Page 252 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes dangers of both "coarse polemic on so unacceptably general a level of description" and" so detailled
and atomistic a series of analyses as to lose all track of the general lines of force informing the
field". His goal is accordingly to "recognise individuality and to reconcile it with its . . . general
and hegemonic context".
The Distinction between Pure and Political Knowledge Said points out that the prevailing
assumption, especially in the humanities, is that knowledge is "nonpolitical, that is, scholarly,
academic, impartial, above partisan or small-minded doctrinal belief". However, he argues, no
one has ever devised a method for detaching a scholar from the circumstances of his life, from the
fact of his involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of beliefs, a social position, or
from the mere activity of being a member of society. Arguing that the "political societies" of the
imperial powers inevitably imparted to their "civil societies" a "direct political infusion . . . where
and whenever matters pertaining to their imperial interests abroad are concerned" , Said contends
that the British intellectual in the nineteenth century, for example, took an interest in British
colonies "that was never far from their status in his mind as British colonies". For Said, thus, the
issue at hand is determining the nature of the relationship between the "big dominating fact, as I
have described it" and the "details of everyday life that govern the minute discipline of a novel
or a scholarly text as each is being written". The fact of imperialism, that is, the economic, political
and military involvement of Europeans and, later, Americans in the Orient necessarily shaped
how seemingly apolitical institutions and individuals viewed the Orient.
In short, like any discursive practice, Orientalism must be understood in relation to the imbalance
of power, in this case, that which has existed between Europe and the rest of the world for the last
few centuries. Said, however, rejects the notion that "'big' facts like imperial domination can be
applied mechanically and deterministically to such complex matters as culture and ideas".
Undoubtedly all discourse on the Orient was politically-motivated but, he contends, "it was the
culture that created that interest, that acted dynamically along with brute political, economic and
military rationales" . Orientalism is accordingly not a mere political subject matter or field that is
reflected passively by culture, scholarship or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection of
texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious 'Western' imperialist
plot to hold down the 'Oriental' world. It is rather a distribution of geopolitical awareness into
aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical and philological texts; it is an elaboration
not only of a basic geographic distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient
and Occident) but also of a whole series of 'interests' which, by such means as scholarly discovery,
philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not
only creates but also maintains; it is, rather than expresses a certain will or intention to understand,
in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or
alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct corresponding
relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in uneven exchange
with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a
colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative
linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural (as with orthodoxies
and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what 'we' do and what 'they'
cannot do or understand as 'we' ). Said points out that most scholars would not deny that "texts
exist in contexts" and acknowledge the fact of "intertextuality, . . . the pressures of conventions,
predecessors and rhetorical styles". However, Said contends that most are unwilling to admit that
"political, institutional and ideological constraints act in the same manner on the individual author".
Many are reluctant to give up their belief in the "principle of 'creativity,' in which the poet is
believed on his own, and out of his pure mind to have brought forth his work" . In the same way
that there is an "explicit connection " in classic philosophers such as Locke "between their
'philosophic' doctrines and racial theory, justifications of slavery, or arguments for colonial
exploitation" . Said acknowledges that much materialist criticism has been 'vulgar' or "crudely
iconoclastic", and has often failed to keep up with the "enormous technical advances in detailed

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