Orientalist discourse was addressed exclusively to Western audiences, never to Orientals

Evidence

The discourse of Orientalism, its internal consistency, and its rigorous procedures were all designed for readers and consumers in the metropolitan West. This goes as much for people I genuinely admire, like Edward Lane and Gustave Flaubert, who were fascinated by Egypt, as it does for haughty colonial administrators, like Lord Cromer, brilliant scholars, like Ernest Renan, and baronial aristocrats, like Arthur Balfour, all of whom condescended to and disliked the Orientals they either ruled or studied. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 846

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines the audience-structure of Orientalism: a discourse whose internal consistency presupposes a metropolitan Western reader.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Islamophobia-module theme of who constructs and consumes representations of the Other.

Related

• Orientalist texts were designed for Western readers, not Oriental ones. (similarity 0.92)
• The Westerner’s intimate estrangement from the Orient reinforces the Orientalist discourse built on it. (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism operates as a discourse with material institutional support (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism is a differentiated analysis, not a blanket attack on the West (similarity 0.87)
• Western scholarly discourse about the Orient was entangled with colonial domination (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial administrator attitudes toward the Orient formed a shared consensus (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism is a discourse, not a mirror of imperial political power (similarity 0.86)
• Said’s Orientalism targets the Middle East, not the Far East. (similarity 0.86)
• The Orientalist’s constructed Orient displaced the actual Orient in European discourse (similarity 0.86)
• Some nineteenth-century writers engaged the Orient aesthetically without reducing it to documentary knowledge (similarity 0.86)
• Western cultural discourse about the Orient is a formidable structure of domination. (similarity 0.85)
• Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism’s scientific pretense requires positing a permanent, unchanging Orient (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism has been stretched to cover any discourse of Otherness tied to domination (similarity 0.85)