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> “I haven’t heard this before, so it must be wrong” It's rather that all of the definitions of orientalism I have been taught both at home, at school, and in the literature revolve about culture, all the uses of it I have witnessed talk about culture, I have read Salambo, Zadig, and other classics, I have visited museum filled to brim with European paintings from the period depicting odalisques, harems, bedouins, tuaregs, mosques, fantasia, Turkish baths, city drooling of sun on the Mediterranean, I have assisted to Les Indes Galantes, Der Entführung aus dem Serail and the Italian in Algiers, and the only mention I heard of Orientalism being used in this meaning comes from a few Americans, and a mention in the US wiki stating “Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term "Orientalism" to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies”. So no, I don't intend, for now, to replace the semantic of this centennial word because of a controversial publication. > implying that you are familiar with it after all! Familiar with it, as “I just read the wiki page of the author, which is extremely critical against the book”. |