What are two main arguments Edward Said makes in his book Orientalism?

Edward Said's
seminal work , first published in 1978, makes two important arguments about
the ways in which the East, or the non-Western world, is portrayed both in academic texts and
area studies and in discourse more broadly.

First, Said argues that Western
texts have constructed the Orient as an exotic other. This scholarship, produced largely in
the Western world, serves to reinforce monolithic notions of the Orient. The result is a canon
of literature that reifies and exoticizes the Orient, casting populations as others.

Second, Said argues for the importance of understanding discourse as a system of
power. According to Said, colonialism was not only a form of military rule that dominated the
non-Western world but is also a powerful discourse that reinforces colonialist relations. This
happens in part through the powerful textual representations produced in Western texts. Said
contends that we cannot separate the production of knowledge from the exercise of...