Orientalist scholarly authority requires the disappearance of the scholar’s individuality

Evidence

In both of his later works his individuality has disappeared entirely as a creative presence, as of course has the very idea of a narrative work. Lane the man appears only in the official persona of annotator and retranslator (the Nights) and impersonal lexicographer. From being an author contemporary with his subject matter, Lane became—as Orientalist scholar of classical Arabic and classical Islam—its survivor. But it is the form of that survival which is of interest. For Lane’s legacy as a scholar mattered not to the Orient, of course, but to the institutions and agencies of his European society. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 416

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the genealogy of the writing subject in Foucault — the author-function being subordinated to institutional discourse — and anticipates how Islamophobia scholarship frames the disciplining of the scholar.
• DEFINE: Introduces the scholar-as-annotator/lexicographer as a distinctive persona — the Orientalist as survivor of classical rather than contemporary Orient.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 416