Said’s critique of Orientalism mirrors the procedures of his adversaries.

Evidence

See Sadek el-Azm’s review essay ‘Orientalism and Orientalism-in-Reverse’, Khamsin, no. 8 (London: Ithaca Press, 1981), there is much in el-Azm’s essay that I would disagree with, but his discussion of Said’s treatment of Marx is fruitful and he is right, on the whole, about the convergence between Said’s procedures and those of his adversaries. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 714

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘convergence between critic and adversary’ pattern echoes the critique of postcolonial critique inheriting its categories — a recurring theme in Ahmad’s larger argument. — 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 holds incompatible Foucauldian and humanist periodizations of Orientalism at once.; Said’s Orientalism denies colonized agency while criticizing the West for silencing it.

Related

• Said’s Orientalism denies colonized agency while criticizing the West for silencing it. (similarity 0.87)
• Anti-colonial critique before Said was overwhelmingly Marxist-affiliated (similarity 0.87)
• Said’s later essays reversed his Orientalism critique into a desire for Western location (similarity 0.87)
• Said’s critique essentializes the West as much as it claims Orientalists essentialize the East (similarity 0.85)
• Said’s account makes colonialism an effect of discourse, not material power. (similarity 0.85)
• Said’s own critique essentialized the West by tracing Orientalism back to Homer (similarity 0.85)
• Reverse Orientalism mirrors colonial scholarship’s errors while adding secondhand distance from reality. (similarity 0.84)
• Said contradicts Orientalism by treating Western literatures as autonomous. (similarity 0.84)
• Anti-colonial cultural critique existed for a century before Orientalism yet Said ignored it (similarity 0.84)
• Said’s critique reified Orientalism as a category masking deeper structures (similarity 0.84)
• Said’s Orientalism deploys incompatible Foucauldian and humanist origin-stories simultaneously. (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism argued Western literatures were complicit in colonialism (similarity 0.84)
• Said centrally shaped literary theory on colonialism after Orientalism (similarity 0.84)
• Prominent critics of Orientalism have praised scholars deeply complicit in its assumptions. (similarity 0.84)
• Rebutting Orientalism with reverse essentialism would reproduce the same intellectual failure. (similarity 0.84)