A reformed, ethicized Orientalism can serve as the exit route from the Orient

Evidence

Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 55 (#complicates, via linked claim)

And yet despite its failures, its lamentable jargon, its scarcely concealed racism, its paper-thin intellectual apparatus, Orientalism flourishes today in the forms I have tried to describe. Indeed, there is some reason for alarm in the fact that its influence has spread to “the Orient” itself: the pages of books and journals in Arabic (and doubtless in Japanese, various Indian dialects, and other Oriental languages) are filled with second-order analyses by Arabs of “the Arab mind,” “Islam,” and other myths. Orientalism has also spread in the United States now that Arab money and resources have added considerable glamour to the traditional “concern” felt for the strategically important Orient. The fact is that Orientalism has been successfully accommodated to the new imperialism, where its ruling paradigms do not contest, and even confirm, the continuing imperial design to dominate Asia. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 819 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalism must be retained and reformed, not abolished outright.; Orientalism defines the Orient as innately resistant to change and modernity; Islamic Orientalism treats resistance to change as the Orient’s essential trait — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 675 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalism is a corporate discourse that produces the Orient #complicates (0.86) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 55
• Orientalism fixes the Orient as passive reactor to the West’s self-assigned agency #complicates (0.82)
• Orientalism persists by being internalized by the Orient itself and by new imperialism #complicates (0.79) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 819
• Demanding the Orient equal the West reproduces the Orientalist creed #complicates (0.78) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 277
• Hegemony via consent, not domination, gives Orientalism its durability and strength #complicates (0.76)
• Even sympathetic Orientalists fixed the Orient in an ancient time rather than coeval modernity #complicates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 691