Fear of the Orient’s barren reality gets converted into strengthened European self-assertion

Evidence

The process of thought in this passage is revealing. An experience of Pascalian terror does not merely reduce one’s self-confidence, it miraculously stimulates it. The barren landscape stands forth like an illuminated text presenting itself to the scrutiny of a very strong, refortified ego. Chateaubriand has transcended the abject, if frightening, reality of the contemporary Orient so that he may stand in an original and creative relationship to it. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 440

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the psychodynamic mechanism: Pascalian terror becomes self-stimulating, turning the Orient into an ‘illuminated text’ for a refortified ego.
• XREF: This conversion of dread into assertion prefigures the colonial psychology of racialized selfhood that later Islamophobia readings rely on (Fanon-adjacent material).
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 440