gothcactus 
Today I just watched and the Jacobin’s show on Said and his Orientalism’s significant influence on post-colonial students and current social movements.
Vivek Chibber (?) I think that was his name offered a deep analysis of Said’s central ideas in Orientalism, the book that made him famous and the concepts that provided the foundations to current worldview of colonialism and imperialism.
Even though Said’s critique was revolutionary during his time because of his ideas about “otherness” in making the current racialization and hierarchies of white supremacy. However, a central argument of Said is that racism is the motivation for colonization and conquest, rather than a result of it.
This central argument is the underlying ideology of current cultural studies courses and critical race theory. It is problematic because it implies that cultural and racial biases are the MAIN REASON that colonizers took over the lands of and genocided indigenous peoples of the “global south”.
Which leads one to think that the solution to racism is to reduce bias and eradicate these ideologies of “otherness” indicated in Said’s book.
While it’s hard to say that colonizers were not motivated by racial biases, it is dangerous to make the assertion that it is the primary reason that colonization took place.
By making this assumption, Said minimizes the material gains of colonization and reduces the system built by empires to the issues of cultural differences and biases.
It gave rise to the current liberal ideas of cultural identity that ignores class divisions and material conditions of colonized peoples.
Which explains many of the policies that were created to better POC lives that center racial and gender identities rather than the material conditions defined by their class. This results in individuals in various “oppressed” identities rising to the top while the mass of people suffer devastating consequences of poverty and continual disintegration of public services.
Ultimately, Said’s analysis was materially incorrect by ignoring the effects of capitalism and reducing racial inequities to identities and biases.
It would be crucial for the left to properly critique Said because we are in desperate need of a historical materialist analysis of the current conditions faced by the people of the world. We cannot be stuck in this identitarian loop because nothing will be uprooted unless we change the material conditions of the masses of people. Those who cling to identitarianism are either detached from the material conditions or aligned themselves with the capitalist class, or both.