Orientalism
Etymology
The word once neutrally meant Western scholarship and art depicting the East, from Latin "oriens" ("rising sun, east"). Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said radically recast it in "Orientalism" (1978) as a discourse that constructs the Orient in order to control it. Flagged as a critical redefinition of an older term.
noun · /or-ee-EN-tuh-liz-uhm/
The West’s habit of representing "the East" as exotic, backward, and essentially other — a portrayal that serves Western power.
What it names
A critical lens for spotting how cultures get flattened into stereotypes that justify dominance, useful well beyond its original East–West frame.
Example
The film’s snake charmers and veiled mysteries were pure Orientalism, a Western fantasy standing in for a real place.
Related idea
Compare hegemony, the broad dominance of a worldview; Orientalism is one specific machinery of it — knowledge itself deployed as power.
See also