Philology let Orientalists read timeless essences from texts while ignoring historical context

Evidence

Orientalism, however, like all nineteenth-century science of man, had its limitations. It enabled colonial administrators to talk of the ‘Oriental mind’ and to conceive of its ‘backwardness’. But because its theory of language considered individual words to be plenitudes of meaning in themselves, Oriental Studies tended to remain caught up in the detailed analysis of texts. What was needed was a way of moving quickly from these empirical particulars to the abstraction of an Oriental mentality. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 441 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalists claimed textual reading revealed the fixed essence of Muslims — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 179; Zoroastrian communities enabled European Orientalists to access ancient Iranian languages — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 302; Orientalists recycled predecessors’ texts instead of observing the real Orient (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Conflating all Western knowledge production with Orientalism repeats essentialism and obscures historical specificity #complicates (0.75)
• Text-centric Orientalism could not abstract from words to a general Oriental mentality #complicates (0.72) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 441