Direct Orient experience threatened European rationality of time, space, and identity

Evidence

But there were other sorts of threats than sex. All of them wore away the European discreteness and rationality of time, space, and personal identity. In the Orient one suddenly confronted unimaginable antiquity, inhuman beauty, boundless distance. These could be put to use more innocently, as it were, if they were thought and written about, not directly experienced. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 423

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 423
• XREF: connects to: Daily machine experience, not logical necessity, steered Europe’s choice of worldview — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 853; Cultural conventions shape even basic perception of time and color — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 134