Rationality and Resentment in the Egyptian Critique of Orientalism: The Example of Anouar Abdel-Malek and Ḥasan Ḥanafī

Abstract

Fifteen years before Edward Said published his seminal book Orientalism, Anouar Abdel-Malek (1924-2012), an Egyptian alumnus of the Sorbonne and a Sociologist in the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), had published his contentious article entitled “Orientalism in Crisis” in 1963. The essay placed Abdel-Malek as the first Arab thinker to critique Orientalism in a European language. In 1991, Ḥasan Ḥanafī (b. 1935), an Egyptian philosopher and Sorbonne graduate, published Introduction to the Science of Occidentalism. He presents the book as the first serious formation of an Eastern science capable of challenging Eurocentrism and countering Western Orientalism. The present study implements Partha Chatterjee’s (b. 1947) model of the three moments in the development of the Nationalist thought in India on Anouar Abdel-Malek and Ḥasan Ḥanafī in the context of restructuring the power relations between the East and the West. Chatterjee argued that nationalist thought in the colonial world, while seeking to liberate itself from the imperialist influence, remained a prisoner of the post-Enlightenment Western thought. It will be argued that Ḥasan Ḥanafī, who fits in the third moment, the moment of arrival, could not escape the Orientalist mode of knowledge. It will also be argued that Anouar Abdel-Malek, who fits in the third moment as well, has successfully managed to overcome the nationalist dilemma suggested by Chatterjee. The moment of arrival represents a fully developed ideology that embraces the different components of a nation.