Orientalism argued Western literatures were complicit in colonialism
Evidence
The whole point of Orientalism, one would have thought, was that these literatures were not autonomous; that they were too complicit in colonialism to be spoken of primarily in terms of ‘high’ aesthetics. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 416
Categorization
- XREF: Ahmad catches Said contradicting his own foundational work—Said who denied the autonomy of Western literature in Orientalism now holds it up as ‘aesthetically independent’, a sharp internal-consistency critique that could anchor an essay.
Related
- Said contradicts Orientalism by treating Western literatures as autonomous. (similarity 0.88)
- Said’s Orientalism denies colonized agency while criticizing the West for silencing it. (similarity 0.87)
- Said centrally shaped literary theory on colonialism after Orientalism (similarity 0.86)
- Critics ignore how literary theory legitimated colonial subjugation (similarity 0.85)
- Anti-colonial cultural criticism predates Orientalism in the colonized world (similarity 0.85)
- Orientalism ignores how colonized intelligentsias received and modified Western texts (similarity 0.85)
- Western cultural discourse about the Orient is a formidable structure of domination. (similarity 0.85)
- Said contradicts himself by also crediting the prior critics he dismisses. (similarity 0.85)
- Said’s account makes colonialism an effect of discourse, not material power. (similarity 0.84)
- Orientalism’s influence owed more to narrative breadth than to its theses (similarity 0.84)
- Generalizing knowledge-power critique would erase Orientalism’s special status (similarity 0.84)
- Said’s critique of Orientalism mirrors the procedures of his adversaries. (similarity 0.84)
- Prominent critics of Orientalism have praised scholars deeply complicit in its assumptions. (similarity 0.84)
- Said studied non-Western literature only as evidence of Western empire (similarity 0.84)
- Said’s later essays reversed his Orientalism critique into a desire for Western location (similarity 0.84)