Orientalist condescension and aesthetic worship of the Other are mutually reinforcing

Evidence

In a penetrating article, Karatani argued that the Orientalist treatment of the non-West as the inferior Other went “hand in hand with an aesthetic worship” of that very Other, producing “an uneradicable self-deceit: Those with an Orientalist attitude come to believe that they, unlike others, treat non-Westerners more than equally—they treat them with ‘respect.’ ” Looking down upon the Other as an object of scientific analysis and looking up to the same Other as an aesthetic idol are not a contradictory attitude but in fact an interdependent and mutually corroborating activity. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 334

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Kantian aesthetics framework of cognition/ethics/taste, and echoes the ‘complaints about immodesty’ article’s theme of aestheticized moralizing toward the Other. — connects to: Orientalist cultural borrowing mixed admiration with denigration, not pure contempt
• DEFINE: Defines Karatani’s ‘aesthetic worship’ concept where condescension and admiration coexist as one dependent attitude.