Imperial geography roots fixed Oriental character in a physical territory

Evidence

Geography was essentially the material underpinning for knowledge about the Orient. All the latent and unchanging characteristics of the Orient stood upon, were rooted in, its geography. Thus on the one hand the geographical Orient nourished its inhabitants, guaranteed their characteristics, and defined their specificity; on the other hand, the geographical Orient solicited the West’s attention, even as—by one of those paradoxes revealed so frequently by organized knowledge—East was East and West was West. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 539

Categorization

• DEFINE: Latent Orientalism’s core move: tying unchanging Oriental character to geography as material underpinning.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 539
• XREF: connects to: The Oriental’s status as a separate fixed subspecies emerged only in the nineteenth century — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 178; The nineteenth-century composite Oriental lumped North Africa to India together