Said presents colonial figures as products of Orientalist discourse rather than material interests

Evidence

One cannot escape the impression that for Said somehow the emer­gence of such observers, administrators and invaders of the Orient as Napoleon, Cromer and Balfour was made inevitable by ‘Orientalism’, and that the political orientations, careers and ambitions of these figures are better understood by reference to d’Herbelot and Dante than to more immediately relevant and mundane interests. — Sadik Jalal al-‘Azm, Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse, 24

Categorization

• QUESTION: Al-‘Azm’s compression of Said’s view invites the question of where material causation actually sits in Said’s argument—is this a fair reading or a strawman?
• XREF: connects to: Said’s Orientalism replaced Marxism with Foucauldian Discourse Theory; Said frames anti-imperial resistance chiefly as cultural discourse and identity

Related

• Said’s account makes colonialism an effect of discourse, not material power. (similarity 0.87)
• Said’s Orientalism concerned representation, not colonial discourse reception (similarity 0.85)
• Said traces imperial conquest back to centuries-old Western habits of representing the Orient (similarity 0.85)
• Said’s Orientalism deploys incompatible Foucauldian and humanist origin-stories simultaneously. (similarity 0.85)
• Said’s Orientalism shaped a field mainly through emotive impact (similarity 0.85)
• Said centrally shaped literary theory on colonialism after Orientalism (similarity 0.84)
• Said’s critique of Orientalism never explained how discourse connects to colonial power (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism operates as a discourse with material institutional support (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist discourse was addressed exclusively to Western audiences, never to Orientals (similarity 0.83)
• The negative Orientalist portrayals Said condemned began with colonized Christian subjects, not colonizers. (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s Foucauldian ‘will to power’ discourse operates without imperialist agency or design. (similarity 0.83)
• Said frames anti-imperial resistance chiefly as cultural discourse and identity (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s critique of Orientalism mirrors the procedures of his adversaries. (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s survey concentrated on British and French varieties of Orientalism that supported the British and French Empires as commercial enterprises constructed from colonialism. (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s Orientalist tropes originated with Eastern Christians, not Western colonizers (similarity 0.82)