Said left his most important proposed task completely undeveloped

Evidence

At the end of Orientalism’s introduction, and summing up what he saw as a possibility for the future, he writes: “Perhaps the most important task of all would be to undertake studies in contemporary alternatives to Orientalism, to ask how one can study other cultures and peoples from a libertarian, or nonrepressive and nonmanipulative, perspective. But then one would have to rethink the whole complex problem of knowledge and power” (24, emphasis mine). Considering that such a task is “most important of all,” it is striking that Said would, first, not say anything else about it throughout the book (nor, to my knowledge, in any other writing of his), not even an allusion or intimation (although he does acknowledge that this task is “left embarrassingly incomplete in this study” ). — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 324

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did Said never pursue the libertarian alternative to Orientalism he himself called ‘most important of all’ — is the omission itself a telling silence?