In the Oriental Shadow of the French Enlightenment

Description

In the Oriental Shadow of the French Enlightenment, Rebecca Joubin and Sophia Nissler systematically examine the treatment of Islamic and Arab civilization in the French encyclopedias, dictionaries, and the illustrious Encyclopédie, the prodigious and formidable work that weaves together the vast tapestry of dissenting thought in eighteenth-century France and exposes the establishment of a sub-genre topos of the Oriental as Other as a means to avoid censorship and provide an indirect, albeit potent, method of selfcriticism.
The study brings together works of philosophers such as Bayle, Diderot, d’Herbelot, de Boulainvilliers, and Voltaire, who all criticize Islam as a means to criticize Christianity. The book examines not only the philosophes’ work, but also the backlash to their work leveled by supporters of the monarchy and Church, who derisively called the philosophes Cacouacs (mean ones). In order to expose the nuances of the philosophes’ differently-motivated expressions of Orientalism, the authors pay close attention to their varied and often semi-contradictory political and religious critiques of institutions, gender hierarchies, social norms, and irrational knowledge.
Throughout the text, the authors provide a detailed and critical analysis of how Enlightenment Orientalism gave rise to key ideas and theories shaping European perspective on the Middle East, engaging with foundational decolonial scholars such as Walter Mignolo, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Hamid Dabashi, and Nikita Dhawan. Indeed, without complicating the common Enlightenment historiography by seeing the philosophes as plural, complicated actors, it is impossible to understand how they confused “l’infâme,” laughed, and shaped understandings of knowledge for centuries to come.