Anti-Orientalist critics ignored the actual scholarly merits of Orientalist findings

Evidence

Prudently, the anti-Orientalists hardly touch on this question and indeed give very little attention to the scholarly writings of the scholars whose putative attitudes, motives, and purposes form the theme of their campaign. Scholarly criticism of Orientalist scholarship is a legitimate and indeed a necessary, inherent part of the process. Fortunately, it is going on all the time – not a criticism of Orientalism, which would be meaningless, but a criticism of the research and results of individual scholars or schools of scholars. The most rigorous and penetrating critique of Orientalist, as of any other scholarship has always been and will remain that of their fellow-scholars, especially, though not exclusively, those working in the same field. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 544

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Milgrom/Shapiro chapters on evaluating institutions by their actual functioning rather than by their origins or rhetoric. — connects to: Dismissing Orientalism as bad faith ignores its material scholarly functions. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1139
• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely sharp point: the harshest and most valid critique of any discipline comes from within the discipline, because it engages evidence rather than motives — worth sitting with against the current idolatry of ‘critique’.

Related

• Prominent critics of Orientalism have praised scholars deeply complicit in its assumptions. (similarity 0.87)
• Dismissing Orientalism as bad faith ignores its material scholarly functions. (similarity 0.87)
• Academic Orientalist expertise legitimizes rather than corrects crude stereotypes (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism’s claim to scholarly attention rests on its uniqueness among fields (similarity 0.84)
• Even technically accomplished Orientalist scholarship rests on racist and mercenary assumptions. (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism criticism became a politicized ad hominem charge, not an epistemic critique (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism’s harm lies in its thought structure, not its content’s positivity (similarity 0.83)
• The Orientalism debate presumes scholarship and ideology are opposites (similarity 0.83)
• No critical apparatus exists for diagnosing how Orientalism is biased (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalist scholarship includes anti-imperialist activists, not only empire-serving scholars (similarity 0.83)
• Native liberal scholars mostly reinforced rather than challenged Orientalism. (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism changed no scholarly practices and disturbed no imperialists (similarity 0.82)
• Learned Orientalist scholarship pressed ideological myths into service (similarity 0.82)
• Post-1945 critics transformed Orientalism from scholarship into a concept of imperial institution (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalist scholars were a diverse group spanning nations, religions, and politics (similarity 0.82)