Postwar hostility to Orientalism grew from political conflict, not scholarship defects

Evidence

Then, particularly in the post-war period, there came a considerable change which may be attributed, I think, to several factors. I shall enumerate some though I cannot claim pretend that this is a comprehensive list. One is undoubtedly the intensifying conflicts between the Islamic world and the Western world, conflicts which do not arise from scholarship, at least not usually, but which obviously affect attitudes towards scholars, the things they write and the way they write them. It arises also from a resurgence, sometimes national, sometimes religious, sometimes both at the same time, an increasing self-awareness, including cultural self-awareness, and an increasing selfconfidence. And, of course, the self-confidence in its turn was greatly encouraged and reinforced by the new wealth and power which some, though not all, of the countries of the Islamic world possess. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 2073

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: when a field’s critics come from geopolitics rather than its own internal errors, the fallout targets the wrong thing.
• XREF: connects to: Orientalism’s 1978 reception was shaped by a specific US political conjuncture — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 785; Post-1945 critics transformed Orientalism from scholarship into a concept of imperial institution; Postwar postcolonial critiques transformed Orientalism’s meaning from scholarship into ideology of empire