Le savoir de l’autre ? Les intellectuels arabes de l’université parisienne (1955-1980): une relecture de l’orientalisme français

Abstract

The paper outlines a sociological analysis of a scientific Diaspora. It focuses on the Arab intellectuals who have been working in Paris since the middle of the 50’s and shows how this specific position impinged on their reading of the French Orientalist tradition. Doing so the article questions Said’s Orientalism and its idea of a Western way of understanding (and creating) the East. Instead, it argues that the ways Arab intellectuals engaged with the West’s understanding of their culture is far more complex and cannot be understood merely in terms of cultural identity. Instead, it argues that one has to scrutinize the positions held by the Arab intellectuals inside the French academic field to fully understand how they came to read and criticize the tenets of the classical Orientalism.

Keywords

• Orientalism
• scholars
• scientific relationships beetween the Arab World and the West academic fields