Orientalism’s coherence depends on the permanence of its object

Evidence

Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West. Thus the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 91 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalist representation is a closed, self-reinforcing system immune to empirical data — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 188; Orientalism divides into a fixed unconscious core and changeable surface views; Latent Orientalism denies the Orient any possibility of development or transformation (+14 more)

Related

• Orientalism is studied via its internal consistency, not its correspondence to a real Orient (similarity 0.95)
• Orientalist representations operate for purposes within specific historical and economic settings (similarity 0.91)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.91)
• Academic Orientalist expertise legitimizes rather than corrects crude stereotypes (similarity 0.90)
• Orientalism’s essentialism hides both historical change and the Orientalist’s interests (similarity 0.90)
• Oriental representations become repetitive pseudoincarnations serving narcissistic Western needs. (similarity 0.88)
• Holistic Orientalist vision is fundamentally conservative and self-confirming (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism persists by being internalized by the Orient itself and by new imperialism (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalist scholarship presents constructed artifacts as natural accounts of dead cultures. (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism’s scientific pretense requires positing a permanent, unchanging Orient (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalist representation is a closed, self-reinforcing system immune to empirical data (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism functions as a self-enclosed Western text rather than knowledge of an actual Orient. (similarity 0.86)
• Empiricist assumptions locked Orientals into unescapable determining origins (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism is only the visible tip of a larger modern structure. (similarity 0.86)
• Latent Orientalism is an unchanging unconscious baseline while manifest Orientalism absorbs all change (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• Orientalism is studied via its internal consistency, not its correspondence to a real Orient #expands (0.85)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object #complicates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 91