Orientalist texts were designed for Western readers, not Oriental ones.

Evidence

Nevertheless Orientalism has been thought of rather more as a kind of testimonial to subaltern status—the wretched of the earth talking back—than a multicultural critique of power using knowledge to advance itself. Thus, as its author I have been seen as playing an assigned role: that of a self-representing consciousness of what had formerly been suppressed and distorted in the learned texts of a discourse specifically designed to be read not by Orientals but by other Westerners. This is an important point, and it adds to the sense of fixed identities battling across a permanent divide that my book quite specifically abjures, but which it paradoxically presupposes and depends on. None of the Orientalists I write about seems ever to have intended an Oriental as a reader. The discourse of Orientalism, its internal consistency, and its rigorous procedures were all designed for readers and consumers in the metropolitan West. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 846

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s goal of building a critical-theory vocabulary for Islamophobia studies — the idea of discourse’s intended audience is core to the ‘construction of the Other’ toolkit.
• DEFINE: Clarifies that Orientalism’s defining feature is its audience: a metropolitan Western readership, which is what makes the discourse’s self-enclosed consistency possible.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 846