Hegemonic systems are neither seamless nor fully determinative of individual agency

Evidence

Yet among American and British academics of a decidedly rigorous and unyielding stripe, Orientalism, and indeed all of my other work, has come in for disapproving attacks because of its “residual” humanism, its theoretical inconsistencies, its insufficient, perhaps even sentimental, treatment of agency. I am glad that it has! Orientalism is a partisan book, not a theoretical machine. No one has convincingly shown that individual effort is not at some profoundly unteachable level both eccentric and, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s sense, original; this despite the existence of systems of thought, discourses, and hegemonies, (although none of them are in fact seamless, perfect, or inevitable). — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 855

Categorization

• DEFINE: Said here qualifies his own use of ‘hegemony’ and ‘system’: none are seamless or inevitable, leaving room for individual originality — a nuance to carry into how the scaffolding theory is deployed.
• CANDY: Quotable line: ‘Orientalism is a partisan book, not a theoretical machine’ — a memorable self-defense worth sharing.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 855
• XREF: connects to: Total mediation makes nature nothing but domination-available, eliminating any positive first nature — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1335; General equilibrium frameworks can only explain change through outside intervention, not internal dynamics — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 814; Determination constrains but does not eliminate individual agency — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 38