Said’s critique reified Orientalism as a category masking deeper structures

Evidence

As I will show in due course, Said’s work, in isolating Orientalism for special analysis, had the effect of reifying a category of modern discourse that masked deeper structures of what might be called non-Orientalist Orientalism. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 523

Categorization

• QUESTION: What exactly is ‘non-Orientalist Orientalism’? Hallaq promises to develop this — a genuinely intriguing inversion worth chasing through the rest of the book.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s concept of discourse reifying categories, and to how critiques of a term can inadvertently consolidate the thing they criticize. — connects to: Orientalism’s totalizing discourse critique erases all sites of resistance and liberation; 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 Orientalism replaced Marxism with Foucauldian Discourse Theory — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 723 (+2 more)