Orientalist style transforms its human subjects into objects of an unaccountable observer

Evidence

The style of this prose tells more perhaps than Hamady intends. Verbs like “demonstrate,” “reveal,” “show,” are used without an indirect object: to whom are the Arabs revealing, demonstrating, showing? To no one in particular, obviously, but to everyone in general. This is another way of saying that these truths are self-evident only to a privileged or initiated observer, since nowhere does Hamady cite generally available evidence for her observations. Besides, given the inanity of the observations, what sort of evidence could there be? As her prose moves along, her tone increases in confidence: “Any collective action … is alien to them.” The categories harden, the assertions are more unyielding, and the Arabs have been totally transformed from people into no more than the putative subject of Hamady’s style. The Arabs exist only as an occasion for the tyrannical observer: “The world is my idea.” — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 784

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the core Orientalism mechanism of ‘the construction of the Other’ the reader is assembling — the observer’s ungrounded authority is a running thread through Said’s scaffolding of representation and power. — connects to: Western audiences explain away Asian creators’ skills through exoticizing frames — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 127; Orientalist depictions eroticized the torture and death of Eastern women
• DEFINE: Illustrates how style itself (verbs without indirect objects, un-cited universality) is a mechanism of dehumanizing representation — a concrete textual signature of Orientalist rhetoric.
• SEED: Angle: a practical checklist of stylistic tells of reductive representation — universalizing verbs, absent evidence, hardening assertions — usable as a critical-reading heuristic.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 784