Said’s critique stayed at representation because going further would destroy his liberal commitments

Evidence

Said’s carefully buffered insulation of Orientalism as a target of massive critical conductivity was thus the function of his ideological commitment as a secular humanist and liberal, among much else that is modernist. He remained within the realm of “representation” as Orientalism’s spectacular problem and could never go beyond it precisely because these commitments would have been destroyed to the core had he pursued his critique to its logical conclusion. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 356