Orientalism Chapter Summary & Analysis - Part 2, Orientalist Structures and Restructures: Oriental Residence and Scholarship: the Requirements of Lexicography and Imagination Summary

Part 2, Orientalist Structures and Restructures: Oriental Residence and Scholarship: the Requirements of Lexicography and Imagination Summary and Analysis

Renan is considered to have taken a rather scientific approach to Orientalism in that the cultural generalizations are now becoming scientific statements. Sacy and Renan made Orientalism a modern topic. "What we can say is that the two work together in support of each other. What Renan and Sacy tried to do was to reduce the Orient to a kind of human flatness, which exposed its characteristics easily to scrutiny and removed from it its complicating humanity. In Renan's case, the legitimacy of his efforts was provided by philology, whose ideological tenets encourage the reduction of a language to its roots; thereafter, the philologist finds it possible to connect those linguistics roots, as Renan and others did, to race, mind, character, and temperament at their roots" (Chap. 2, p. 149-150).

The Orient is still viewed as being unequal to Europe. The Orient and Europe are still being balanced against each...
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