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Should orientalist be orientalism? An orientalist is a person who studies oriental culture, whereas orientalism is the fallacy of constructing ideal types and then going out into the world to look for confirmatory examples. Unless orientalist can also mean anti-oriental; that definition isn't in Merriam-Webster and I don't have web access to the OED right now to check.



I took "orientalist" to be a pejorative in line with Edward Said's Orientalism -- i.e., accusing its target of attitudes shaped by Western imperialism. It's not really correct to use it this way, since "Orientalist" already has the meaning you describe, but I've seen it a handful of times in an idea-suppressing context.




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