Cultural misrepresentation is a universal human process, not a uniquely Western vice.

Evidence

If, as the author keeps repeating (by way of censure and castigation), the Orient studied by Orientalism is no more than an image and a rep­resentation in the mind and culture of the Occident (the representer in this case) then it is also true that the Occident in doing so is behaving perfectly naturally and in accordance with the general rule – as stated by Said himself – governing the dynamics of the reception of one cul­ture by another. … 1) domesticate the alien and represent it through its own familiar terms and frames of reference; 2) impose on the Orient those ‘complete transformations’ which Edward Said says cultures are prone to effect on each other so as to re­ceive the strange, not as it is but as it ought to be, for the benefit of the receiver; 3) impose upon the raw reality of the Orient the necessary corrections needed to change it ‘from free-floating objects into units of knowledge’; and 4) follow the natural bent of the human mind in resisting ‘the assault on it of untreated strangeness’. — Sadik Jalal al-‘Azm, Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse, 39

Categorization

• XREF: The core move here — using Said’s own universalizing account of how all cultures receive others against his special-casing of the West — parallels the classic ‘tu quoque within the theorist’s own framework’ critique, also seen in later debates about subaltern studies.

Related

• Non-Western receptions of foreign cultures reproduce the same reductive dynamics Said attributes to Orientalism. (similarity 0.86)
• Said traces imperial conquest back to centuries-old Western habits of representing the Orient (similarity 0.85)
• Rebutting Orientalism with reverse essentialism would reproduce the same intellectual failure. (similarity 0.84)
• Said’s own theory of representation contradicts his book’s accumulated negative detail about Orientalist depictions. (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist representations operate for purposes within specific historical and economic settings (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.83)
• All cultures transform other cultures into knowledge fitting their own needs (similarity 0.83)
• The Orientalist’s role shifted from guild scholar to representative of Western supremacy. (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism’s harm lies in its thought structure, not its content’s positivity (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism’s error is essentializing both Orient and West from above (similarity 0.83)
• The Occident defines itself as the mirror image of the Orient (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism’s coherence depends on the permanence of its object (similarity 0.82)
• Oriental representations become repetitive pseudoincarnations serving narcissistic Western needs. (similarity 0.82)
• Said’s Orientalism concerned representation, not colonial discourse reception (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism is studied via its internal consistency, not its correspondence to a real Orient (similarity 0.82)