Said’s self-divided method generates confusions reproduced in Colonial Discourse Analysis

Evidence

For Said’s deployment of this self-divided procedure leads co a great many theoretical difficulties and political confusions which are then frequencly replicated and even simplified in what has come co be known as ‘Colonial Discourse Analysis’ Let me say, meanwhile, that it is in the midst of all these difficultiesof definition, conception, periodization, theoretical position and political uncertainty - that Said then launches on his reading of individual authors, most of whom turn out co be the familiar canonical authors. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 762

Categorization

• XREF: Directly on the research thread — Ahmad linking Orientalism’s internal contradictions to the later Colonial Discourse Analysis school that Spivak etc. emerged within. — connects to: Said’s method cannot simultaneously hold realist historical grounding and non-mimetic discourse theory — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 341
• QUESTION: What specifically are the ‘theoretical difficulties and political confusions’ the next paragraphs will enumerate?

Broader Connections

• Said’s method cannot simultaneously hold realist historical grounding and non-mimetic discourse theory #expands (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 341