Travelers’ firsthand experience could not overturn their Orientalist fantasies

Evidence

The trend toward the exotic was fueled by the growth of Romanticism, an artistic and philosophical movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The image of an exotic Orient associated with “sensuality, promise, terror, sublimity, idyllic pleasure, [and] intense energy” can be found in the works of musicians, painters, novelists, and philosophers from Mozart to Byron, Hugo, and Goethe. To be fair, the Romantics did not only look to the East for the exotic: they also looked to their own past, drawing from Gothic tales and stories of European barbarians. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Professional expatriates live like that. Real travelers are vulnerable creatures, at once attracted and repelled by the cultures they move among, but expatriates are hard to reach, hard to impress; they carry about with them the plastic bubble of their own culture, and nothing touches them until it has been filtered through the protective membrane of prejudice, the life-support system that forms their invisible excess baggage when they move on, from one contract to the next, to another country and another set of complaints. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 67 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Orientalism ignores factual accuracy in favor of exotic horror; Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89; Expatriates travel protected by a filtered bubble of their own culture — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 67 (+6 more)

Related

• Orientalism’s ontological rigidity makes its fantasies nearly impossible to dismantle (similarity 0.86)
• Author Beckford lived out Orientalist fantasy by renaming his estate Baghdad (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism ignores factual accuracy in favor of exotic horror (similarity 0.86)
• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge (similarity 0.85)
• Romantic adventurers challenged the institutional authority of professional Orientalists. (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalist science masks an egoistic will to power (similarity 0.83)
• Romantic restorative reconstruction shaped Orientalist writing’s form and intent (similarity 0.81)
• Orientalist painters invented imagery of Eastern despotism they never witnessed (similarity 0.80)
• Eighteenth-century France romanticized exotic others as noble (similarity 0.80)
• Actual travel to the Orient did not alter pre-formed Western prejudices. (similarity 0.80)
• Europe’s doubt about Oriental novelty serves as its cultural weapon (similarity 0.78)
• Expatriates travel protected by a filtered bubble of their own culture (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge #corroborates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89
• Author Beckford lived out Orientalist fantasy by renaming his estate Baghdad #exemplifies (0.85)
• Expatriates travel protected by a filtered bubble of their own culture #expands (0.70) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 67
• Orientalism’s ontological rigidity makes its fantasies nearly impossible to dismantle #corroborates (0.65)