Knowledge production about the East is itself an index of Western power

Evidence

This proposition was introduced early in Chapter One, and nearly everything in the pages that followed was intended in part as a corroboration of it. The very presence of a “field” such as Orientalism, with no corresponding equivalent in the Orient itself, suggests the relative strength of Orient and Occident. A vast number of pages on the Orient exist, and they of course signify a degree and quantity of interaction with the Orient that are quite formidable; but the crucial index of Western strength is that there is no possibility of comparing the movement of Westerners eastwards (since the end of the eighteenth century) with the movement of Easterners westwards. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 511

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The knowledge-power link foreshadows Foucauldian analysis of discourse as power in later readings.

Related

• Conflating all Western knowledge production with Orientalism repeats essentialism and obscures historical specificity (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism was a project of power and culture, not merely an academic enterprise (similarity 0.85)
• The sheer asymmetry of knowledge production signals Western dominance over the East (similarity 0.84)
• For imperial discourse, knowledge of the Orient constitutes power over it (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism functions as a self-enclosed Western text rather than knowledge of an actual Orient. (similarity 0.84)
• Twentieth-century Orientalism controlled freedom and knowledge through formalized repetition (similarity 0.83)
• The Orient was made Oriental through power and domination, not imagination alone (similarity 0.82)
• Generalizing knowledge-power critique would erase Orientalism’s special status (similarity 0.82)
• Foucault held that all knowledge is a product of discourse bound up with power. (similarity 0.82)
• The knowledge-power relationship is circular, not unidirectional as Said held (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalist knowledge served to deepen European suzerainty over Asia (similarity 0.81)
• Knowledge of the Orient requires conceiving it as ruled by Europe (similarity 0.81)
• Material command of the earth reinforced Orientalist knowledge and vice versa (similarity 0.81)
• Imperial control depended on constantly refined knowledge of the Orient. (similarity 0.81)
• Knowledge of the Orient served to extend European suzerainty over Asia (similarity 0.81)