Said’s Orientalism overshadowed the sociology-of-knowledge tradition it drew on

Evidence

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

• XREF: Speaks to the reader’s regular interest in how intellectual traditions get flattened into single iconic figures — resonance with Carey’s work on communication as culture and the amnesia about pre-cursor traditions.

Related

• Said’s Orientalism rested on a pre-existing sociology-of-knowledge tradition. (similarity 0.91)
• The sociology of knowledge preceded and grounds Said’s critique of Orientalism (similarity 0.90)
• Orientalism’s triumph caused a collective amnesia about earlier knowledge-power theory (similarity 0.90)
• All knowledge production is socially formed and power-laden (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalism as colonial knowledge has been replaced by new propaganda (similarity 0.84)
• Generalizing knowledge-power critique would erase Orientalism’s special status (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism was a project of power and culture, not merely an academic enterprise (similarity 0.84)
• Said’s critique of Orientalism is inadequate for refashioning the discipline. (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism reduced multifaceted Muslim societies to a single doctrinal Islam (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalism is only the visible tip of a larger modern structure. (similarity 0.83)
• Said traces imperial conquest back to centuries-old Western habits of representing the Orient (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s critique of Orientalism relies on the same modernist assumptions that produced it (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s survey concentrated on British and French varieties of Orientalism that supported the British and French Empires as commercial enterprises constructed from colonialism. (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s Orientalism shaped a field mainly through emotive impact (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalism operates as both an academic discipline and a repository of cultural images (similarity 0.82)