I’ve thought it would be an interesting paper to expand on, but I’ve never had the time and am, at least for now, moving away from a direct study of autopoietic systems.

In that way, many post-colonialists wind up essentializing, dehumanizing, and marginalizing those whom they label as Orientalists (and the power to label and categorize is strictly theirs). And of course, anyone so labelled does not need to be read. Their voices are ignorant, oppressive, dangerous. We need post-colonial scholars to speak for them. They have Orientalized the Orientalists. Or, as you so rightly point out, they have simply turned the same old binary on its head, and (at least in the academy and certain activist circles) they are now on top.