The first Orientalist was also a complete lunatic

Evidence

That Guillaume Postel – the first true Orientalist – was also a complete lunatic may be taken as an ominous presage for the future history of an intellectual discipline. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 124

Categorization

• CANDY: A witty, tweetable one-liner with real historical payload about the discipline’s founder.

Related

• The Orientalist expert becomes the representative Oriental himself (similarity 0.80)
• Orientalist training typically converted initial fascination into a debunking project (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism operates as a constraint on thought, not a positive doctrine. (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism is only the visible tip of a larger modern structure. (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism is chiefly a British and French cultural enterprise (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism’s cult following grew among nonspecialists despite no corrections to its errors (similarity 0.79)
• Orientalism’s power lies in its practitioners’ ignorance of what they are doing. (similarity 0.78)