Robert Irwin (writer) - Orientalism

In 2006 his critique of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies, was published. Among his various critiques, he maintains that Said focused his attention on the British and the French in his critique of Orientalism, while, in fact, it was German scholars who made the original contributions. He notes that Said linked the academic Orientalism in those countries with imperialist designs on the Middle East. Yet, by the 19th and the early 20th centuries, it was more proper to regard Russia as an empire having imperialist designs on the Caucasus region and Central Asia. Irwin maintains that the issue of Russia's actual imperialist designs is avoided by Said. Another of Irwin's key points is that oriental scholarship or 'Orientalism' "owes more to Muslim scholarship than most Muslims realise."

Maya Jasanoff in the London Review of Books argued: "...Irwin's factual corrections, however salutary, do not so much knock down the theoretical claims of Orientalism as chip away at single bricks. They also do nothing to discount the fertility of Orientalism for other academics. The most thought-provoking works it has inspired have not blindly accepted Said's propositions, but have expanded and modified them."