Orientalism and Its Afterlives
catalyst-journal.com
Edward Said’s Orientalism is one of the most influential books of the past fifty years. In a very brief span, it put a reckoning with colonialism’s legacy at the very heartof historical scholarship. In doing so, it instilled an anti-imperial sensibility into an entire generation of Western scholars. But even while it castigated the imperial project, the book gravely weakened the intellectual resources for analyzing it and, even more, for overturning it. This essay examines the antinomies of Orientalism, and the context that allowed for its infirmities to be overlooked and even welcomed.

Look, I’ll be real with you: I basically have a high school level formal history education so I try not to express opinions too loudly about questions of historiography even though I find them interesting. Particularly, I find a lot of materialist historiography really compelling. Even when it’s boring it’s hard to argue against.

This is pushing back on alleged mushiness in Said’s account of cause and consequence of orientalism and colonialism. Pretty cool stuff.