Culture, not merely power, dynamically created Western interest in the Orient
Evidence
My idea is that European and then American interest in the Orient was political according to some of the obvious historical accounts of it that I have given here, but that it was the culture that created that interest, that acted dynamically along with brute political, economic, and military rationales to make the Orient the varied and complicated place that it obviously was in the field I call Orientalism. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 71
Categorization
- XREF: This is the paradigm shift that later Islamophobia scholarship inherits: culture is not a passive reflection of power but a dynamic force in producing the Other. — connects to: All Western writers treated the Orient as fixed, feminine, and needing redemption; The Westerner’s intimate estrangement from the Orient reinforces the Orientalist discourse built on it.; Europe defined itself through a material and cultural image of the Orient — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 52 (+3 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: Reverses the common materialist assumption that brute political and military power precedes culture; here culture acts ‘dynamically along with’ material rationales as a co-producer.
- corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 71
Broader Connections
- Western scholarly discourse about the Orient was entangled with colonial domination
#qualifies(0.85) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206