Book completed

[eve_prime]

Orientalism, by Edward W. Said. Whew. This book is important, and I was determined to get through it, but it wasn't entirely what I was expecting. I thought there would be more of a focus on the ways that the global West finds various aspects of the global East to be mysterious and fascinating and ends up commodifying them. Nope - it was much more a history of the field of "Orientalism" in the humanities, starting originally with the dichotomy of Christian Europe and the Islamic world, and gradually becoming more an academic practice and a government policy of seeing the global East (especially archaeologically rich lands like Egypt) as fallen from its ancient grandeur and therefore in need of Europe's help to become more like we supposedly are. The perspective and conclusions were quite interesting, but the descriptions of the work of dozens and dozens of specific scholars was a lot to wade through.