Orientalism

from the book Orientalism by E., Said, 1979, NY, Random House

• pxxviii 'herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like 'America' or 'Islam' and invent collective identitiesfor large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse
• p1' a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes and remarkable experiences
• 'Americans will not feel the same about the orient' - more association with China and Japan
• 'The orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and more recurring images of the Other'
• p94 'a realtion between Western writing (and its consequences) and Oriental silence the result of and the sign of the West's great cultural strength, its will to power over the Orient'
• p95 'Orientalism as a kind of Western projection onto and will to govern over the Orient'