Material command of the earth reinforced Orientalist knowledge and vice versa

Evidence

Yet Orientalism reinforced, and was reinforced by, the certain knowledge that Europe or the West literally commanded the vastly greater part of the earth’s surface. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 130

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• ADDENDUM: Echoes the dynamic in ‘On Sacrifice’ where material power and ideology mutually reinforce one another rather than one simply rationalizing the other.

Related

• The Orient was made Oriental through power and domination, not imagination alone (similarity 0.83)
• Knowledge of the Orient requires conceiving it as ruled by Europe (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism was a project of power and culture, not merely an academic enterprise (similarity 0.83)
• Conflating all Western knowledge production with Orientalism repeats essentialism and obscures historical specificity (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism functions as a self-enclosed Western text rather than knowledge of an actual Orient. (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalist knowledge served to deepen European suzerainty over Asia (similarity 0.82)
• Learned Orientalist scholarship pressed ideological myths into service (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism is studied via its internal consistency, not its correspondence to a real Orient (similarity 0.82)
• Knowledge of the Orient served to extend European suzerainty over Asia (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist representations operate for purposes within specific historical and economic settings (similarity 0.81)
• Knowledge production about the East is itself an index of Western power (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalization results from power and domination, not merely imaginative necessity (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalism’s coherence depends on the permanence of its object (similarity 0.81)
• Imperial control depended on constantly refined knowledge of the Orient. (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.81)