Said’s textual focus made him neglect the colonial realization of Orientalism

Evidence

Because Said was almost exclusively interested in the Orientalist text, and only in quite specific and limited ways, the relationship between the text and its actual realization on the colonial ground was passed over in silence. This is why he deemed the juridical (which he called “law”) to have but a “symbolic significance for the history of Orientalism” (78). And it is striking that he makes this statement in no other context than the colossal British overtaking of India. Juridicality—the legal and political concept of sovereignty, education, the formation of the subject, the modern state, and a host of other concepts and institutions—is not up for analysis in his work. For a thinker who advocated the necessity of reading the text with a due consideration for “worldliness,” these absences are stunning. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 40

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to detailed critiques of Said’s omission of legal/sovereignty apparatus in empire studies — resonates with literature on law as colonial instrument.