Said’s method never connected individual texts to concrete colonial power structures

Evidence

The method he employed to demonstrate the collusion of Orientalism with power amounted to a series of dissections of individual scholars’ writings. These individual dissections always stood in a dialectical relationship to an overarching discourse that gave them unity, but were then corralled back into the overarching discursive tradition. The dialectic, in other words, remained confined to the space between the individual text and the organizing suprastructure. How this suprastructure established well-defined and concrete relationships of power with colonialism and other manifestations of dominance was never made clear. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 24 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Said’s critique of Orientalism never explained how discourse connects to colonial power — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 24; Said never developed a method for truly engaging colonized literatures; Said’s self-divided method generates confusions reproduced in Colonial Discourse Analysis — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 762 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Said’s critique of Orientalism never explained how discourse connects to colonial power #expands (0.93) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 24