Yet for Said, so long as the people doing the looking are Western and the cultures being looked at are not, it is very sinister indeed. Everything about the West, even the learning of its scholars, is held against it. For instance, Said wishes to blame Westerners for their allegedly narrow worldview. He ignores the fact that the Orientalists who he spurns were remarkable men and women: people who learned the languages and dialects of faraway societies and who studied these cultures almost always because they were fascinated by and admired them.
