Treating distance as contingent prevents conflating premodern and modern Orientalism

Evidence

One advantage of such assumptions as I have proposed is that if distance and its resultant stereotypes are to be taken for granted, then one of the issues that proved confusing to Said and just as confusing to many commentators on Orientalism writing today will be averted. More precisely put, if this feature is not deemed a condition of possibility but an accidental attribute that, by definition, may or may not exist, then one would not confuse Aeschylus or Dante with a von Grunebaum or Lewis. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 113