflect the real East, in this sense orientalism is outside the latter, and Orientalist ideas about it are rather based on Western traditions, rather than on the distant and amorphous East. Orientalism in general depends more on the West than on the East, and its significance is due to a variety of factors.-

¹⁶ Learn more about this [Berezny, 2001].

¹⁷ It should be noted that despite the categorical statements of Said about the ideological and political bias of orientalist studies, he still makes a reservation: orientalism is not just a reflection of the dishonest imperialist conspiracy to possess the Eastern world, but rather the dissemination of geopolitical awareness in aesthetic, sociological, historical, philological texts; however, not in every humanitarian study There is a firm rule regarding the relationship between research and policy [Said, 1978, p. 12, 15].

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These are the presentation techniques that make the East visible "here" in the discourse about it. Orientalism, Said believes, is more in line with the culture that shaped it than with its imaginary subject matter, also produced by the West.

The main result of this author's exteriority is, according to Said, not" natural " (Said's quotation marks) descriptions of the East, but only representations or images of it (representations), which cannot be used to judge the correctness and accuracy of the display of what is described. Exteriority, Said believes, proceeds from a truism: if the East can present itself, let it present itself; if it cannot, then, for lack of something better, such representations must be fulfilled, both for the West and for the poor East, in other ways ^.18 Written evidence found in so-called truthful texts (historical, philological, political treatises) are artifacts, and they do not allow us to judge their truth in relation to the original. The representation of something is first formulated in language, and then in the culture, institutions, and political environment of the interpreter, so we must be prepared to recognize that the representation is involved and intertwined with a large number of circumstances, in addition to" truth", which is itself a representation.

Methodologically, this leads to the consideration of representations as being in the general field of play assigned to it, and not as inherent in the subject itself, but with a common history, tradition, and world of discourse. Noting that this common field is formed not by a single scientist, but by many generations who receive and contribute to already established ideas, Said formulates his point of view: ideas are usually created in accordance with a trend in a specific historical, intellectual and even economic environment. In other words, representations have goals, they effectively perform one or many tasks for a long time; the East as a representation was formed or deformed in Europe by the growing special sensitivity to the geographical region called "East", to a large extent it is the orientalist who supplies his own society with the idea of the East [Said, 1978, pp. 272-273]..

Thus, in accordance with the epistemological claims of the adherents of postmodernism, the very possibility of knowing a historical fact is denied; the historian, according to Said, operates only with his own ideas about it. This conclusion was criticized in the course of discussions by US sinologists.

As you know, the question of fact in history is a long-standing problem in historical science. Overcoming the illusory positivist view of the scientist's ability to know history as it really was led already in the 19th century to the recognition of the relativism of historical knowledge. Postmodernists substitute extreme negativism for this conclusion, which is generally accepted in historical science. According to the logic of this approach, Huang believes that the careful collection of historical evidence and texts, the desire of researchers to correctly read them, is meaningless, since they reject the presence of an objective entity outside the discourse about the historian's view of these testimonies and texts, the differences between actual evidence collected by historians and fabricated artifacts lose their meaning, they differ only in the degree each simply reflects the cultural orientation of the historian, and each remains only a part of the system of discourse [Huan, 1998 (2), p.195].

As far as can be judged, the subjectivist approach to the problem of historical fact is primarily due to Said's views on the connection of orientalism

¹⁸ Said quotes the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx, using the quoted words (in the original language) as the second epigraph to his book: "Sie konnen nicht vertreten, Sie mtissen vertreten werden".

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It is a reflection of the relatively wider spread in modern Western social thought of the postmodern interpretation of the connection between theory and fact. Coincidentally, at the same time as the publication of Said's Orientalism, A. Feyerabend's book Against Method was published in London, with the provocative subtitle: "An Outline of the Anarchist Theory of Knowledge" (Feyerabend,1978). According to the author, facts and theories are much more closely related than the "principle of autonomy" implies, according to which facts exist independently of alternative theories used in their verification. In reality, the author believes, the description of a single fact depends on one theory or another, not to mention the fact that many facts cannot be extracted even with the use of several alternative theories; this means, as Feyerabend believes, that the methodological approach used in discussing the issue of verification of facts and their empirical content is formed by the whole a number of partially coinciding, but generally "mutually incompatible theories".

A. Dirlik sees the meaning of Feyerabend's reasoning in the conclusion: the status of "fact" in history is very problematic, which turns the study of history into an enterprise that is highly dependent on interpretation. According to Dirlick himself, this does not mean looking at history as a kind of fiction; but historians cannot ignore warnings about the need to carefully consider the narrative strategy of the researcher in understanding the past; the emphasis on the role of the historian in reconstructing history draws attention to the relationship between the historian and his time. These statements serve as a basis for Dirlick to draw an important conclusion about the influence of events and conditions of the historian's own work on the choice of the research paradigm and method. In his opinion, claims to professional autonomy and the corresponding autonomy of relations between theory and "fact" (Dirlik's quotation marks) ignore the question of the role of ideology both in choosing research paradigms and in searching for "facts", or, in other words, they ignore the ideological nature of history studies [Dirlik, 1996 (1), p. 247].

The denial of the very possibility of verifying the authenticity of historical evidence seems to have spread among some scholars who study the East in one form or another. But if Said, as Huang pointed out, is only engaged in reflexive criticism of orientalism, some authors try to offer positive, from Said's point of view, alternative "decolonizing" approaches. The latter, in his monograph, names several scholars who study the problems of the history of Islam and have been able to free themselves "from the old ideological shackles" [Said, 1978, pp. 325-326] ^.19 Said calls C. Geertz, the author of a number of works on" interpretive anthropology "and" local knowledge "(Geertz, 1973; Geertz, 1978), a" brilliant example "of a scientist who is free from the" prejudices and doctrines " of orientalism. Geertz, Huang notes, assumes that anthropological research can dispense with the constructs of social science and assumed facts; instead, it is proposed to translate for the Western reader the researcher's understanding of the conceptual structures of the" other " culture (indigenous conceptual structures). According to Huan, this means contrasting the positivist approach of semiotic research of discourses with "another culture"; for Geertz, like Said, there is no fact that does not depend on interpretation [Huan, 1998 (2), p.193 - 196,200]. Dirlik puts the essence of the problem perhaps more precisely: history as discovery versus history as construction; in such an unstable area as the new history of China, he believes, ed-

¹⁹ Mention is made, in particular, of the well-known Arab scholar Anwar Abdel Malek, who published an article long before the publication of Said's book under the characteristic title "Orientalism in Crisis" (Diogenes, 44. Winter 1963).

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one can hardly claim that historiographical problems are simply empirical problems, the solution of which depends only on the discovery of a larger number of "facts" without taking into account the relationship between the discovery and the construction of the "fact" itself (Dirlik, 1996 (1), p.272).

The breadth of the range and variety of circumstances that influence, as noted in the discussion under consideration, the ability to determine the degree of reliability of historical evidence that a researcher has, only emphasizes the complexity of the problem of relativism of historical knowledge. Its aggravation, which manifested itself in the last decades of the last century, is connected, in my opinion, not only (or rather, not so much ) with the extremes of postmodern subjectivist views that have penetrated sinology, but also with the general acceleration of the run of historical time, changes in the world as a whole. In the historiography of the history of China of the XX century This is also due to the high rate of radical changes in the PRC, and the practical absence of a time distance separating the researcher from the events and phenomena he is studying.

The discussion, which involves American historians of China, did not lead to a convergence of views of disputants on the problem of fact in history. However, it seems that the factors influencing the process of establishing a greater or lesser degree of reliability of historical evidence have perhaps been more clearly identified. In any case, the discussion emphasized the need for a balanced approach to this important epistemological problem.

The inferiority of the methodology of Said's concept of orientalism becomes particularly obvious when one raises the question, as Dirlik formulated it: is orientalism an autonomous product of Euro-American development, then projected to the "East", or is it the result of unfolding relations between Euro-Americans and Asians, relations that required the participation of the latter. The above - mentioned repeated statements by Said ("The East is a European idea", etc.) leave no doubt that he rejects the very idea of this kind of complicity of "Orientals" (i.e., residents of the East) in the era of colonialism. Dirlik, recognizing the indisputability of the Eurocentric origin of Oriental studies, stating that even today Western ideas about the world often carry distinct features of Eurocentrism, gives a positive answer to the question raised by him above. The problem of the participation of "Orientals" in the formation and development of Oriental studies Dirlik quite reasonably, in my opinion, considers fundamental for understanding orientalism and its place in the modernity of the East. Based on his own observations and opinions of various authors, he convincingly, in my opinion, justified the conclusion about the two-sided nature of the process of formation and development of the science of the East [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p.99 passim].

According to the author, Euro-American orientalists, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the culture of "others", had to move away from "their" society to some extent and "orientalize" to some extent, thus becoming closer to the society of "others"being studied. Such "orientalization" enabled Western scholars to better judge the subject matter and speak not only for the West (as Said believes), but also for the East. All this contributed to the fact that orientalists were not always perceived as the vanguard of Euro-American power ^.20 Moreover. Both Dirlik and Huang state that the" Sinicization " of Western sinologists aroused ideological suspicions at home.

²⁰ For more information, see [Radtke..., 1993]. It is noted that all the authors of the articles in the collection during their life in China were subjected, in one way or another, to "Sinicization".

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It also contributed to the fact that the concept of "East" was used to criticize and reflect on Euro-American modernity [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p. 102]. But there is also the opposite situation in the relationship between Orientalists and the "East" - they may have met with a favorable reception in the societies of the "other" ²¹ . In this sense, the publication in Taiwan in 1991 of a collection of laudatory articles about foreign (except for D. K. Fairbank - all Europeans) sinologists who made a significant contribution to the "globalization" of Chinese civilization is also noteworthy. The publication was undertaken (according to the authors, quoted by A. Dirlik) in order to "look at China through the eyes of 'others' and better understand ourselves "(Dirlik, 1996 (2), p .SW) ²².

Even more important, in my opinion, is Dirlik's conclusion that Oriental orientalism played an important role in shaping the science of the Orient. Although Oriental studies, as a theory and practice, the American scholar notes, is of European origin, and the term itself was used almost exclusively to describe the attitude of Europeans to Asian societies, but, regardless of the links in origin and in its history with Eurocentrism, orientalism needed the participation of "Orientals" for its legitimization, and in practice it has been used from the very beginning. Initially, it was formed as an exchange of images and ideas during the penetration of Europeans (intellectuals, etc.) into Asia, and over time, the counter-penetration of Asians into Europe and the United States [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p. 112] ²³.

The circulation of people and ideas between East and West (which was not taken into account by Said) developed in various forms, which were largely determined, apparently, by the degree of colonial dependence (but, of course, by other factors) [Borokh, 2001]. In Qing China, the "orientalization" of intellectual thought already at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries manifested itself in the perception of ideas borrowed from the West by circles opposed to the imperial regime, but with noticeable features of "Chinese specifics" (as one might say now) ^.24 This process acquired a fundamentally different character in colonial India. In an effort to create an effective colonial administration, the British authorities promoted the formation of an Anglicized intellectual elite, which, according to T. Macaulay, was supposed to become an intermediary between the colonial authorities and the local population. Apparently, it was not without the participation of the future " Macaulay children "(as D. Lal calls them) [Lai, 2001] that a group of intellectual elites that existed until 1830, known in historiography as "British Orientalists", emerged in 1772, and modern orientalism, according to D. Kopf, emerged in 1784. The Asian Society of Bengal was educated in Calcutta (Kopf, 1980). Both Kopf, in a discussion in 1980, and later Dirlik, drew attention to the so - called Bengali Renaissance, a very important episode in the history of Indian social thought. British orientalists have helped to extract esoteric Brahman texts from obscurity by playing a key role in the process.,

²¹ Dirlik sees a classic example in the situation of the Jesuits in China [Ronan..., 1988].

²² Dirlik points out how familiar the term "Westernized Chinese" is, but we rarely use another term, " Sinicized Westerners."

²³ Dirlik relies on the concept of "contact zones" and "border areas" proposed by M. L. Pratt (1992). According to the author of the concept, within these colonial spaces, people who were geographically and historically separated from each other entered into contacts and established developing relationships, which usually included relations of coercion, radical inequality and difficult-to-overcome conflicts. One could add to this, in the case of China, the circulation of ideas not only in such "contact zones" (Borokh, 2001).

²⁴ L. N. Borokh, analyzing the worldview of the outstanding thinker and public figure Liang Chi-chao, explains the inconsistency of his views as "the product of a split consciousness" [Borokh, 1992, p.239].

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Thus, it played a crucial role in reviving the interest of Bengali intellectuals in Hindu traditions ^.25

The limited size of these notes does not allow at least a brief summary of D. Kopf's highly critical view of Said's concept. I would just like to draw attention to the connection between Said's one-sided, subjectivist approach and the deep-rooted problem of identity that concerns the intelligentsia of the "third world" (Kopf, 1980) ^.26

These and similar facts served as the basis for a very important, in my opinion, conclusion formulated by Dirlick: the concept of orientalism, which serves almost exclusively to describe the attitude of Europeans to Asian societies, should, taking into account the tendencies of self-orientalization of "Orientals", be extended to the views of Asians on Asia; self-orientalization thus becomes an integral part of the history of Oriental studies [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p. 104-106]. It is not difficult to notice the fundamental difference between this approach and the one-sided Saidov's assessment of orientalism as a "European idea".

In connection with this conclusion, it is noteworthy to raise the question, although it seems not indisputable, about the origin of the concept of "Asian traditions". According to Dirlik, they may turn out to be "invented traditions", since they were more a result than a precondition of contacts between Asians and Europeans, due more to the orientalist perception of Asia than to the self-perception of Asians in the places of contact (Dirlik, 1996 (2), p.104).

The question of the role of traditions in the movement of history in the East would deserve special consideration. Here we have to confine ourselves to Wang Gungwu's interesting, in my opinion, point of view on the relationship between traditions and progress [Wang Gungwu, 1999 (1)]. A scholar from Singapore considers the view that Chinese revolutionaries have long held untenable: progress requires the rejection of traditions. To this" extremist " view, according to Wang, the author contrasts the experience of Japan, where the deployment of modernization was also accompanied by the rejection of traditions, but these were Chinese traditions that were revered by the Japanese for 15 centuries. According to the scientist, progress depends largely on the modified tradition, as it was in Thailand, Malaya, Java and in some other regions that previously faced the achievements of the West in China and Japan. Noting the moderation of anti-colonial nationalism in these regions, Wang said he was convinced that progress as originally envisioned in the West was not incompatible with traditions in Asia ^.27 This conclusion can be considered, in my opinion, in the context of the widespread dichotomy "traditional and modernized (modernizing) societies" in the literature; it has long been disputed by some sinologists. Thus, according to B. Schwartz, the Chinese past and modernity may not oppose each other as impenetrable forces.

²⁵ Notably, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, some French and German orientalists advocated recognizing the "Oriental Renaissance" rather than Greece and Rome as the beginning of a new era of European history, with the view that modern India was showing Europe its own past.

²⁶ But the use of the term "intelligentsia" does not seem legitimate to me, the concepts of "intellectual elite" and "intellectuals" seem more adequate.

²⁷ According to Wang Gong'u's observations, Asian intellectuals noticed that North America and Australasia had followed the European path and achieved success, inspired by reformed versions of basic Christian doctrines that formed the core of a deeply rooted European tradition.

²⁸ Cohen (1984) also criticized this dichotomy, but emphasized the need to look for the roots of China's new history in its past ("China-centered history"), in fact, according to Dirlik, depriving China of historicity up to modern times, presenting it as a world in itself (Dirlik, 1996 (1), p. 262-268].

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Developing his concept of the incorporation of some Western ideas about the East into the self-identification of Asians, Dirlick believes that this is especially characteristic of the twentieth century, when Euro-American orientalist ideas and methods became visible components of Chinese self-perception and understanding of their past. This process was accelerated by the formation of nationalism. Colonial expansion, while provoking its emergence, has simultaneously provided nationalism with an image of the Chinese past that can be incorporated into a new national identity. Nationalism tends to project itself into the past up to mythical times, while homogenizing the differences in the historical process in time and space so that the whole history turns into the history of the nation, while some features become symbols of the nation, and others that are incompatible with the modern national self-perception are rejected as alien; in this metonymic reductionism, the author notes However, nationalism shares much in the cultural procedures of orientalism, now at the level of the nation [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p. 106] ²⁹ . It will be shown below that P. Duara also shares similar views on the problem (Duara, 1995).

The circulation of ideas, which has always been a prerequisite for the formation of Western ideas about China, sometimes now serves as a basis for the conclusion that with the collapse of the colonial system, orientalism has lost its significance. This is actually the original point of view of Ed. According to some other authors, " postorientalism "is declared synonymous with postcolonialism (Clarke, 1999) ^.30 However, this identification does not reflect the true state of modern orientalist research. The elimination of colonialism, at least in its former guise, did not lead to the decline of Oriental studies. On the contrary, the range of possibilities of orientalism in space and time has been greatly enriched, while acquiring new features. It, which previously somehow reflected the realities of the historical existence of countries that found themselves in colonial dependence, has now acquired a new theme, connected with the search for the liberated peoples of their own paths of social development, paths determined not only by the current situation in the world, but also by the historical past, recent and long ago. Oriental studies, which was previously cramped under the influence of various factors, now does not fit at all into the Procrustean bed of postmodernism.

A. Dirlik proposed a different and, in my opinion, convincing concept of these changes: not orientalism has lost its significance, but the configuration of power between, in particular, China and Euro-America has changed - the former sense of powerlessness has been replaced by a newfound awareness of its own power, which accompanies the economic success of the PRC (and other East Asian societies) and challenges the former euro-American dominance, and this transformation brings orientalism to the level of a global ideology. Orientalism that was previously articulated in different ways-

²⁹ The author also refers to publications that indicate that similar trends have been observed in Indian social thought. The differences in views on nationalism are quite significant. British scientists, for example, after analyzing several variants of such dualistic assessments, came to the conclusion that differences can be better understood in the degree of divergence and emphasis, rather than in principle: all forms of nationalism are associated with the problem of attitude to "others", which determines the nation itself and its formation [Spenser..., 1998; see also: Friedman, 1995].

30 Sa'id himself, insisting that colonial orientalism has failed, uses the term "modern orientalism" and even believes that it is "flourishing", causing Sa'id to worry about the spread of the influence of modern Orientalism to the East, saying that he can only judge the Middle East, Sa'id sees there "the triumph of orientalism'a " - reaching a compromise between intellectuals and orientalism; the leading trends of modern culture in the Middle East are developing, in his opinion, according to Euro-American models [Said, 1978, p. 322-323].

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The difference between Asian and Euro-American societies now points to their contemporary features, as these societies act as dynamic participants in global capitalism31 . In its modern guise, orientalism opens up a space for competing ideological loyalties of an elite that is no longer easily identified as Western or Eastern, Chinese or non-Chinese. In the twentieth century, Dirlik believes, orientalist concepts do not differ in geographical origin [Dirlik, 1996 (2), p. 108]. It is also obvious that the process of "self-orientalization of Orientals" and their participation in the Oriental studies of the past contribute to the modern development of orientalism; the number of publications prepared jointly by Western scientists and Chinese researchers is growing.

The recent dependent past and more distant history began to be viewed from new angles, and accents began to change. Thus, we have collected convincing data that allowed us to conclude that even before the "discovery" of China by the "opium wars", the country was undergoing a process of positive, albeit contradictory changes, which served as a basis for some researchers to designate at least the XVIII century as "premodern China", a XIX and the first half of the XX century. - as a time not only for the existence of semi-colonial forms of oppression, but also for the formation of new social forces associated with capitalist development that has already begun [Berezny, 1997]. Other examples could also be cited that indicate the expansion of the scope of interests of both Western and Chinese orientalists, who are overcoming to varying degrees the one-sidedness of approaches to the study of Chinese history ^.32 However, trends have also emerged that are directly related to the aforementioned contests of " conflicting ideological loyalties "and, ultimately, to the problem of choosing a path in a globalizing world, to the problem of" one's own " modernity.

(To be continued)

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³² In particular, the significance of 1840, which is interpreted in Western historiography as a turning point in the historical development of China, is questioned (Cohen, 1984).

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