Said defined the Orient as a topos assembled from prior texts and imaginings

Evidence

Near the center of his vast survey of orientalism, Said insists that “the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone’s work on the Orient, or some bit of previous imagining, or an amalgam of all these.” Indeed, Zweig appropriates the “Orient” as a topos and testimony, a potent cultural code meant to endow his text, and the passionate argument he advances in it, with greater legitimacy, greater authenticity, and greater urgency. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 415

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures Said’s core formulation of orientalism as intertextual topos rather than place.