Latent Orientalism is a conservative, self-perpetuating discourse that survives political upheaval.

Evidence

There were two principal methods by which Orientalism delivered the Orient to the West in the early twentieth century. One was by means of the disseminative capacities of modern learning, its diffusive apparatus in the learned professions, the universities, the professional societies, the explorational and geographical organizations, the publishing industry. All these, as we have seen, built upon the prestigious authority of the pioneering scholars, travelers, and poets, whose cumulative vision had shaped a quintessential Orient; the doctrinal—or doxological—manifestation of such an Orient is what I have been calling here latent Orientalism. So far as anyone wishing to make a statement of any consequence about the Orient was concerned, latent Orientalism supplied him with an enunciative capacity that could be used, or rather mobilized, and turned into sensible discourse for the concrete occasion at hand. … But like all enunciative capacities and the discourses they enable, latent Orientalism was profoundly conservative—dedicated, that is, to its self-preservation. Transmitted from one generation to another, it was a part of the culture, as much a language about a part of reality as geometry or physics. Orientalism staked its existence, not upon its openness, its receptivity to the Orient, but rather on its internal, repetitious consistency about its constitutive will-to-power over the Orient. In such a way Orientalism was able to survive revolutions, world wars, and the literal dismemberment of empires. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 557

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Specifies the core definition of latent Orientalism: a doctrinal enunciative capacity, conservative and self-preserving, transmitting itself across generations.
• XREF: The enunciative capacity and discursive conservatism connect directly to Foucault’s discourse/statement theory, which Said draws on throughout.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Balfour’s 1910 Commons speech instantiate this enunciative capacity concretely?

Related

• Latent Orientalism is a conservative discourse reproduced through institutional learning and scholarship. (similarity 0.96)
• Latent Orientalism is an unchanging unconscious baseline while manifest Orientalism absorbs all change (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist discourse denies the Orient any capacity for historical development or change (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalism is a discourse, not a mirror of imperial political power (similarity 0.80)
• Orientalism operates as a discourse with material institutional support (similarity 0.80)
• Orientalism divides into a fixed unconscious core and changeable surface views (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalist texts were designed for Western readers, not Oriental ones. (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism persists by being internalized by the Orient itself and by new imperialism (similarity 0.78)
• Said borrowed only Foucault’s schematic features, losing his subversive critique (similarity 0.78)
• Orientalism’s scientific pretense requires positing a permanent, unchanging Orient (similarity 0.78)
• Oriental representations become repetitive pseudoincarnations serving narcissistic Western needs. (similarity 0.78)