— 310 ORIENTALISM of enthusiasm but do not pursue patiently collective endeavors, which are usually embraced half-heartedly. They show lack of coordination and harmony in organization and function, nor have they revealed an ability for cooperation. Any collective action for common benefit or mutual profit is alien to them.!*5 The style of this prose tells more perhaps than Hamady intends. Verbs like “demonstrate,” “reveal,” “show,” are used without an indirect object: to whom are the Arabs revealing, demonstrating, showing? To no one in particular, obviously, but to everyone in general. This is another way of saying that these truths are selfevident only to a privileged or initiated observer, since nowhere does Hamady cite generally available evidence for her observations. Besides, given the inanity of the observations, what sort of evidence could there be? As her prose moves along, her tone increases in confidence: “Any collective action . . . is alien to them.” The categories harden, the assertions are more unyielding, and the Arabs have been totally transformed from people into no more than the putative subject of Hamady’s style. The Arabs exist only as an occasion for the tyrannical observer: “The world is my idea.” And so it is throughout the work of the contemporary Orientalist: assertions of the most bizarre sort dot his or her pages, whether itis a Manfred Halpern arguing that even though all human thought processes can be reduce ight, the Islamic mind is capable of only four,’** or a Morroe Berger presuming that since the Arabic language is much given to rhetoric Arabs are conseguently_incapable of true thought.?*7 One can call these assertions myths in their function and structure, and yet one must try to understand what other imperatives govern their use. Here one is speculating, of course. Orientalist generalizations about the Arabs are very detailed when it comes to itemizing Arab characteristics critically, far_ less so when_it comes to analyzing Arab strengths. The Arab family, Arab rhetoric, the Arab character, despite copious descriptions by the Orientalist, appear de-natured, without human potency, even as these same descriptions possess a fullness and depth in their sweeping power over the subject matter. Hamady again: 7 66 Thus, the Arab lives in a hard and frustrating environment. He has little chance to develop his potentialities and define his position in society, holds little belief in progress and change, and finds salvation only in the hereafter.'*8

Orientalism Now 311 What the Arab cannot achieve himself is to be found in the writing about him. The Orientalist is supremely certain of Ais potential, is not a pessimist, is able to define his position, his own and the Arab’s. The picture of the Arab Oriental that emerges is determinedly negative; yet, we ask, why this endless series of works on him? What grips the Orientalist, if it is not—as it certainly_is_not=—love_of Arab science, mind, society, achievement? _In_other_words, what is the nature of Arab presence in mythic discourse about him? Two things: number and generative power. Both qualities are reducible to each other ultimately, but we ought to separate them for the purposes of analysis. Almost without exception, every contemporary work of Orientalist scholarship (especially in the social sciences) has a great deal to say about the family, its maledominated structure, its all-pervasive influence in the society. Patai’s work is a typical example. A silent paradox immediately presents itself, for if the family is an institution for whose general failures the only remedy is the placebo of “modernization,” we must acknowledge that the family continues to produce itself, is fertile, and is the source of Arab existence in the world, such as it is. What Berger refers to as “the great value men place upon their own sexual prowess” suggests the lurking power behind Arab presence in the world. If Arab society is represented in almost completely negative and generally passive terms. to be ravished and won by the Orientalist hero, we can assume that such a representation is a way of dealing with the great variety and potency of Arab diversity. whose source is, if not intellectual and social, then sexual and biological. Yet the absolutely inviolable taboo in Orientalist discourse is that that very sexuality must never be taken seriously, It can never be explicitly blamed for the absence of achievement and “real” rational sophistication the Orientalist everywhere discovers among the Arabs. And yet this is, I think, the missing link in arguments whose main object is criticism of “traditional* Arab society, such as Hamady’s, Berger's. and Lerner’s. They recognize the power of the family, note the weaknesses of the Arab mind, remark the “importance” of the Oriental world to the West, but never say what their discourse implies, that what is really left to the Arab after alt is said and done is an undifferentiated sexual drive. On rare occasions—as in the work of Leon Mugniery—we do find the implicit made clear: that there is a “powerful sexual appetite . . . characteristic of those hot-bloeded southerners.""*® Most of the time, how