Group identities are formed negatively as ‘not-barbarian’ rather than positively.

Evidence

To a certain extent modern and primitive societies seem thus to derive a sense of their identities negatively. A fifth-century Athenian was very likely to feel himself to be nonbarbarian as much as he positively felt himself to be Athenian. The geographic boundaries accompany the social, ethnic, and cultural ones in expected ways. Yet often the sense in which someone feels himself to be not-foreign is based on a very unrigorous idea of what is “out there,” beyond one’s own territory. All kinds of suppositions, associations, and fictions appear to crowd the unfamiliar space outside one’s own. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 154

Categorization

• XREF: Negative identity-formation resonates with the reader’s toolkit: colonial psychology and racialized selfhood, and later Islamophobia arguments about defining Europe against its Islamic Other. — connects to: Structure is a historical stage of group self-making, not a timeless property. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 532; Buddhist identity is circular and same-yet-other, resisting linear generalization. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 306; Queer identity can be conceived as a bridge rather than a closet. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1270 (+2 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 154