Excluding Arab literature from area studies dehumanizes the region it claims to describe.

Evidence

What seem to matter far more to the regional expert are “facts,” of which a literary text is perhaps a disturber. The net effect of this remarkable omission in modern American awareness of the Arab or Islamic Orient is to keep the region and its people conceptually emasculated, reduced to “attitudes,” “trends,” statistics: in short, dehumanized. Since an Arab poet or novelist—and there are many—writes of his experiences, of his values, of his humanity (however strange that may be), he effectively disrupts the various patterns (images, clichés, abstractions) by which the Orient is represented. A literary text speaks more or less directly of a living reality. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 738

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Said’s core thesis on representation of the Other; also resonates with how the Islamophobia readings will treat media framing of Muslims as statistics rather than voices.
• DEFINE: Gives a concrete mechanism for dehumanization: suppressing literature empties a culture of first-person voice, leaving only statistics.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 738