H_TAYEB_Postcolonial ...

: the process (from the late eighteenth century to the present) by which "the Orient" was constructed as an exotic other by European studies and culture. Orientalism is not so much a true study of other cultures as it is broad Western generalization about Oriental, Islamic, and/or Asian cultures that tends to erode and ignore their substantial differences.

The term is used in another sense by postcolonial theorists to refer to the negative view of subjected peoples held by their colonizers. It assumes that those who are different from oneself are inferior beings. The term was taken from Jacques Lacan’s theory of the self. The term is used in another sense to refer to colonized peoples. It carries with it the negative view of them held by their colonizers, who assume that those who are different from themselves are inferior beings.