Interwar Orientalism reframed the Orient as a cultural cure for Western provincialism

Evidence

The ground had shifted considerably from Hurgronje to Gibb, as had the priorities. No longer did it go without much controversy that Europe’s domination over the Orient was almost a fact of nature; nor was it assumed that the Orient was in need of Western enlightenment. What mattered during the interwar years was a cultural self-definition that transcended the provincial and the xenophobic. For Gibb, the West has need of the Orient as something to be studied because it releases the spirit from sterile specialization, it eases the affliction of excessive parochial and nationalistic self-centeredness, it increases one’s grasp of the really central issues in the study of culture. If the Orient appears more a partner in this new rising dialectic of cultural self-consciousness, it is, first, because the Orient is more of a challenge now than it was before, and second, because the West is entering a relatively new phase of cultural crisis, caused in part by the diminishment of Western suzerainty over the rest of the world. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 664

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the shift in Orientalism’s rationale: from natural domination to a cultural self-definition meant to cure Western parochialism.
• XREF: Foreshadows how Orientalist expertise persists even as its justification mutates — a mechanism later Islamophobia readings on expert discourse will need.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 664