The conquering nineteenth-century bourgeoisie mastered knowledge’s façade but not its reality.

Evidence

What they move through, in fact, is the whole disillusioning experience of the nineteenth century, whereby—in Charles Morazé’s phrase—“les bourgeois conquerants” turn out to be the bumbling victims of their own leveling incompetence and mediocrity. Every enthusiasm resolves itself into a boring cliché, and every discipline or type of knowledge changes from hope and power into disorder, ruin, and sorrow. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 312

Categorization

• XREF: Compares to the reader’s knowledge of bourgeois knowledge-critique across Marx and later Frankfurt School work; useful backdrop for how Said positions Orientalism as bourgeois knowledge-production. — connects to: Across nineteenth-century Europe the bourgeoisie integrated into aristocratic regimes rather than overturning them — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 183; Nineteenth-century Europeans could only experience reality as representation, not presence — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 38; Marxist theory was built by bourgeois thinkers studying bourgeoisies, not proletarians — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2432 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 312
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Across nineteenth-century Europe the bourgeoisie integrated into aristocratic regimes rather than overturning them — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 183; Nineteenth-century Europeans could only experience reality as representation, not presence — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 38; Marxist theory was built by bourgeois thinkers studying bourgeoisies, not proletarians — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2432 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Across nineteenth-century Europe the bourgeoisie integrated into aristocratic regimes rather than overturning them #complicates (0.74) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 183