Said studied non-Western literature only as evidence of Western empire

Evidence

When Said expressed interest in the literature of the colonized, and when he vehemently critiqued the Eurocentric predilections for Euro-American literature, his final concern remained constrained by “understanding” Western literature as an expression of empire. Furthermore, this proposal never translated into even a preliminary methodological or theoretical attempt at bringing Euro-American literature into critical dialogue with literary and other cultural productions of the colonized, be it in their colonized present or in their largely autonomous histories. “I suggested that studying the relationship between the ‘West’ and its dominated ‘others’ is not just a way of understanding an unequal relationship between unequal interlocutors, but also a point of entry into studying the formation of meaning of Western cultural practices themselves.” Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993), 191. This attitude exhibits the same pattern of thought that governs Orientalism, as I have been arguing. It does not seem to have been on Said’s mind that the fundamentals of Euro-American intellectual and cultural productions can be subjected to, and reevaluated by a critical engagement with and by means of, the intellectual-historical accumulation of the presently colonized cultures. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 815

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to critiques that postcolonial theory remained methodologically West-centered despite its objects — parallels arguments about epistemic decolonization being rhetorical rather than practiced. — connects to: Said’s later work privileges Western-based writers while raging against non-Western societies — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 848
• QUESTION: Worth checking the primary texts of Culture and Imperialism to see whether Hallaq’s reading of the proposal as never methodologically realized is fair.