Even after Edward Said, I still can't help dreaming of the Orient: that radiant and mysterious utopia uncompromised by real geographical and historical determinants, which promises a degree of innocence and forgetfulness impossible in a Western world which one knows and is fatefully known by.
It is precisely the possibility of becoming-imperceptible via the donning of a kimono and submission to an alien sensibility which so seduces. The dream, says Barthes, is to undo our reality until everything Occidental in us totters and we can see the world with narrowed eyes.
Prince Philip seemed to understand this when visiting China and speaking to some English students, but thought it was something to warn against.
