A shared East-West binary grounds vast and diverse bodies of thought

Evidence

With the blossoming of the Orient as the inevitable Other to the normative Occident, so today’s Islam and the West dichotomous relationship would seem to have found its first legitimised manifestation. Despite the significant and dramatic interest shown in Islam, the Orientalist tradition did little to challenge the position that Islam and Muslims had held in previous centuries. In many instances, the inherently negative meanings and understandings that were widespread, many relating to the attributed threat and danger presented by the heretical Saracens some thousand years beforehand, were merely regurgitated in newer more relevant and resonant frames: frames that were backward and retrogressive to europe’s rationally perceived forwardness and progression. Orientalism therefore oversaw the embellishment of a much fuller and informed process, seeing Islam and Muslims as an inferior civilisation that was inherently backward, irrational and inferior populated by violent and barbaric people who, quite paradoxically, were also highly sensual, exotic and romanticised. Despite this, it is difficult to conclude that the meanings and understandings that were evident in Orientalist discourses were part of a continuum that linked the medieval John of Damascus with the Will Cummins of the contemporary. Instead, Orientalist discourse was a juncture in the evolution of those discourses that are evident in the here and now as indeed they were in the distant past. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 189 (#expands, via linked claim)

First, it allows us to characterize and classify societies into different categories—i.e., “Western,” “non-Western.” It is a tool to think with. It sets a certain structure of thought and knowledge in motion. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 509 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The canal project imposed modern technopolitical will upon the fixity of East and West.; Orientalism divides into a fixed unconscious core and changeable surface views; Shared intellectual authority over the Orient unified otherwise divergent national Orientalisms (+15 more)

Related

• The West-Orient binary found its first legitimised modern manifestation in Orientalism (similarity 0.90)
• The canal project imposed modern technopolitical will upon the fixity of East and West. (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalist discourse frames Westerners and Orientals as absolute binary opposites. (similarity 0.88)
• The Orientalist’s internal East-West conflict erases Oriental agency (similarity 0.88)
• Said’s Orientalism changed the meaning of ‘Orientalism’ from benevolent human interest in the East to an apparatus of knowledge and writing aligned with western imperial power. (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalist assumptions restrict non-Western history to relations with the West (similarity 0.86)
• Western scholarship constructed the East as savage to justify imperial conquest. (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism fixes the Orient as passive reactor to the West’s self-assigned agency (similarity 0.86)
• The West defined itself as the mirror opposite of the Muslim world. (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism imagined Muslims as a monolithic Arab or Middle Eastern racial bloc. (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism presents Arabs as static types rather than historical agents (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism’s essentialism hides both historical change and the Orientalist’s interests (similarity 0.85)
• The Westerner’s intimate estrangement from the Orient reinforces the Orientalist discourse built on it. (similarity 0.85)
• Shared intellectual authority over the Orient unified otherwise divergent national Orientalisms (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism defines the Orient as innately resistant to change and modernity (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• The West-Orient binary found its first legitimised modern manifestation in Orientalism #expands (0.88) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 189
• The West concept classifies, represents, compares, and evaluates societies #exemplifies (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 509
• Orientalism divides into a fixed unconscious core and changeable surface views #expands (0.82)
• Enlightenment thought frames tradition and modernity as opposing binary cultures. #exemplifies (0.82)
• Shared intellectual authority over the Orient unified otherwise divergent national Orientalisms #corroborates (0.80)
• Orientalist typing subordates individual Arab experience to a fixed collective essence #exemplifies (0.80)
• Bernard Lewis reduced fourteen centuries of East-West to unchanging conflict. #exemplifies (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 27
• Rising non-Western cultures relativized the Western episteme #corroborates (0.78)
• Orientalist knowledge cycles into control over an Orient it activated #corroborates (0.78)
• The East and West have coexisted in conflict and cooperation, not eternal clash #complicates (0.78) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 97
• Western scholarship constructed the East as savage to justify imperial conquest. #exemplifies (0.78)
• Orientalism is knowledge that disciplines its object through dominating frameworks #corroborates (0.75)
• Orientalism disciplined the exotic into lexicons, codes, and clichés #corroborates (0.74) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 487
• The Silk Princess story illustrates a cultural exchange from East to West. #exemplifies (0.72) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 789