Sustained material investment makes Orientalism a filtering grid for all Western perception

Evidence

Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. Continued investment made Orientalism, as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness, just as that same investment multiplied—indeed, made truly productive—the statements proliferating out from Orientalism into the general culture. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 61

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘grid for filtering’ mechanism anticipates the reader’s later material on how Islamophobic discourse produces what the West can see of Islam — the productive, not merely reflective, character of power-knowledge.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing in later readings: how does this ‘grid’ metaphor relate to the Foucault-style model of discourse as productive that Said is sketching here?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 61