Holistic Orientalist vision is fundamentally conservative and self-confirming

Evidence

It shares with magic and with mythology the self-containing, self-reinforcing character of a closed system, in which objects are what they are because they are what they are, for once, for all time, for ontological reasons that no empirical material can either dislodge or alter. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 188 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalist aesthetics repress affect to achieve clinical exactness of detail.; Orientalism’s coherence depends on the permanence of its object; Orientalism’s paradigms confirm rather than contest imperial domination (+3 more)

Related

• Orientalist aesthetics repress affect to achieve clinical exactness of detail. (similarity 0.92)
• Orientalism’s coherence depends on the permanence of its object (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalist representation is a closed, self-reinforcing system immune to empirical data (similarity 0.87)
• Scientific validity in Orientalist writing requires canceling the human content of its subjects (similarity 0.87)
• Oriental representations become repetitive pseudoincarnations serving narcissistic Western needs. (similarity 0.86)
• Empiricist assumptions locked Orientals into unescapable determining origins (similarity 0.86)
• An institutional network of interests sustains unchanging orientalist dogma (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism is studied via its internal consistency, not its correspondence to a real Orient (similarity 0.85)
• Academic Orientalist expertise legitimizes rather than corrects crude stereotypes (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalist representations operate for purposes within specific historical and economic settings (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism’s essentialism hides both historical change and the Orientalist’s interests (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.83)
• The Orient was made Oriental through power and domination, not imagination alone (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism’s ontological rigidity makes its fantasies nearly impossible to dismantle (similarity 0.83)
• The word ‘Oriental’ alone invoked a fixed, unchallengeable body of knowledge (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist representation is a closed, self-reinforcing system immune to empirical data #corroborates (0.90) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 188
• Orientalism’s ontological rigidity makes its fantasies nearly impossible to dismantle #corroborates (0.80)
• Orientalism’s paradigms confirm rather than contest imperial domination #corroborates (0.75)
• Orientalism’s coherence depends on the permanence of its object #expands (0.72)