Orientalist scholarship constructs narrative portraits from fragments, imposing order on a perceived nonhistory.

Evidence

Even if the Orientalist does not explicitly judge his material as Dozy and Muir did, the principle of inequality exerts its influence nevertheless. It remains the professional Orientalist’s job to piece together a portrait, a restored picture as it were, of the Orient or the Oriental; fragments, such as those unearthed by Sacy, supply the material, but the narrative shape, continuity, and figures are constructed by the scholar, for whom scholarship consists of circumventing the unruly (un-Occidental) nonhistory of the Orient with orderly chronicle, portraits, and plots. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 387

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which Orientalist scholarship operates: fragments supplied by predecessors, shape and plot supplied by the scholar, with the un-Occidental nonhistory as the raw material to be disciplined.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 387