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  • Introduction: New Models for Indo-German Scholarship Within the Critical Reappraisal of Orientalism
  • Robert Cowan

The study of German Orientalism has had a conflicted relationship with the Saidian mode of inquiry, from Edward Said’s initial omission of the German role in Orientalism in his pioneering 1978 book to his later rejoinders to his critics, which further entrenched his stance on the issue. Despite this, German Orientalism scholarship has further extended the reach of Said’s critical apparatus, capitalizing on those deconstructive elements that have proven most useful in revealing personal biases, racial agendas, and overt and covert power dynamics. Yet, as Suzanne L. Marchand notes in the introduction to her new book, “those who have followed Said’s lead and adopted the Foucauldian tactic of analyzing only the surfaces of the texts they study end up simply reiterating what we know, namely that people make representations for their own purposes; too rarely do they ask about the variety of those purposes, or about the rootedness of those representations in weaker and stronger interpretations of original sources” (xxi). Much of the scholarship on German Orientalism in the past fifteen years or so, however, and Marchand is part of this, has attempted to refine that which is useful in the Saidian model, balancing it with hermeneutical theories and on-the-ground archival practices. German Orientalism scholarship has thus played a leading role in the critical reappraisal of Orientalism by addressing these aporiae in Said’s work and critically reflecting on his model’s efficacy, prejudices, and goals. Within these endeavors, the study of German Indology has proven particularly fruitful, for closer examination reveals that the intellectual relationships between Germany and South Asia provide instances of “colonial” contact that differ in some dramatic ways from the Anglo-French contexts that Said and others have emphasized, for Germans had very different agendas. Indeed, I would argue that the intellectual relationships between Germany and South Asia have had ramifications for Western thought that are more profound than any other Orientalist discourse. [End Page 47]

In 2007, I organized a panel for the Modern Language Association convention in Chicago entitled “The Indo-Germans: The German Misappropriation of Indian Philosophy,” featuring Gabrielle Bersier, Sai Bhatawadekar, and Thomas Paul Bonfiglio. The German Studies Association president Sara Lennox then asked me to organize a follow-up panel for the Association’s 2008 conference in St. Paul, which I did, entitled “Re-Orientalism: Beyond Foucauldian Paradigms.” That panel featured Nicholas A. Germana, Bradley L. Herling, Douglas T. McGetchin, and myself, with Bhatawadekar as moderator and Peter K. J. Park as respondent. I felt that Herling’s, Germana’s, and McGetchin’s papers went very well together: Herling presented a challenge to the critical context in which this scholarship is taking place, and Germana and McGetchin served as excellent examples of refinements of existing models that are being taken in new directions. These three scholars are part of an important new wave of scholarship on German Indology, each with recent monographs, contributions to anthologies, and journal articles1—the articles in this cluster for The Comparatist grew out of those presentations at the 2008 GSA.

The fact that I am a comparatist, Herling a religion scholar, and Germana and McGetchin scholars of intellectual and cultural history, and that we all work on German Orientalism is indicative of the topic’s polyvalent nature. German Orientalism is an area of inquiry has both expanded its scope and refined its modes of investigation rather dramatically in the past sixty years, and not only in response to Said. That this branch of Orientalist study finally should garner such tremendous attention is only logical, for it is an incredibly rich area for scholars in a variety of disciplines. Such comparative analyses are vital to the growth of German Studies as it seeks to hold its place institutionally, for while the study of German may be in severe decline as opposed to languages such as Chinese or Spanish, the role of German thinkers in the history of both European and global thought remains central.

A Brief History of German Orientalism Scholarship

Orientalism in Germany drew on two separate sources: the relationship between the Ottoman and Holy...

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