Orientalism persists as a stable form while its content is periodically recharged

Evidence

Orientalism itself can be regarded as a form into which various contents can be cast. We shall suggest below a periodization of orientalism in general and of its relationship to representations of the Jews, rooted in continuities and discontinuities in the history of the Western world. In this sense it is more like what Foucault called “language” (a finite set of principles that can generate an infinite number of discourses), rather than “discourse,” a word that Foucault used to refer to a finite corpus of historically located texts. (We shall, however, continue to follow Said’s lead in referring to orientalism as a “discourse”—meaning “ways of representing” the Orient—as this has now become a common practice.) Looking at orientalism as language rather than discourse would open it up to theorizing in terms of the Bakhtinian notion of slovo. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, slovo, a Russian term quite homologous with the French parole and typically translated as “the word,” is a stage on which changing and competing, socially conditioned views are played out. And indeed, orientalism has, like words, kept a continuity of form while recharging itself periodically with new content. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 97

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the key distinction between Foucault’s ‘language’ (generative form) and ‘discourse’ (finite corpus), plus Bakhtin’s ‘slovo’ as applied to orientalism.
• XREF: This form-content distinction echoes the broader structuralist insight found across cultural theory — parallels the Milgrom material on institutions as form persisting while content changes.