Control over image production outweighs mere financial capital in cultural contest

Evidence

The filmmakers and PBS had to be conscious — as indeed any Muslim or Third World individual would be conscious — that no matter what the film contained, the making of it, the very act of representing scenes in images, was a prerogative deriving from what I have elsewhere called cultural power, in this case the West’s cultural power. It was simply irrelevant that the Saudis have more money: the actual production and distribution of news and of images were more powerful than money because these, more than mere capital, were the system that counted in the West. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 213

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the infrastructure of representation — not money — is the decisive power in inter-cultural contest is a paradigm-shifting inversion worth sitting with.