Abstract
Abstract This thesis has attempted to map out (1) the theoretical trajectory of Edward Said's appropriation of and disagreement with Michel Foucault's analysis about discourse, power and resistance, and (2) the further development of Said's ideas for “Saidian resistance.” To contend that Foucault's ideas occupy a significant position in Said’s writings during his first half of his career, it is not surprising to find out that there are at least six essays or book chapters that mainly discuss Foucault's thoughts; nonetheless, what is surprising is the span of time—approximately fifteen years —that Said kept conceptualizing and rethinking his theoretical/ethical position in comparison with and in contrast to Foucault. In this respect, in Chapter One, after I have presented an overview of this thesis’s central problem and introduced the background and career of Said, I underline the genuine difficulty of systemizing Said's theoretical affiliations. The results show that either “a technique of trouble” or “dialectical thinking” may be helpful for us to understand the “untidiness” of Said’s theoretical views. Although my main concern in this thesis is how Said turned away from Foucault's theoretical frame and developed his unique ideas about resistance, I have nevertheless proposed that we can have a greater picture of postcolonial resistance after we have reviewed key ideas developed by Cabral, Ashcroft, and Fanon concerning national liberation, cultural transformation, and literary resistance. Chapter Two investigates Said's methodological appropriation of Foucault’s notions of history-writing, the scheme of discursive formation, and the genealogy and the transformation of knowledge, particularly in Orientalism (1978), in order to understand the close early theoretical relations between Foucault and Said. This chapter also traces other influences coming from Gramsci, Vico, and Humanism in order to acknowledge that Foucault is not the only determinant on Said's early theoretical framework. It is through Said’s dialectical confrontation with these other factors and figures that Said’s discussion of resistance becomes possible. Chapter Three addresses Said's explicit dissatisfaction with Foucauldian theory in the early 1980s—particularly in essays collected in The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983) and The Reflections on Exile (2000)—and Said’s critical turn to reconsider discourse, power, resistance, as well as the project of poststructural criticism. This chapter also re-examines critiques of Orientalism from different sides, with particular attention paid to the issue of representation, discourse, the position of “postcolonial critics,” and the “untidiness” of Said’s thinking. These significant discussions are important markers as we track the development of and shifts in strategies for resistance. Chapter Four analyzes how Said subsequently proposed his own beliefs about resistance, particularly in Culture and Imperialism (1993), a book that not only discusses the dialectical relation between texts and imperialism but also shows “how innumerable authors and intellectuals of the colonized world make their suppressed histories and identities visible and viable again and strive for ‘the invention of new souls’” (Sheehi 397). In this chapter, I outline Said’s central contributions to the question of postcolonial resistance through critical concepts including “contrapuntal reading,” “secular criticism,” and the responsibility of “intellectuals,” all of which I attempt to regard as strategies of and points of access to “Saidian resistance.” At the end of Chapter Four, I provide a conclusion to attempt to connect shifts in Said's critical positions with the project of contemporary postcolonial studies. I hope my investigation of Said's “steering away” from Foucault would not merely be considered at a theoretical level; instead, my hope is that it can provide us with a perspective to re-conceptualize the ongoing development of contemporary postcolonial studies.