Said’s claim that Europeans cannot know non-Europe was a radical novelty in criticism.

Evidence

Numerous writers had previously demonstrated the complicity of European cultural productions in the colonial enterprise, but only the most obscurantist indigenists and cultural nationalists had previously argued – surely, no writer with any sense of intellectual responsibility had ever accepted – that Europeans were ontologically incapable of producing any true knowledge about non-Europe. But Said was emphatic on this point, and he mobilized all sorts of eclectic procedures to establish it. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 321

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader debate over postcolonial critique and the charge of essentializing the West that Ahmad later prosecutes against Said.
• DEEPTHINKING: The observation that a critic can invert rather than dismantle the very binary of Europe/the rest — that anti-colonial knowledge production can reproduce a mirror-essentialism — is dense and standing.

Related

• Said’s critique of Orientalism mirrors the procedures of his adversaries. (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s account makes colonialism an effect of discourse, not material power. (similarity 0.82)
• Said studied non-Western literature only as evidence of Western empire (similarity 0.82)
• Anti-colonial critique of culture predates Said by nearly a century outside Euro-America (similarity 0.82)
• Said’s Orientalism denies colonized agency while criticizing the West for silencing it. (similarity 0.82)
• Othering and essentialism predate and exceed Europe; colonial capitalism gave them world-historical force (similarity 0.82)
• Said centrally shaped literary theory on colonialism after Orientalism (similarity 0.81)
• Anti-colonial cultural critique existed for a century before Orientalism yet Said ignored it (similarity 0.81)
• Said’s later essays reversed his Orientalism critique into a desire for Western location (similarity 0.80)
• Said’s critique essentializes the West as much as it claims Orientalists essentialize the East (similarity 0.80)
• Said’s own critique essentialized the West by tracing Orientalism back to Homer (similarity 0.80)
• Western scholarship on Islam grew from positions of colonial dominance. (similarity 0.80)
• Anti-colonial cultural criticism predates Orientalism in the colonized world (similarity 0.79)
• Anti-colonial critique before Said was overwhelmingly Marxist-affiliated (similarity 0.79)
• Said’s career bridged liberal academia and avant-garde theory on an anti-Marxist basis (similarity 0.79)