Said’s own work replicated the very Orientalist contempt he critiqued

Evidence

W. J. T. Mitchell, “Secular Divination: Edward Said’s Humanism,” Critical Inquiry 31 (Winter 2005): 462–71, at 466–67. Likewise, Ziauddin Sardar, Orientalism (Buckingham, PA: Open University Press, 1999), 74, rightly points out that “Said exhibits as much hatred for things non-Western as the Orientalists showed towards things oriental. In his books on Palestine, which even his strongest critics have praised, a distinct dislike for Islam and Islamic culture is more than evident.… That religion could have real meaning for people, that it can be just as rational as humanism, are totally alien notions for Said. Hence he retreats into the classical European depiction of the Oriental as a child-like entity driven purely by emotional needs. In Said’s vision there is no place for alternatives and in his world there is no place for Islam or Muslims to exist by their own definition.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 856

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that a critic of a discourse can replicate its very structure recalls the temptation/ability trap in the Milgrom trade chapters — systems reproduce their own logic even through those who try to escape them. — connects to: Said’s later work privileges Western-based writers while raging against non-Western societies — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 848