ABSTRACT
This chapter helps to sharpen the definition of cultural intimacy, which, for immediate purposes, can be understood as the sharing of known and recognizable traits that not only define insiderhood but are also felt to be disapproved by powerful outsiders. The intensity and personal commitment of this focus have their costs. Anthropological work evokes resentment and, at times, downright hostility in some local intellectuals, who tend to dismiss its concerns as immaterial and inessential. Practical orientalism is the translation of hegemonic ideology into everyday practice so that it infiltrates the habitual spaces of ordinary experience. It is here that we can no longer afford to do without anecdotalism. To understand the full implications of Martin Bernal's insights into the significance of nineteenth-century Aryanism, one should remember that its pernicious development as Nazism in our own century is but one, if indeed the most terrible, of its consequences.
