Orientalist discourse performs its effects where it is deployed, not in the metropole.

Evidence

In the following chapters, I will try to bring out the problematic implications of representationalism for our current conception of Orientalism and propose a performative conception that aims to place Orientalism in a different—though no less damning—light as well as in its proper larger context. The next chapter aims at fleshing out the performativity of Orientalist discourse not in the West-grounded Orientalist text, in the metropolis that gave it its formal existence, but rather in the location in which it was meant to apply and the destination to which it was meant to be deployed. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 130