China and Orientalism

1 Sinological-orientalism now

“China” and the new era

In “Orientalism Now,” the concluding chapter of Edward Said's 1978 book, we are left with the migration of orientalism from European empires and philology to the U.S. imperium and the dominance of social scientific discourse. This project begins where Said left off. It argues that there is a new, “Sinological” form of orientalism at work in the world, one that takes as its object an “Other” that has since the 1970s occupied an increasingly central place within the world system and Western intellectual-political culture: the People's Republic of China. As with Said's formulation rooted in the Middle East and South Asia, Sinological-orientalism and its production of a textual “China” helps constitute ...