Europe’s doubt about Oriental novelty serves as its cultural weapon

Evidence

Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West. Thus the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 91 (#expands, via linked claim)

Unlike the Americans, the French and the British—less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Swiss—have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 52 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European travelers recorded oriental customs to assert their own superiority; Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 91; European representation of the Orient outweighs actual Oriental lived experience (+6 more)

Related

• Europe’s literary repertoire of the Orient half-imagined settings and figures. (similarity 0.90)
• European knowledge of the Orient assembled a restricted archive of tropes that controlled novelty (similarity 0.90)
• Europe defined itself through a material and cultural image of the Orient (similarity 0.89)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.87)
• Europeans claimed to possess the Orient’s souls beyond territorial power (similarity 0.87)
• Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality (similarity 0.87)
• European modernity defines itself through relation to alien past cultures. (similarity 0.86)
• Knowledge of the Orient requires conceiving it as ruled by Europe (similarity 0.86)
• European confidence in cultural superiority rests on doubting the Orient produces anything new (similarity 0.86)
• European knowledge about the Orient served domination rather than truth. (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalist stereotypes project producers’ fears rather than describing their targets (similarity 0.86)
• British imperial presence was conceived as permanently transforming the Orient (similarity 0.86)
• The Orientalist’s constructed Orient displaced the actual Orient in European discourse (similarity 0.85)
• The word ‘Oriental’ alone invoked a fixed, unchallengeable body of knowledge (similarity 0.85)
• European representation of the Orient outweighs actual Oriental lived experience (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• European knowledge of the Orient assembled a restricted archive of tropes that controlled novelty #expands (0.90)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object #expands (0.85) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 91
• Orientalist knowledge served to deepen European suzerainty over Asia #expands (0.85)
• Europe defined itself through a material and cultural image of the Orient #expands (0.85) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 52
• European representation of the Orient outweighs actual Oriental lived experience #corroborates (0.80)
• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge #expands (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89
• Orientalism ignores factual accuracy in favor of exotic horror #expands (0.75)