Occidentalism defines itself against an Orient it has already made inferior

Evidence

In its most limited definition, Orientalism created the Western-defined territorial and cultural fiction that is an integral part of Occidentalism, an identity predicated upon the exoticized and inferior Orient. This cognitive mapping of the Orient resulted in the drawing of borders and the reduction of complex social and cultural groups to meaningless identities. The framing of the Orient as a wild and uncontrolled environment helped to explain why the Oriental was viewed as “irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’ “—the opposite of the European, the American, the Christian. In literature, art, and cinema, such characterizations are seen in the Muslim despot (who cannot help but be violent because he is a product of his environment and religion, both unrestrained and violent) and the Oriental landscapes found in Gothic horror, which feature blood-streaked skies and medievalesque subterranean chasms that swallow the innocent victims of Muslim monsters. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 385

Categorization

• XREF: Directly builds on Edward Said’s Orientalism; the reader’s own Occidentalism concept mirrors Horkheimer/Adorno’s self-definition-through-negation pattern.
• DEFINE: Defines Occidentalism as the identity predicated on an exoticized, inferior Orient — a mirror of the monster thesis.