American Orientalism persists fragmentarily but ideologically coherently

Evidence

In the nineteenth century, various European nations set up centers for the study of the Orient from which there emerged a huge body of Orientalist scholarship integrally tied to imperialism and colonization. In this chapter, and throughout the book generally, I focus mainly on the Middle East and North Africa, because it was these regions, due to their proximity to Europe, that largely informed the development of an elite Western vocabulary about “Islam.” After World War II, the United States took over from France and England, both literally and metaphorically. It began to exercise its hegemony in the region through the borrowed language of Orientalism, but also through the vocabulary of capitalist modernization, which was better suited to the new form of imperialism initiated by the United States. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Latent Orientalism is a conservative, self-perpetuating discourse that survives political upheaval.; European Orientalism was normalized into a coherent US scholarly consensus; Orientalism divides into a fixed unconscious core and changeable surface views (+5 more)

Related

• European Orientalism was normalized into a coherent US scholarly consensus (similarity 0.95)
• US Middle East research institutions retained the European Orientalist outlook (similarity 0.89)
• Oriental studies were reconceived as instruments of national policy toward postcolonial nations (similarity 0.88)
• US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism persists by being internalized by the Orient itself and by new imperialism (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism’s essentialism hides both historical change and the Orientalist’s interests (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism functioned as fuel for colonial conquest before American independence. (similarity 0.86)
• Islamic Orientalism resisted internal critique while cognate fields engaged it. (similarity 0.86)
• Western scholarship constructed the East as savage to justify imperial conquest. (similarity 0.86)
• Postwar postcolonial critiques transformed Orientalism’s meaning from scholarship into ideology of empire (similarity 0.85)
• British, French, then American Orientalism follows the rise and fall of colonial empires (similarity 0.85)
• Empire shifting to the US carried Orientalist scholars across the Atlantic with it (similarity 0.85)
• Academic study of Islam only began with Orientalism’s language training (similarity 0.85)
• 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 0.85)
• The Middle East itself is a product of Orientalist construction. (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• European Orientalism was normalized into a coherent US scholarly consensus #expands (0.90)
• Orientalism divides into a fixed unconscious core and changeable surface views #expands (0.80)
• US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. #expands (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28
• Orientalist scholarship varied internally but shared the racial category #expands (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 132
• Orientalist discourse was a juncture rather than a continuous line of anti-Islam thought #complicates (0.75) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 189