Said misdiagnosed the assimilationist dynamic that Guénon identified

Evidence

What disturbed Said was negative depictions and stereotyping, on the one hand, and “exoticizing,” on the other. The latter, as we have seen and will continue to see, is a highly problematic category, for no other reason than this: Had Said discussed Guénon, he would have, almost certainly, concluded that Guénon belonged to the second category, an “exoticizer.” Be that as it may, the absence (or at best near-absence) of this category from Said is pregnant with significance, going beyond a mere understatement of a problem and speaking loudly of a clear case of misdiagnosis. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 319

Categorization

• XREF: Ties directly to this book’s larger argument about the limitations of Said’s Orientalism framework.
• SEED: Possible essay angle: the philosophical problem of ‘sympathetic’ Orientalism — whether well-meaning scholarly engagement can ever escape structural distortion.