On Mazrui's “Black Orientalism”: A Cautionary Critique

Heritage tourism in Southeast Asia

“…The logic and premises behind Said's attack on Orientalism have inspired many scholars to think critically about how people imagine other societies, and how people inadvertently disperse particular geopolitical messages in their activities. Orientalist debates have been extended to the study of places like Africa (Jeyifo, 2000;Mazrui, 2000), East Asia (Clarke, 1997;Dirlik, 1996;Hill, 2000;Hung, 2003) and Eastern Europe (Ash, 1989;Kumar, 1992;Ooi, Kristensen and Pedersen, 2004). Orientalism has also inspired scholars to look at how discourses have come to misrepresent and caricaturize the Other with regard to sex and gender (e.g.…”

“…Albet-Mas and Nogue-Font, 1998;Lewis, 1996;Mann, 1997;Prasch, 1996), race and ethnicity (e.g. Jeyifo, 2000;Mazrui, 2000) and religion (e.g. Amstutz, 1997;Burke III, 1998;Kahani-Hopkins and Hopkins, 2002;Zubaida, 1995).…”

“Call Me America”: The Construction of Race, Identity, and History in Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Wonders of the African World

“…In an insightful and highly damning critique of Gates's series, Ali Mazrui (2000) suggested that it might signal the birth of a new paradigm, which he characterized as "black orientalism." In his highly disapproving response, Biodun Jeyifo (2000) objected to Mazrui's use of the term Orientalism, arguing that it represented a misuse of both Said's text and the concepts deployed therein: "Mazrui ignores, deliberately in my opinion, the fact that Said makes it abundantly clear that 'Orientalism' was not, and could never have been, the creation of ONE man, of one DISCIPLINE, of one GENERATION of European 'Orientalists.' " However, Jeyifo's response misunderstands Mazrui's intent in his deliberate invoking of "Orientalism," both as a text and as a form of sociopolitical practice.…”