Aid’s orientalism critique largely repeated earlier Marxist work that never gained canonical status

Evidence

It is curious, to say the least, that a good part of Said’s critique had already been put forth, a decade and a half earlier, by the Egyptian Marxist Anouar Abdel-Malek (“Orientalism in Crisis,” Diogenes 11, no. 44 : 103–40). A promising topic of research into the subject of authorship and canonization might be why Abdel-Malek’s penetrating critique—though cast in a laborious style and at times terse to an enigmatic point—never managed to gain anything near the canonical status that Said’s liberal work achieved. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 608

Categorization

• QUESTION: What determined canonization since the substance existed earlier — style, authorial identity, political framing, institutional position?
• SHARE: For someone working on canon formation or postcolonial theory historiography — the Abdel-Malek anticipation of Said is a precise niche fact.
• SEED: Angle: canonization as style/medium not substance — a study of why the labored Marxist critique was ignored while the polished liberal one took over the field.
• XREF: connects to: Anti-imperialist historians of India contradict the portrayal of Marx as an Orientalist — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 73; Historicism charges erase liberation struggles’ use of Marxist critique. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 713