a potentially lesser-known fact about ed said is that he's almost single-handedly responsible1 for orientalism even becoming a derogatory term in the first place. like before he wrote the book of the same name that's just what like, studying asia was called. but he argued that the collected literature and assumed scholarly wisdom on asia in western academia was mostly just racist and he did it so fucking well that orientalism became synonymous with anti-asian racism and they had to invent the phrase "asian studies" instead to describe like, scholarly work that was respectful. truly one of the greatest to ever do it
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coming back later to footnote this: i am certain that this happened because of many people elaborating on his work both formally in writing and also just in conversations with others, but the first major impulse towards that pushed this movement forward was born of said's book
