Orientalist scholarship is inseparable from imperial power and its orthodox attitudes

Evidence

As a judge of the Orient, the modern Orientalist does not, as he believes and even says, stand apart from it objectively. His human detachment, whose sign is the absence of sympathy covered by professional knowledge, is weighted heavily with all the orthodox attitudes, perspectives, and moods of Orientalism that I have been describing. His Orient is not the Orient as it is, but the Orient as it has been Orientalized. An unbroken arc of knowledge and power connects the European or Western statesman and the Western Orientalists; it forms the rim of the stage containing the Orient. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 292

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core Orientalist stance as false detachment — professional knowledge masking an absence of sympathy, producing an ‘Orientalized’ Orient rather than the real one.
• XREF: Connects directly to the later Islamophobia readings on how expert/academic production of ‘the Muslim world’ is itself a form of power; also anticipates Foucault’s power-knowledge coupling. — connects to: Said defined Orientalism as scholarship tied to governing the Middle East; Orientalist ideas can circulate without imperial power structures; Orientalist scholarship was internally divided between empire servants and anti-colonial critics (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 292