Page 113 - Introducing Cultural Studies

riticisms of Said

Said was located in New York and wrapped his theory in what was
fast becoming the highly-fashionable field of textual theory. Although
he was working in an already existing tradition, he brought a reading
of Michel Foucault (1926-84) - the post-structuralist historian of
ideas - to give old material a new universal twist: Orientalism was
argued as a general theory of all representations of all non-Western
cultures. Hence the difference: location, fashion, generalization.
Responses to Said's approach include
accusations that he has made a
special case for the Middle East.

There is also a critique that turns his argument against him: if the
Orient has been the object of the West and unable to represent itself,
who is he to do the representing?

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