Even putatively impartial scientific Orientalism remains an egoistic interpretive act that rebuilds its object.

Evidence

Despite their differences, however, these three categories are not so separate from each other as one would imagine. Nor does each category contain “pure” representative types. For example, works in all three categories rely upon the sheer egoistic powers of the European consciousness at their center. In all cases the Orient is for the European observer, and what is more, in the category that contains Lane’s Egyptians, the Orientalist ego is very much in evidence, however much his style tries for impartial impersonality. Moreover, certain motifs recur consistently in all three types. The Orient as a place of pilgrimage is one; so too is the vision of Orient as spectacle, or tableau vivant. Every work on the Orient in these categories tries to characterize the place, of course, but what is of greater interest is the extent to which the work’s internal structure is in some measure synonymous with a comprehensive interpretation (or an attempt at it) of the Orient. Most of the time, not surprisingly, this interpretation is a form of Romantic restructuring of the Orient, a re-vision of it, which restores it redemptively to the present. Every interpretation, every structure created for the Orient, then, is a reinterpretation, a rebuilding of it. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 404

Categorization

• DEFINE: Key move: each category of Orientalist text is an interpretive reconstruction (Romantic re-vision) of the Orient, not a neutral record.
• XREF: Connects to the scaffolding on representation and the construction of the ‘Other’; the Orient as spectacle/tableau vivant echoes how later readings treat coverage of Muslim societies as staged performance for a European gaze.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 404