Said’s critique misses the corporate-economic deep structures underlying Orientalism.

Evidence

Of the trio, genocide and company Orientalism, not to mention the corporation, never make an appearance in Orientalism’s index. Of course this is the book Said chose to write, but the point of remarking on these omissions is that Said’s narrative does not delve into the performative structures that underlie the phenomena he is critiquing. The corporate business and economics are not just material factors, as Said seems to think (Culture and Imperialism, 12). They are rather the manifestations of the deep structures of thought that explain and explore the full dimensions of what Said was complaining about but that he never articulated. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 618

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to critiques of Orientalism’s blind spots and to broader arguments about the economic/material underpinnings of intellectual discourse.