Archibald Forder Orientalist Summary

This paper rediscovers Archibald Forder as a forgotten American Orientalist, who is surprisingly left out of account by postcolonial critics. Forder's travel books record his life, travel experiences, and missionary works in Trans-Jordan between the years 1891 and 1920. This paper illuminates how Forder’s depictions of the Arabs and “going native” process are in tune with an inherent ambivalence and contradiction of the colonial discourse. While Said (1978) iterates the Western negative representations of the Orient, Bhabha (1994) theorizes the colonized’s mimicry of the colonizer. In building on Said’s monolithic discourse, this paper argues that Forder’s postcolonial discourse oscillates between positive and negative portrayals of the Arabs.

His travel accounts of his experiences in the Middle East, especially in Jordan, from 1891 to 1920, are sine qua non for Orientalists, historians, folklorists, and anthropologists, among others, since they depict the local customs, beliefs, and myths of the Arabs, especially Jordanians. There is an urgent need to rediscover this forgotten American traveler who has sojourned in the Middle East for a long period of time. During his missionary work and sojourns in Kerak, Moab, Jerusalem, and the great peninsula of Arabia, he has undergone several risky adventures during which he has disguised as a Bedouin. Therefore, he has to employ certain strategies that enable him to go native in order to escape attention, danger, among others. Although he despises and assumes an ambivalent position towards the Arabs, he tries to learn Arabic and to imitate local ways of dress, food, travel, and habitation. It is important to find out whether his “going Bedouin,” so to speak, demonstrates a defense mechanism, a real fascination with Bedouins’ outlook and lifestyle, or a mere desire for assimilation or harmonizing with

He depicts them as exotic, violent, aggressive, restless, primitive, and uncivilized. They are renowned for their lawlessness in the sense that lack of law means lack of regulations that control their behaviours and social practices. Because their lawlessness accounts for their restlessness and insecurity, they in fact do not trust anybody especially uninvited foreigners. They are always in great need of various weapons (such as long curved daggers, long spears, revolvers, rifles, and pistols) in order to defend and protect themselves. These weapons indicate the great danger they go through and the harsh environment against which they should struggle. It is thus no surprise to say that they live in a state of what might be phrased social anarchy, resulting in their tendency to rob, plunder, and even murder as Forder iterates in his three books under discussion. What shocks him is the fact that murder becomes so natural and mechanic in the sense that the Arabs can kill easily and for no significant reasons. This makes his adventures so risky. For instance, he is attacked by a man, armed with a long spear and a revolver. That man says: "God has given me my opportunity; now I will kill you and throw your body into a pit, and no one will know where you are or what has come of you" (Ventures, 90, With the Arabs, 182). Forder’s depiction of this man in this way shows his mercilessness, violence, and