A review by em_being
Orientalism by Edward W. Said

3.0

It is good to want to read foundational criticism but it is also a chore. That's inherent in the practice, an inevitability of progress and perspective. Reading this book is like watching someone discover the wheel as you coast by in your car. There is use to it, but also so many words of it are devoted to outlining a problem and practice that modern anti-colonialists could easily tell you. Which is not to say the book is without merit, especially as an introduction to the ideas of cultural representation and othering. But it is also the prime example of white audiences and institutions needing every aspect of an argument explained and cited and tied up against any critique ad nauseam about people they oppress that the oppressed could have told you in a tenth of the time and decades (if not centuries) before.