Orientalism’s error is essentializing both Orient and West from above

Evidence

My position is that in the case of an essential Islam or Orient, these images are no more than images, and are upheld as such both by the community of the Muslim faithful and (the correspondence is significant) by the community of Orientalists. My objection to what I have called Orientalism is not that it, is just the antiquarian study of Oriental languages, societies, and peoples, but that as a system of thought Orientalism approaches a heterogenous, dynamic, and complex human reality from an uncritically essentialist standpoint; this suggests both an enduring Oriental reality and an opposing but no less enduring Western essence, which observes the Orient from afar and from, so to speak, above. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 840

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise definition of Orientalism as a ‘system of thought’ with an ‘uncritically essentialist standpoint’ — the operative concept to carry forward.
• XREF: The Muslim faithful and the Orientalist community jointly upholding essential images mirrors the co-construction theme useful in later biopolitics/hegemony modules.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 840