The West-Orient binary found its first legitimised modern manifestation in Orientalism

Evidence

With the blossoming of the Orient as the inevitable Other to the normative Occident, so today’s Islam and the West dichotomous relationship would seem to have found its first legitimised manifestation. Despite the significant and dramatic interest shown in Islam, the Orientalist tradition did little to challenge the position that Islam and Muslims had held in previous centuries. In many instances, the inherently negative meanings and understandings that were widespread, many relating to the attributed threat and danger presented by the heretical Saracens some thousand years beforehand, were merely regurgitated in newer more relevant and resonant frames: frames that were backward and retrogressive to europe’s rationally perceived forwardness and progression. Orientalism therefore oversaw the embellishment of a much fuller and informed process, seeing Islam and Muslims as an inferior civilisation that was inherently backward, irrational and inferior populated by violent and barbaric people who, quite paradoxically, were also highly sensual, exotic and romanticised. Despite this, it is difficult to conclude that the meanings and understandings that were evident in Orientalist discourses were part of a continuum that linked the medieval John of Damascus with the Will Cummins of the contemporary. Instead, Orientalist discourse was a juncture in the evolution of those discourses that are evident in the here and now as indeed they were in the distant past. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 189

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Orientalism as the juncture where the modern Islam-West binary crystallised, drawing on Said’s lexicon.
• XREF: Connects to Said’s Orientalism (1978) which this passage directly engages, and to Shaheen’s Hollywood framing of Arabs. — connects to: A shared East-West binary grounds vast and diverse bodies of thought; Orientalism fixes the Orient as passive reactor to the West’s self-assigned agency; Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 188 (+3 more)

Related

• Even sympathetic Orientalists denied the Orient modernity by casting it as ancient and Semitic. (similarity 0.90)
• A shared East-West binary grounds vast and diverse bodies of thought (similarity 0.90)
• Orientalist discourse frames Westerners and Orientals as absolute binary opposites. (similarity 0.90)
• Latent Orientalism denies the Orient any possibility of development or transformation (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalist writings assumed the Orient was inferior and childlike (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism defines the Orient as innately resistant to change and modernity (similarity 0.88)
• The West defined itself as the mirror opposite of the Muslim world. (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism imagined Muslims as a monolithic Arab or Middle Eastern racial bloc. (similarity 0.88)
• Orientalism fixes the Orient as passive reactor to the West’s self-assigned agency (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition (similarity 0.87)
• Said’s Orientalism changed the meaning of ‘Orientalism’ from benevolent human interest in the East to an apparatus of knowledge and writing aligned with western imperial power. (similarity 0.87)
• Edward Said’s Orientalism is considered one of the foundational texts for the study of Islamophobia, describing how Western imperial projects crafted a dehumanizing representation of ‘the Arab’. (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism’s essentialism hides both historical change and the Orientalist’s interests (similarity 0.87)
• All Western writers treated the Orient as fixed, feminine, and needing redemption (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalist science and personal utterance alike erase the modern Orient’s human reality (similarity 0.87)

Broader Connections

• Orientalism fixes the Orient as passive reactor to the West’s self-assigned agency #expands (0.85)
• Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition #expands (0.82) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 188
• The Orientalist’s constructed Orient displaced the actual Orient in European discourse #expands (0.78)
• Orientalist writings assumed the Orient was inferior and childlike #expands (0.75) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206