Writers across ideology could converse using unexamined Oriental generalities

Evidence

His novel Tancred is steeped in racial and geographical platitudes; everything is a matter of race, Sidonia states, so much so that salvation can only be found in the Orient and amongst its races. There, as a case in point, Druzes, Christians, Muslims, and Jews hobnob easily because—someone quips—Arabs are simply Jews on horseback, and all are Orientals at heart. The unisons are made between general categories, not between categories and what they contain. An Oriental lives in the Orient, he lives a life of Oriental ease, in a state of Oriental despotism and sensuality, imbued with a feeling of Oriental fatalism. Writers as different as Marx, Disraeli, Burton, and Nerval could carry on a lengthy discussion between themselves, as it were, using all those generalities unquestioningly and yet intelligibly. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 284

Categorization

• DEFINE: Catalogues the stable set of Orientalist platitudes — ease, despotism, sensuality, fatalism — that constitute the category’s content.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 284