Western observers experience the Orient as spectacle barred from full participation

Evidence

Despite the energy of his intelligence and his enormous power of intellectual absorption, Flaubert felt in the Orient, first, that “the more you concentrate on it [in detail] the less you grasp the whole,” and then, second, that “the pieces fall into place of themselves.” At best, this produces a spectacular form, but it remains barred to the Westerner’s full participation in it. … On a more general level, this was an epistemological difficulty for which, of course, the discipline of Orientalism existed. … Therefore one could either construct the world with verve and style, or one could copy it tirelessly according to impersonal academic rules of procedure. In both cases, with regard to the Orient, there was a frank acknowledgment that it was a world elsewhere, apart from the ordinary attachments, sentiments, and values of our world in the West. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 487

Categorization

• DEFINE: Saïd frames the Orient as both a personal-epistemic predicament and the very reason the discipline of Orientalism exists.
• XREF: Connects to later Islamophobia readings on representation: the Orient as spectacle the West can look at but not enter.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 487