The Orientalism charge equally applies to all modern scholarly fields.

Evidence

Yet any account of Orientalism would have to consider not only the professional Orientalist and his work but also the very notion of a field of study based on a geographical, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic unit called the Orient. … To speak of scholarly specialization as a geographical “field” is, in the case of Orientalism, fairly revealing since no one is likely to imagine a field symmetrical to it called Occidentalism. Already the special, perhaps even eccentric attitude of Orientalism becomes apparent. For although many learned disciplines imply a position taken towards, say, human material (a historian deals with the human past from a special vantage point in the present), there is no real analogy for taking a fixed, more or less total geographical position towards a wide variety of social, linguistic, political, and historical realities. A classicist, a Romance specialist, even an Americanist focuses on a relatively modest portion of the world, not on a full half of it. But Orientalism is a field with considerable geographical ambition. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 148 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Orientalist studies apparently cover everything from the editing and translation of texts to numismatic, anthropological, archaeological, sociological, economic, historical, literary, and cultural studies in every known Asiatic and North African civilization, ancient and modern. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 150 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalism is uniquely a totalizing field covering an entire half of the world. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 148; Orientalism’s scope was total, spanning every discipline and civilization — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 150; Mainstream scholars across all modern fields share an identical inner intellectual structure. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 359 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalism is uniquely a totalizing field covering an entire half of the world. #complicates (0.82) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 148
• Orientalism’s scope was total, spanning every discipline and civilization #complicates (0.80) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 150
• Orientalism uniquely holds philological access to the non-Western Other #complicates (0.80)
• Orientalism’s claim to scholarly attention rests on its uniqueness among fields #complicates (0.78) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 96
• Orientalism holds unmatched philological access to the Other’s texts #complicates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 477