Europe’s self-formation against an Other does not require an actual Orient

Evidence

This is said bearing in mind the caveat that if Orientalism, along with Culture and Imperialism, is evaluated within the exclusive boundaries of the modalities through which Europe constructed itself against the Other, then Said’s explorations remain monumental, though these modalities are not immediately germane to the concerns of my work. In some strong sense, this book could not care less about Europe’s self-formation insofar as it is Europe’s nontransgressive business. For it is one of my conjectures (which cannot be anything more than that) that even if the “Orient” has never existed, Europe would have found other “realities” against which it would elaborate a “self,” as have most premodern cultures, however dramatically different these were. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 30

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the book’s governing assumption that Europe’s self-elaboration is not truly dependent on the Orient as its Other — a conceptual reframing of Said’s core thesis.