Summary
French philosopher whose notion of a Discourse, as described in The Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish, Said adopts to identify Orientalism, and from whom Said expressly departs on the weight of the individual writer (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.12, 32 / printed p.3, 23).
Details
- Said’s contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot understand the systematic discipline by which European culture managed and even produced the Orient in the post-Enlightenment period (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.12 / printed p.3).
- Foucault is also cited for The Order of Things, on the web of scientific interests born with Indo-European philology (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.31 / printed p.22).
- Departure: Foucault believes in general that the individual text or author counts for very little; empirically, in the case of Orientalism, Said finds this not to be so, and defends the determining imprint of individual writers such as Lane and Renan on the discursive formation (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.32 / printed p.23).
- With Gramsci and Raymond Williams, Foucault is named as illustrating, in a very different way, that the internal constraints of hegemonic systems on writers and thinkers were productive, not unilaterally inhibiting (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.23 / printed p.14).