European confidence in cultural superiority rests on doubting the Orient produces anything new

Evidence

From the cultural point of view, I do not think that we have much to fear now from the Oriental influence. It is not unknown to us. We owe to the Orient all the beginnings of our arts and of a great deal of our knowledge. We can very well welcome what now comes out of the Orient, if something new is coming out of there—which I very much doubt. This doubt is precisely our guarantee and our European weapon. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 642

Categorization

• XREF: Valery’s doubt-as-weapon prefigures the patronizing ‘nothing new from the East’ gesture in later Islamophobia material.
• DEFINE: A canonical specimen of the Orientalist attitude: acknowledgment of past debt paired with denial of present vitality.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 642