Orientalism’s triumph caused a collective amnesia about earlier knowledge-power theory

Evidence

Whereas Foucault traced the insidious modes of power basing at the roots of a variety of social practices and discourse formations, Said imploded these theoretical insights into a single sustained reflection on the nature of colonial power and the necessary mode of knowledge that corresponds to its political predicates. In Discipline and Punish (1975), Foucault detected the insidious panoptic mechanism of power whereby the human subject is “automatized” and “disindividualized” and thus “becomes the principle of his own subjection”. Whereas Foucault navigated the social formations of power in institutions and discourses domestic to a society, Said extended its discursive mechanism to a colonial relation of power between two polar ends of domination. The significance of Orientalism lies in its lifting a brilliant history of theoretical reflection on the correspondence between social institutions, economic forces, cultural practices, and modes of knowledge production to the pronounced political project of colonialism. The power of his formulation among his own contemporaries was so overwhelming that it overshadowed all these preceding reflections on the nature of knowledge and power—a collective amnesia that can be traced to the depoliticized practice of sociological theory, especially in the American academy. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 490

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense causal claim: Said’s very success erased the pre-history that made him possible, an amnesia rooted in American sociology’s depoliticization.
• SEED: Essay angle: intellectual success as erasure of its own genealogy; the political economy of ‘iconic’ thinkers.

Related

• Said’s Orientalism overshadowed the sociology-of-knowledge tradition it drew on (similarity 0.90)
• Said’s Orientalism rested on a pre-existing sociology-of-knowledge tradition. (similarity 0.88)
• The sociology of knowledge preceded and grounds Said’s critique of Orientalism (similarity 0.87)
• All knowledge production is socially formed and power-laden (similarity 0.85)
• Generalizing knowledge-power critique would erase Orientalism’s special status (similarity 0.82)
• Said borrowed only Foucault’s schematic features, losing his subversive critique (similarity 0.82)
• Said’s own Orientalism framework reduced knowledge to a balance-of-power politics (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism was a project of power and culture, not merely an academic enterprise (similarity 0.82)
• Said’s Orientalism replaced Marxism with Foucauldian Discourse Theory (similarity 0.81)
• Totalizing condemnation of Orientalism contradicts Said’s own Foucauldian framework (similarity 0.81)
• Said’s critique of Orientalism never explained how discourse connects to colonial power (similarity 0.81)
• Said held that Orientalism cannot be corrected by factual research because it is power. (similarity 0.81)
• Said showed that representing colonized others is itself an act of power. (similarity 0.80)
• Said’s Foucauldian ‘will to power’ discourse operates without imperialist agency or design. (similarity 0.80)
• Said’s Orientalism shaped a field mainly through emotive impact (similarity 0.80)