Author | Robert Irwin |
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Language | English |
Publisher | Penguin Books |
Publication date | 2006 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
Pages | 416 pp |
ISBN | 978-0-14-028923-7 |
OCLC | 71807778 |
For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies, published in the United States under the title Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents, is a 2006 non-fiction book by British historian Robert Irwin. The book is both a history of the academic discipline of Orientalism and an attack on Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism, which he calls "malignant charlatanry, in which it is hard to distinguish honest mistakes from willful misrepresentations." The title of the British version of the book comes from the poem "The Golden Journey to Samarkand" by James Elroy Flecker.[1]
We travel not for trafficking alone; By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned: For lust of knowing what should not be known We take the Golden Road to Samarkand