Colonialist context is routinely stripped from Orientalist scholarship when read abroad

Evidence

In this respect, the assumption that orientalism can be entirely subsumed as a specific instance under the general topic of colonial discourse has been a hindrance. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 81 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Because Said was almost exclusively interested in the Orientalist text, and only in quite specific and limited ways, the relationship between the text and its actual realization on the colonial ground was passed over in silence. This is why he deemed the juridical (which he called “law”) to have but a “symbolic significance for the history of Orientalism” (78). And it is striking that he makes this statement in no other context than the colossal British overtaking of India. Juridicality—the legal and political concept of sovereignty, education, the formation of the subject, the modern state, and a host of other concepts and institutions—is not up for analysis in his work. For a thinker who advocated the necessity of reading the text with a due consideration for “worldliness,” these absences are stunning. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 40 (#complicates, via linked claim)

A notable feature of Orientalism is that it examines the history of Western textualities about the non-West quite in isolation from how these textualities might have been received, accepted, modified, challenged, overthrown or reproduced by the intelligentsias of the colonized countries: not as an undifferentiated mass but as situated social agents impelled by our own conflicts, contradictions, distinct social and political locations, of class, gender, region, religious affiliation, and so on – hence a peculiar disjuncture in the architecture of the book. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 308 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Treating orientalism as mere colonial discourse is analytically hindering — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 81; Orientalist scholarship cannot be detached from its imperial context — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 840; Orientalism ignores how colonized intelligentsias received and modified Western texts — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 308 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Treating orientalism as mere colonial discourse is analytically hindering #complicates (0.75) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 81
• Said’s textual focus made him neglect the colonial realization of Orientalism #complicates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 40
• Orientalism ignores how colonized intelligentsias received and modified Western texts #complicates (0.74) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 308
• Critique of Orientalism must begin with on-the-ground colonial practice, not texts #complicates (0.73) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 38