The Orientalist judged the modern Orient by rescuing its classical past.

Evidence

In their dealings with the modern Orientals, the early professional Orientalists like Jones had only two roles to fulfill, yet we cannot today fault them for strictures placed on their humanity by the official Occidental character of their presence in the Orient. They were either judges or they were doctors. Even Edgar Quinet, writing more metaphysically than realistically, was dimly aware of this therapeutic relationship. “L’Asie a les prophètes,” he said in Le Génie des religions; “L’Europe a les docteurs.” Proper knowledge of the Orient proceeded from a thorough study of the classical texts, and only after that to an application of those texts to the modern Orient. Faced with the obvious decrepitude and political impotence of the modern Oriental, the European Orientalist found it his duty to rescue some portion of a lost, past classical Oriental grandeur in order to “facilitate ameliorations” in the present Orient. What the European took from the classical Oriental past was a vision (and thousands of facts and artifacts) which only he could employ to the best advantage; to the modern Oriental he gave facilitation and amelioration—and, too, the benefit of his judgment as to what was best for the modern Orient. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 205

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Core mechanism: Orientalism works by splitting the classical (admirable) past from the modern (decrepit) present, legitimating European intervention.
• XREF: The judge/doctor binary directly scaffolds Islamophobia readings on Western expertise legitimately administering Muslim societies.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘L’Asie a les prophètes, l’Europe a les docteurs’ as the template for contemporary punditry that affirms a civilization’s past only to justify intervention in its present.

Related

• Early European Orientalists related to the Orient as judges and doctors, not equals (similarity 0.85)
• Even putatively impartial scientific Orientalism remains an egoistic interpretive act that rebuilds its object. (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism became a managerial code through which Europe interpreted itself. (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalist scholarship is inseparable from imperial power and its orthodox attitudes (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism was a project of power and culture, not merely an academic enterprise (similarity 0.82)
• Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality (similarity 0.81)
• The Orient’s inability to reformulate itself authorizes the Orientalist’s corrective futurism (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist scholarship framed East-West difference as modernity versus ancient tradition (similarity 0.81)
• Scholarly Orientalism telescoped textual detail into policy about the whole Orient (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalism is a symptom, not the cause, of modernity’s epistemic disorder. (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist knowledge served to deepen European suzerainty over Asia (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist expertise erases politics, economics, and class from Oriental realities (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist training typically converted initial fascination into a debunking project (similarity 0.81)
• Even sympathetic Orientalists fixed the Orient in an ancient time rather than coeval modernity (similarity 0.80)
• The Orientalist’s role shifted from guild scholar to representative of Western supremacy. (similarity 0.80)