re-locating the oriental in orientalism...

A South Asian critic of Orientalism, Aijaz Ahmad, explained the book's operative importance within the university in this way:

"Its most passionate following in the metropolitan countries is within those sectors of the university intelligentsia which either originate in the ethnic minorities or affiliate themselves ideologically with the academic sections of those minorities. . . . These [immigrants] who came as graduate students and then joined the faculties, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences, tended to come from upper classes in their home countries. In the process of relocating themselves in the metropolitan countries they needed documents of their assertion, proof that they had always been oppressed.... What the upwardly mobile professionals in this new immigration needed were narratives of oppression that would get them preferential treatment, reserved jobs, higher salaries in the social position they already occupied: namely, as middle-class professionals, mostly male. For such purposes, Orientalism was the perfect narrative."

...

Fifteen years after publication of Orientalism, the UCLA historian Nikki Keddie (whose work Said had praised in Covering Islam) allowed that the book was "important and in many ways positive." But she also thought it had had "some unfortunate consequences":

"I think that there has been a tendency in the Middle East field to adopt the word "orientalism" as a generalized swear-word essentially referring to people who take the "wrong" position on the Arab-Israeli dispute or to people who are judged too "conservative." It has nothing to do with whether they are good or not good in their disciplines. So "orientalism" for many people is a word that substitutes for thought and enables people to dismiss certain scholars and their works. I think that is too bad. It may not have been what Edward Said meant at all, but the term has become a kind of slogan."
...

Beyond the overt political allegiance test, Orientalism also insinuated an ethnic test for admission to the field. As Keddie noted, the book "could also be used in a dangerous way because it can encourage people to say, 'You Westerners, you can't do our history right, you can't study it right, you really shouldn't be studying it, we are the only ones who can study our own history properly.'"⁴⁶ Hourani identified the same problem: "I think all this talk after Edward's book also has a certain danger. There is a certain counter-attack of Muslims, who say nobody understands Islam except themselves."⁴⁷

(martin kramer, ob der mir politisch geheuer ist, versuche ich
gerade rauszukriegen - aber obwohl er den stempel
neokonservativ zu tragen scheint, fand ich seine kritik
doch berechtigt.)

(und so ließe sich vieles aus diesem, einer der sich langsam häufenden kritischen artikel zu edward saids monumentalwerk weiterzitieren. dasselbe passierte vorher mit freud, marx, lacan, völlig normal und recht gesund - said aber ist noch immer eine heilige kuh, und heilige kühe lesen ist immer was unbalanciertes...)

einen äußerst lesenswerten artikel von emmanuel sivan zu kritik aus arabischsprachigen ländern an saids methodologie gibt es hier:

Excessive pursuit of Orientalism and its sins and failures—real or imagined—only serves to draw attention away from fundamental problems in the Muslim world, most of which are rooted in the Muslim world itself and are not the results of external manipulations or influences.

Despite Said’s death, polemics about his book are very much alive, in the West as well as in the Arab world. But the Arab debate is quite different--in context, themes, emotions and quandaries--from the corresponding debate in the Western republic of letters. It illuminates, above all, the predicament of the Arab liberal today.

bzw. hier.

(nebenbei: wieso fange ich plötzlich an, edward said zu kritisieren? mir macht ehrlich gesagt langsam auch etwas die unglaubliche wucht des von ihm umgeprägten konzeptes 'orientalism' angst, das zu einem totschlagargument wurde, bei dem jede diskussion ihr ende findet. dass es dabei in komplexer art und weise auch herablassende, naive positionen in jeder generation dem 'osten' gegenüber gegeben hat, steht dabei ausser frage. dass aber der gesamte 'okzident' seit seiner entstehung (edward, der 'anti-essentialist' setzt anachronistisch alle generationen überspringend tatsächlich bei homer an!), in allen ländern, in allen regionen, in allen äußerungen, seien sie affirmativ oder negativ gegenüber dem 'orient', diesen nur diskursiv mit worten imperialistisch zu bezwingen versuchte, ist so über alle maßen polemisch, so ohne jeden beweis philologischer art (das ist schliesslich das, was er ist) zu erbringen, so ungerecht den verschiedensten 'orientalisten' gegenüber (im wertneutralen prä-saidschen sinne, die tatsächlich oft eben selbst die kritische gegenstimme zu offizieller politik stellten) - dass es langsam zeit wird, zu versuchen, die bedeutung dieses ja tatsächlich wichtigen buches etwas zu relativieren. denn seit seiner veröffentlichung ist es bekanntermaßen zu einem politischen argument geworden.)