Empiricist assumptions locked Orientals into unescapable determining origins

Evidence

It shares with magic and with mythology the self-containing, self-reinforcing character of a closed system, in which objects are what they are because they are what they are, for once, for all time, for ontological reasons that no empirical material can either dislodge or alter. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 188 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Orientalist’s authority required disengagement from lived Oriental life; The word ‘Oriental’ alone invoked a fixed, unchallengeable body of knowledge — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 513; Orientalist truth about racial difference was radical and ineradicable (+6 more)

Related

• Orientalist representation is a closed, self-reinforcing system immune to empirical data (similarity 0.89)
• Oriental representations become repetitive pseudoincarnations serving narcissistic Western needs. (similarity 0.88)
• The word ‘Oriental’ alone invoked a fixed, unchallengeable body of knowledge (similarity 0.88)
• An institutional network of interests sustains unchanging orientalist dogma (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism’s coherence depends on the permanence of its object (similarity 0.86)
• Scientific validity in Orientalist writing requires canceling the human content of its subjects (similarity 0.86)
• Holistic Orientalist vision is fundamentally conservative and self-confirming (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism is studied via its internal consistency, not its correspondence to a real Orient (similarity 0.86)
• Orient and West are unstable human constructs, not fixed realities (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalist representations operate for purposes within specific historical and economic settings (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalist ideas can circulate without imperial power structures (similarity 0.85)
• There has never been a pure or nonmaterial form of the Orient (similarity 0.85)
• Representation constructs the Orient as a closed theatrical stage, not an open reality. (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalist scholarship presents constructed artifacts as natural accounts of dead cultures. (similarity 0.84)
• Western scholarship claimed monopoly on truth about an Orient it invented (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist assumptions restrict non-Western history to relations with the West #expands (0.85)
• Orientalist representation is a closed, self-reinforcing system immune to empirical data #expands (0.80) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 188