Said’s Orientalism replaced Marxism with Foucauldian Discourse Theory

Evidence

There were two distinct consequences of this novelty. One was obviously the shift from Marx to Foucault, which was clearly very congenial to the postmodernist moment. The irrefutable fact about the period before Said’s intervention is that apart from the more obscurantist and indigenist kinds of anti-Westernist protests against European influence, the vast majority of the socially enlightened and politically progressive critiques of colonialism had been affiliated with either Marxism or, at least, with the general cultural ?ntiimperialism which Marxism, and the communist movement generally, had helped to bring about. Said’s break with that political tradition was sweeping indeed. Marx himself was dismissed in the .book as yet another Orientalist, Marxism was swept aside as an unsavoury child of ‘historicism’, and the insights which had originally emanated from that tradition were now conjoined with Foucauldian Discourse Theory. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 723

Categorization

• XREF: This is the pivotal discursive-material break the reader is researching: Ahmad’s central claim that discourse-first postcolonial theory obscures material/class structures. — connects to: Said’s canonical Orientalism critique was preceded by a neglected Marxist one; Said’s Orientalism turned discourse representation itself into a form of power; Said’s timeless orientalism diverged from Foucault’s focus on discontinuities (+7 more)
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the reader’s stated motive of tracing how replacing materialist analysis with discourse theory enables later essentialist/identity moves.

Broader Connections

• Hall’s OU essay links Said’s Orientalism to Foucault’s discourse analysis. #corroborates (0.90) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 483
• Orientalism operates as a discourse with material institutional support #expands (0.88) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 52
• Said’s Orientalism turned discourse representation itself into a form of power #expands (0.85)
• The sociology of knowledge preceded and grounds Said’s critique of Orientalism #contradicts (0.85) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 484
• Said presents colonial figures as products of Orientalist discourse rather than material interests #corroborates (0.85) — Sadik Jalal al-‘Azm, Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse, 24
• Said’s canonical Orientalism critique was preceded by a neglected Marxist one #qualifies (0.80)
• Said’s critique reified Orientalism as a category masking deeper structures #complicates (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 523
• Said’s timeless orientalism diverged from Foucault’s focus on discontinuities #qualifies (0.78)
• Said’s critique of Orientalism relies on the same modernist assumptions that produced it #qualifies (0.78) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 476
• Said’s critique of Orientalism implicitly reinforced the very modernism it attacked #complicates (0.75)