In its consideration of the East, the West has been accused of Orientalism, a theory developed by Edward Said to explain the way the West "constructs" the Orient by describing it and then ruling over it. Being Palestinian, Said certainly knows all about the negative side of this process, and consequently he and his followers have stressed the "ruling over" aspect of Orientalism.
That Orientalism in itself is not necessarily malign has been the conclusion of a number of younger scholars, of which Marie-Paule Ha is one. They do not deny that Orientalism can and has been put to political uses, but they do argue that the problem posed is more complicated, and that in any event Orientalism is, as the author puts it, a "two-way street."
The problem, as they see it, is the very human need to create a hard-core "other," someone simplified, consistent and preferably in all ways different, against which one can measure and hence validate the all-too-fluid self. If the "other" is in all ways "inferior," then so much the better. Said's major question was "who is subaltern (powerless or oppressed) and whether the subaltern can articulate a specific position." But there are many strategies, of which Orientalism is just one, for constructing an "other," and they need not involve the use of explicit power.
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