Hi Mehmet Kentel
Though Said himself was not confined to identity-politics, his analysis
confines itself to that. We are now seeing its deleterious run across
international arenas.
Said's preoccupation with ontology and representation (what is the self? how
is it represented in texts?) lends itself to his background as a literary
critic analysing various kinds of texts and the resultant politics, but his
relative lack of engagement of the history of epistemology is what is
important. He was never interested in fields of knowledge other than these.
History is a continent of knowledge for Said, yes, but only a type of
knowledge which lends itself to literary and political Orientalism.
Foucault, on the other hand, is keen on traversing truth regimes - a task
which gathers momentum since his days with Gaston Bachelard and Georges
Canguilheim, if one were to see his predecessors. As for alternate truth
regimes, please refer to the passage on Borges in the initial part of Les
Mots et les choses (The Order of Things) and you will see how open his mind
was.
With best wishes
Ramesh Gopalakrishnan
Though Said himself was not confined to identity-politics, his analysis
confines itself to that. We are now seeing its deleterious run across
international arenas.
Said's preoccupation with ontology and representation (what is the self? how
is it represented in texts?) lends itself to his background as a literary
critic analysing various kinds of texts and the resultant politics, but his
relative lack of engagement of the history of epistemology is what is
important. He was never interested in fields of knowledge other than these.
History is a continent of knowledge for Said, yes, but only a type of
knowledge which lends itself to literary and political Orientalism.
Foucault, on the other hand, is keen on traversing truth regimes - a task
which gathers momentum since his days with Gaston Bachelard and Georges
Canguilheim, if one were to see his predecessors. As for alternate truth
regimes, please refer to the passage on Borges in the initial part of Les
Mots et les choses (The Order of Things) and you will see how open his mind
was.
With best wishes
Ramesh Gopalakrishnan