It's a less sophisticated approach to knowledge (call it intentional naiveté), but it has completely changed my attitude to what I am doing. I've reached my limit with arguments motivated by questioning the 'conditions of knowledge production', and I've come to crave liberal quantities of actual knowledge of the human experience - political, cultural, religious, historical, and of course literary.
I've been seeking alternatives that are more directly grounded in empiricism and evidence, and I'm less concerned about 'who is speaking' than what is being said and on what factual basis. These days I find some of Said's 'big arguments' less than fully convincing. To put it simply: Lewis is comfortable characterizing the world outside Europe from a position of knowledge (Orientalism) Said always questions the motives western scholars have for making the characterizations they make (anti-Orientalism). Edward Said, author of Orientalism and the late doyen of postcolonial theory, was in many ways an intellectual arch-rival to Lewis on the question of Europe's scholarly analysis of the cultures outside of Europe. And while there are indeed many places where I disagree with his arguments, I've personally found it worthwhile to read his books (I've only started to do so in the last two years I've thus far read What Went Wrong? and Cultures in Conflict). Bernard Lewis is generally disliked by progressives, especially those in postcolonial studies.
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