Orientalist science masks an egoistic will to power

Evidence

The trend toward the exotic was fueled by the growth of Romanticism, an artistic and philosophical movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The image of an exotic Orient associated with “sensuality, promise, terror, sublimity, idyllic pleasure, [and] intense energy” can be found in the works of musicians, painters, novelists, and philosophers from Mozart to Byron, Hugo, and Goethe. To be fair, the Romantics did not only look to the East for the exotic: they also looked to their own past, drawing from Gothic tales and stories of European barbarians. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89 (#epitomizes, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalist science and personal utterance alike erase the modern Orient’s human reality; Orientalist knowledge cycles into control over an Orient it activated; Material command of the earth reinforced Orientalist knowledge and vice versa (+3 more)

Related

• Orientalism’s ontological rigidity makes its fantasies nearly impossible to dismantle (similarity 0.91)
• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge (similarity 0.91)
• Romantic adventurers challenged the institutional authority of professional Orientalists. (similarity 0.90)
• Romantic restorative reconstruction shaped Orientalist writing’s form and intent (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism ignores factual accuracy in favor of exotic horror (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism reflects the producing culture rather than its putative object (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalist science and personal utterance alike erase the modern Orient’s human reality (similarity 0.85)
• Said held that Orientalism cannot be corrected by factual research because it is power. (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist painters invented imagery of Eastern despotism they never witnessed (similarity 0.84)
• Enlightenment science and Romanticism both renewed medieval Muslim-monster fantasies rather than ending them (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism is a discourse, not a mirror of imperial political power (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalization results from power and domination, not merely imaginative necessity (similarity 0.83)
• Eighteenth-century France romanticized exotic others as noble (similarity 0.83)
• Travelers’ firsthand experience could not overturn their Orientalist fantasies (similarity 0.83)
• Scientific validity in Orientalist writing requires canceling the human content of its subjects (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist knowledge cycles into control over an Orient it activated #expands (0.85)
• Orientalist science and personal utterance alike erase the modern Orient’s human reality #expands (0.80)
• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge #epitomizes (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89
• Material command of the earth reinforced Orientalist knowledge and vice versa #expands (0.75)