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The Author in Edward Said's Orientalism THE AUTHOR IN EDWARD discourse, to “actions” which are the main unit of study in Bourdieu’s sociology. SAID’S ORIENTALISM : THE QUESTION OF AGENCY Introduction 1 Phrae Chittiphalangsri The mechanism which Edward W. Said deploys in order to set his concept of Abstract Orientalism in motion relies on Foucault’s concept of discourse or discursive representation, which allows Said to talk Edward W. Said’s Orientalism has long about Orientalism as a body of texts that been celebrated for its ground-breaking operates through a network of textual analysis of the encounters between referentiality. Said also relies on Antonio Western Orientalists and the Orient as a Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, to form of ‘othering’ representation. The explain power-differentials between the success, undeniably, owes much to the use East and the West. Orientalism gains of Foucauldian discourse as a core power through the superiority of the methodology in Said’s theorisation of hegemonic culture. The subjugation of the Orientalism which allows Said to refer to East is achieved not only by direct the massive corpus of Orientalist writings coercion but also by partial representation as a form of Orientalist discourse and a through a collection of texts—ranging representation of the East. However, the from travel writings, novels, translations, roles of Orientalist authors tend to be religious tracts and historical documents to reduced to mere textual labels in a greater laws and codes—whose coherent density Orientalist discourse, in spite of the fact is able to claim the power to represent the that Said attempts to give more attention East and, to a certain extent, becomes to the Orientalists’ biographical sufficient to speak on behalf of the East backgrounds. In this article, I argue that without the East speaking for itself. there is a need to review the question of agency that comes with Foucauldian However, Orientalism has faced a number discourse. By probing Said’s methodology, of criticisms in recent decades. Some of I investigate the problems raised by the major attacks have come from David concepts such as “strategic formation,” Kopf (1980, reprinted 2000), who sees “strategic location,” and the writers’ Orientalism as lacking historical reality; imprint. Borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s Michael Richardson (1990, reprinted sociology, I critique Said’s notion of 2000), who attacks Orientalism for the ‘author’ by applying the question of absence of a reciprocal relationship objectivity/subjectivity raised by between the East and the West; and Sadik Bourdieu’s concepts such as “habitus” Jalal al-‘Azm (1981, reprinted 2000), who and “strategy,” and assess the possibility argues that Orientalism tends to of shifting the emphasis on “texts” essentialise the West in the same way that suggested by the use of Foucauldian Said accuses the West of essentialising the East for imperialist ends. Lisa Lowe 1 Lecturer, Department of Comparative (1991) questions the lack of heterogeneity Literature, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn in Orientalism with regard to the University . Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 02:22:33AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No. 18, 2009 difference between British and French Said’s approach to knowledge Orientalisms. Like Foucault, Said sees language as a While many of these criticisms have battleground where speakers and societies drawn mainly on various aspects of compete for power and domination. Orientalism, only a few have mentioned Foucault argues that the formation of the problem of agency in the methodology discourse is subject to the use of power Said adopted in theorising Orientalism (e.g. which yields both repressive and Bové 1986). Therefore, the purpose of this generative effects at the same time. essay is to revisit Said’s methodology and Nevertheless, with the strong influence of its application to Orientalism. I will structuralism and the cult of the death of examine the impact of Said’s use of the author, to entrust discourse, which is Foucauldian discourse on the notion of theoretically deprived of agents, with a ‘author,’ or in this case the Orientalist generative function seems an awkward agents. I will then explore the problem of business. This problem can be seen in agency which becomes manifest as a by- Foucault’s concepts of “archaeology” and product of the unresolved tension between “genealogy.” In The Archaeology of subjectivism and objectivism defaulted in Knowledge and the Discourse on Language Foucauldian discourse. In light of Pierre (1969), Foucault explains the repressive Bourdieu’s sociology, I will critique control of discourse as a feature of Said’s concept of the ‘author’ through archaeology which we can see in Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and assess statements that attempt “to mark out and the possibility of reading Orientalist distinguish the principles of ordering, authors, who can, as I will argue, be exclusion and rarity in discourse” treated as active cultural agents and hence (Foucault 1969: 234). We understand their role pertaining to a form of habitus. discourse as a ‘limited system of presence’ in which only enunciations or the rarity of While Said did not refer to Bourdieu’s statements give meanings to discourse and work in his Orientalism , his explanation of not the unsaid. While archaeology refers to the transferable profession of the the formation of objective structure, Orientalists is similar to the concept of Foucault develops another concept called cultural agency advocated by Bourdieu. genealogy to account for the generative This paper does not intend to fill in the gap effects of discourse. In his later essay in Said’s methodology but rather to shed “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (1977), light on the possibility of reading he explains how his use of ‘genealogy’ is Orientalism as cultural reproduction. In derived from Nietzsche’s view of the fact, I will argue that Said’s approach to development of morals through power. Orientalism, to a certain degree, already While the word tends to suggest the idea lends itself to the theory of cultural of ‘tracing back to the origin’, Foucault’s reproduction. Bourdieu’s sociology, also genealogy does not seek to establish a known as ‘generative structuralism,’ linear development of historical events. complements what critics view as a On the contrary, Foucault uses genealogy methodological shortcoming by shedding to deconstruct that very linearity that is light on a more dynamic sociological central to the traditional way of writing approach, as opposed to a usually held history—as he puts it, genealogy “seeks to ‘static’ discourse. makes visible all of those discontinuities 2 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 02:22:33AM via free access The author in Edward Said’s “Orientalism” that cross us” (1977: 162). However, the root of power and deconstruct Foucault’s notion of genealogy, as David precisely the discursive rules which situate Eick points out, remains a ‘hazy’ it (Eick 1999: 88). distinction from the concept of archaeology. It is questionable that Following Foucault’s archaeology, Said genealogy really has a generative function bases his argument on a network of texts that archaeology does not offer, when, in which forms a web of interrelated fact, one can argue that archaeology can discourse. Orientalism is a concept which pinpoint the same problem of historical works through its textual re-presence in discontinuity. Furthermore, Foucault does which stories, accounts and memoirs re- not explain if one needs to venture into the enact the presence of thoughts and realm of the unsaid, the absent, the concepts about the Orient as a textual unannounced, in order to reconstruct presence, which in turn marks itself as genealogy. If so, it would also call into representation in written format. Said’s question the need to inquire into the Orientalism , together with the subsequent subjective mode of the absent, which is book Culture and Imperialism (1993) what Foucault excludes in theorising which is a postcolonial expansion of his discourse and archaeology for “[t]he thesis in the former, are an archaeological analysis of statements operates therefore project that attempted to map out the without reference to a cogito” (Foucault discursive representations of the Orient 2004: 138). Simon During raises the same and the colonies by the West and the problem in his article “Genealogy, empires. In the Foucauldian manner, Said Authorship, Power”: traces how the images of the West’s other are constructed and distinguished through Where does this system of a rarefaction and objectification of constraint end? Where does the statements that provides a ground for positive programme of enabling investigating the representations of the the “unsayable or unsaid” to speak, Orient and the colonies. Wolfgang Iser begin? To give prisoners, gays, the (2006) notes the strong influence of colonized or the marginal a voice Foucauldian discourse in Said’s Culture is also to demand of them their and Imperialism : “truth,” to suppose that they are the originating subjects of a Edward Said’s postcolonial specific, more or less univocal, discourse, as developed in his book “voice,” and therefore, to some Culture and Imperialism , works as degree at least, to call them into an imposition in the Foucauldian that de-centred centre which sense on both colonial and constitutes the (post)modern world. anticolonial discourse. These are (During 1992: 127) the “objects” to be charted and it is this tripartite relationship through In effect, Foucault’s critics, such as which postcolonial discourse gains Dreyfus and Rabinow, see the concepts of salience. Hence the latter assumes archaeology and genealogy as incompatible, a critical position toward what it with archaeology encapsulated by the operates upon, although it has the statements and governing rules of same structure as the discourse on discourse and genealogy seeking to trace which it focuses its power. It is 3 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 02:22:33AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No.
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