Orientalism

From the blurb of Edward W. Said's scintillating memoir, Out of Place:

"Said writes with great passion and wit about his family and his friends from his birthplace in Jerusalem, schools in Cairo, and summers in the mountains above Beirut, to boarding schools and college in the United States, revealing an unimaginably rich world of colorful characters and exotic eastern landscapes." (Edward Said, Out of Place, emphasis mine).

To update Marx, history repeats itself, the first time as contradiction, the second time as irony.