European exploration modernized knowledge but recycled old Orient-versus-Europe binaries.

Evidence

The discovery of these new and in some cases unsuspected lands can be seen as heralding European modernity. It literally opened up new horizons for Europeans: “virgin territories” were to be possessed and exploited; “different” realities were absorbed, surveyed, and described; “strange” peoples were to be understood, integrated into existing categories, and subjected to European needs. In the following centuries increasingly sophisticated methods were applied to the dissection and categorization of the new religions, social systems, and customs, not to mention the assiduous mapping of the regions themselves and the classification of the flora and fauna found within them. Nonetheless, and this is one of the central arguments of this essay, the process of transformation from a worldview that perceived the Orient and Europe as binary opposites, with Europe and the southern and eastern Mediterranean as poles, to something more complex was accompanied all too often by a utilization of old configurations in new and quite unexpected circumstances. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 309

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the book’s stated purpose and the broader Orientalism scholarship I’ve been reading — the claim that modernity recycled rather than replaced older binary frames.
• ADDENDUM: Relates to the ‘Grafting & Growth’ essay’s theme of old structures being repurposed in new contexts — ancien regimes reinhabited rather than abandoned.