Discursive formations can be unified by a citation system that elevates specific authorial authorities

Evidence

Yet unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted, I do believe in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts constituting a discursive formation like Orientalism. The unity of the large ensemble of texts I analyze is due in part to the fact that they frequently refer to each other: Orientalism is after all a system for citing works and authors. Edward William Lane’s Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians was read and cited by such diverse figures as Nerval, Flaubert, and Richard Burton. He was an authority whose use was an imperative for anyone writing or thinking about the Orient, not just about Egypt: when Nerval borrows passages verbatim from Modern Egyptians it is to use Lane’s authority to assist him in describing village scenes in Syria, not Egypt. Lane’s authority and the opportunities provided for citing him discriminately as well as indiscriminately were there because Orientalism could give his text the kind of distributive currency that he acquired. There is no way, however, of understanding Lane’s currency without also understanding the peculiar features of his text; this is equally true of Renan, Sacy, Lamartine, Schlegel, and a group of other influential writers. Foucault believes that in general the individual text or author counts for very little; empirically, in the case of Orientalism (and perhaps nowhere else) I find this not to be so. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 92

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the machinery of intertextuality and authority that later Islamophobia scholarship inherits; also a direct methodological contrast with Foucault that the reader’s field assumes. — connects to: Naming heterogeneous demands performatively creates their unity. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 361; Treatise authors and courts mutually reinforced each other through reciprocal citation — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3602
• DEFINE: Orients a key nuance: Orientalism is specifically a system for citing works and authors, which differs from a generic anonymous discourse.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 92