Said’s later work privileges Western-based writers while raging against non-Western societies

Evidence

His engagement, both as activist and as scholar, with the Palestinian Liberation movement has been extended, meanwhile, to regular expressions of solidarity with anti-colonial movements in general, and a basic respect for figures associated with such movements. These partial gains in the range of engagements and sympathies stand, however, in peculiar and paradoxical relation with the freshly acquired but altogether irrepressible rage against the peoples, societies, national boundaries, reading communities and literatures of Asia, Africa, and ‘the Islamic world’; the enormous privileging of a handful of writers, strictly those who now live in the West, over those societies and literatures; and the conception of the ‘Western centre’ as the only site where ‘contests over decolonization’ can now take place. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 848

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Foucault-to-Spivak lineage: both traces show postcolonial theory recentering the Western intellectual subject even in its decolonial gestures. — connects to: Said’s critique mirrored Orientalism by fixating on Western metropolitan culture — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 104; Said’s post-Orientalism rage made the solitary Western-city writer the sole redeemer figure — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 379; Said’s own tastes and scholarly practice embodied the Western canon he criticized — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 279 (+8 more)
• QUESTION: If Said rage is directed ‘at West and non-West alike,’ how does material analysis survive when the mediating literary figure becomes the only site of redemption? This is the discourse-first move Ahmad will attack.

Broader Connections

• Said’s post-Orientalism rage made the solitary Western-city writer the sole redeemer figure #corroborates (0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 379
• Said’s own work replicated the very Orientalist contempt he critiqued #corroborates (0.90) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 856
• Said’s later essays reversed his Orientalism critique into a desire for Western location #corroborates (0.88) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 398
• Said’s own tastes and scholarly practice embodied the Western canon he criticized #corroborates (0.86) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 279
• Said’s critique essentializes the West as much as it claims Orientalists essentialize the East #corroborates (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 335
• Edward Said’s own critique essentialized the West #corroborates (0.84)
• Said’s critique mirrored Orientalism by fixating on Western metropolitan culture #corroborates (0.82) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 104
• Said’s oppositional stance left Western humanist assumptions and nationalist movements unexamined #corroborates (0.80)
• Said studied non-Western literature only as evidence of Western empire #corroborates (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 815
• Said’s critique of Orientalism implicitly reinforced the very modernism it attacked #corroborates (0.78)
• Said conceded his Orientalism arguments had all been made by earlier non-Western critics #corroborates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 715