Orientalism functioned to produce the West rather than describe the East

Evidence

Joseph Massad effectively sums up the Saidian project: When Orientalism came out, “few books unraveled the archaeology of Western identity the way Orientalism did. Said’s book ingeniously exposed the connections, relationships, modulations, and displacements in Orientalism’s production of an Orient that was a ruse for the production of the Occident. If Franz Fanon argued ‘Europe is literally the creation of the Third World,’ Said elaborated on that brilliant summation. Thus, for him, Orientalism was never about the Orient and its identity and culture but about the production of the West and its identity and culture—in short, a kind of Western projection; the West could not exist if the East were not invented as its antithesis, its opposite, its other.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 542 (#expands, via linked claim)

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Said defined Orientalism as scholarship tied to governing the Middle East; Orientalism expanded from scholarly practice to signify imperialist ideology; Zionist return to the East functioned as identification with the West against Arabs — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 344 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalism functioned as a Western self-projection requiring an invented East as its antithesis #expands (0.97) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 542
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object #corroborates (0.95) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 91