Even technically accomplished Orientalist scholarship rests on racist and mercenary assumptions.

Evidence

His main concern is to convey the message that the overall image of the Orient constructed by Cultural-Academic Orientalism, from the viewpoint of its own tech­nical achievements and scientific contributions to the field, is shot through and through with racist assumptions, barely camouflaged mer­cenary interests, reductionistic explanations and anti-human preju­dices. It can easily be shown that this image, when properly scrutinised, can hardly be the product of genuinely objective scientific investigation and detached scholarly discipline. — Sadik Jalal al-‘Azm, Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse, 9

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the broader Said-orientalism debate and to critiques of objectivity in area studies.

Related

• Prominent critics of Orientalism have praised scholars deeply complicit in its assumptions. (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism is only the visible tip of a larger modern structure. (similarity 0.86)
• Academic Orientalist expertise legitimizes rather than corrects crude stereotypes (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism’s claim to scholarly attention rests on its uniqueness among fields (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism’s scientific pretense requires positing a permanent, unchanging Orient (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism must be examined at both the general and the individual level (similarity 0.85)
• Even putatively impartial scientific Orientalism remains an egoistic interpretive act that rebuilds its object. (similarity 0.85)
• Said’s critique of Orientalism is inadequate for refashioning the discipline. (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism’s error is essentializing both Orient and West from above (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist scholarship confirms rather than unsettles existing ideas about the Orient. (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism is studied via its internal consistency, not its correspondence to a real Orient (similarity 0.84)
• The Orientalism debate presumes scholarship and ideology are opposites (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism regularizes how the Orient is taught and administered (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.84)
• Anti-Orientalist critics ignored the actual scholarly merits of Orientalist findings (similarity 0.84)