Said’s critique mirrored Orientalism by fixating on Western metropolitan culture

Evidence

The unidirectionality from Orient to Occident, or at best a dialectic that ends, in term of effect and manifestation, in Europe, more than finds adequate attention in Said’s Culture and Imperialism, a work that the author deemed to continue the investigations he started in Orientalism. In other words, Said’s concerns begin and end in the metropolitan centers of Western Empire, in their cultural and political constitutions and manifestations, centers that produced “estimable and admirable works of art and learning,” from which he derived aesthetic “pleasure” and “profit.” And so like Orientalist works, which he on the whole appears to find less aesthetically appealing, if not downright objectionable, his preoccupation is, at the end of the day, the West’s metropolitan cultural and scholarly production, the world that Said in reality knew and the world that in effect formed him in almost every important way, despite any articulation of his identity as a Palestinian. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 104

Categorization

• QUESTION: Hallaq charges that Said’s own framework retained the very Occidental-centrism he criticized — worth checking against Culture and Imperialism directly.
• XREF: Connects to my interest in critique-as-mirror of its object, similar to how the Soundscape book argues anti-noise strategies reproduce the very rupture they oppose. — connects to: Said’s critique essentializes the West as much as it claims Orientalists essentialize the East — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 335; Said’s own critique essentialized the West by tracing Orientalism back to Homer — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 872; Said’s Orientalism denies colonized agency while criticizing the West for silencing it. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 703 (+1 more)