Fields of knowledge are constrained by society, culture, and institutional power

Evidence

My principal operating assumptions were—and continue to be—that fields of learning, as much as the works of even the most eccentric artist, are constrained and acted upon by society, by cultural traditions, by worldly circumstance, and by stabilizing influences like schools, libraries, and governments; moreover, that both learned and imaginative writing are never free, but are limited in their imagery, assumptions, and intentions; and finally, that the advances made by a “science” like Orientalism in its academic form are less objectively true than we often like to think. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 505

Categorization

• DEFINE: States Said’s foundational anti-positivist assumption that knowledge production is never neutral but is shaped by worldly power.
• XREF: This is the scaffold with which Foucauldian power-knowledge and Gramscian hegemony get grafted onto the study of the Orient; carries directly into later Islamophobia readings. — connects to: Horkheimer tied fragmented knowledge to the monopolistic-anarchic structure of the global economy. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 151; Cultural imperialism is driven by science’s demand for legitimation, not by material conquest — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 235; Social theory depends on insight into society’s nature more than on specialized knowledge. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 730 (+2 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 505