Said locates Orientalism’s founding structure in Aeschylean tragedy

Evidence

The ‘Orienralist discourse’ has already been set in motion, then, in the earliest of the Athenian tragedies, nor in general but in the specific regularities which will henceforth determine its structure: Asia’s loss, Europe’s victory; Asia’s muteness, Europe’s mastery of discourse; Asia’s inability to represent itself, Europe’s will to represent it in accordance with its own authority. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 737

Categorization

• XREF: Charts the structure Ahmad will later call out for collapsing millennia of discourse — part of the reader’s tracing of discursive continuity claims. — connects to: Travel and imaginative literature helped build Orientalist discourse — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 275; Said structures Orientalism as a mirror-reversal of Auerbach’s Mimesis — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 644; Orientalism functioned as a Western self-projection requiring an invented East as its antithesis — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 542

Broader Connections

• Orientalism functioned as a Western self-projection requiring an invented East as its antithesis #expands (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 542
• Travel and imaginative literature helped build Orientalist discourse #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 275
• Said structures Orientalism as a mirror-reversal of Auerbach’s Mimesis #complicates (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 644