 As a cultural critic , Said is known for his 1978 book Orientalism , a critical analysis of what he believed to be the culturally inaccurate representations that are the bases of Orientalism — the Western study of the Eastern world that presents how Westerners perceive and represent Orientals . Said argued that because Orientalist scholarship was and remains inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it , much of the work is inherently political and servile to power , and so is intellectually suspect . The thesis of Orientalism is that Orientalism is defined by the presuppositions of the political culture out of which it arises , and that it shapes that political culture in its turn . In his book , Said shows how European imperialists thought about people in their colony , and by doing so , he shows how the political culture of imperialists shapes that of the colony . 
