The European imagination constructs Asia as a speaking yet defeated other

Evidence

What matters here is that Asia speaks through and by virtue of the European imagination, which is depicted as victorious over Asia, that hostile “other” world beyond the seas. To Asia are given the feelings of emptiness, loss, and disaster that seem thereafter to reward Oriental challenges to the West; and also, the lament that in some glorious past Asia fared better, was itself victorious over Europe. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 158

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the core Orientalist move: Europe as the active articulator, Asia as the passive spoken-for.
• XREF: Lines up with the reader’s stated purpose of extracting representation-of-the-Other mechanisms; connects to later Islamophobia readings on how the West gives voice to the Muslim East.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 158