Orientalism fixes the Orient as passive reactor to the West’s self-assigned agency
Evidence
As Hussain states, this process established ‘an absolute and systematic difference between the West … and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped and inferior’. More worrying for him though, and in offering some explanation of what was to follow, Hussain explains that what emerged was a notion and preconception of the Orient that was ‘uniform and incapable of defining itself … either to be feared … or to be controlled’. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 188 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 188; Orientalism regularizes how the Orient is taught and administered; Orientalism defines the Orient as innately resistant to change and modernity (+19 more)
Related
- Orientalism defines the Orient as innately resistant to change and modernity (similarity 0.95)
- Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition (similarity 0.93)
- Latent Orientalism denies the Orient any possibility of development or transformation (similarity 0.92)
- The imagined Orient’s internal ‘dislocation’ is the position from which Orientalists justify their authority (similarity 0.92)
- The Orientalist’s internal East-West conflict erases Oriental agency (similarity 0.92)
- The West framed the Orient as uniform, indefinable, and to be feared or controlled (similarity 0.91)
- Even sympathetic Orientalists denied the Orient modernity by casting it as ancient and Semitic. (similarity 0.91)
- Orientalism presents Arabs as static types rather than historical agents (similarity 0.91)
- Essentialist Orientalist vision erases historical development in favor of unchanging geographic types. (similarity 0.91)
- Orientalist science and personal utterance alike erase the modern Orient’s human reality (similarity 0.91)
- Shared intellectual authority over the Orient unified otherwise divergent national Orientalisms (similarity 0.91)
- Orientalism’s essentialism hides both historical change and the Orientalist’s interests (similarity 0.91)
- The Orient is constituted as absence while the Orientalist constitutes himself as presence (similarity 0.90)
- European representation of the Orient outweighs actual Oriental lived experience (similarity 0.90)
- All Western writers treated the Orient as fixed, feminine, and needing redemption (similarity 0.90)
Broader Connections
- Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition
#corroborates(0.92) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 188 - Orientalism regularizes how the Orient is taught and administered
#expands(0.85) - Orientalism defines the Orient as innately resistant to change and modernity
#expands(0.85) - Orientalist knowledge cycles into control over an Orient it activated
#expands(0.80) - Western scholarly discourse about the Orient was entangled with colonial domination
#corroborates(0.80) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206 - Self-made Oriental experts still reproduced the West’s hostility to the East
#expands(0.75)