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Martin Vega has used researchto develop three importantqualities: his critical-thinkingskills, the ability to structure anargument, and an ethicalawareness of cultural interplay.

His interest in literary criticEdward Saids concept of worldliness inspired Martin totrace Saids development fromhis early works to the later,more political, works for whichhe is better known. Martingraduated from UCI in Spring2005 and plans to work for ayear or two before applying tograduate school. He enjoysplaying basketball and golf,

and likes to critique old filmswith his roommate.

This project is evidence of Martin Vegas real commitment to taing an innovative and potentially controversial position on talready quite controversial Said, who was best known for his politiactivities on behalf of the Palestinian people. Rather than going the coventional route of looking to Saids path breaking book, Orientali(1978) for the roots of Saids political criticism, Vega chooses examine Saids pre-Orientalismwork for evidence of how the Fren

literary and philosophical theory hitting the United States in the 1960s and 70s gahim the building blocks of his later concepts of worldliness and secular humaism. It was as a result of working with Vega that I began to plan a graduate seminon the role of the humanist critic in politics and to conceptualize a book on the intlectual genealogy of Saids work. This is intersegmental research at its best, linkithe work of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty in innovative ways.

K e y T e r m s

Affect

Cosmopolitanism

Discourse

Existentialism

Humanism

Multiculturalism

Phenomenology

Postcolonialism

Poststructuralism

Structuralism

Worldliness

The Influence of French Theory onEdward Saids Concept ofWorldliness

Martin VegaComparative Literature

This paper tracks the antecedents to Edward Saids concept of worldliness aconsiders the challenges this concept presents to humanistic assumptions. A lerary critic and avowed humanist, Said delivered his signature concept of worldlinein The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983). As he developed this concept, Said to

part in the critical uptake of theory in America in the 1960s and 1970s. In partular, this paper considers Saids use of existentialist phenomenology in his dissertion, published asJoseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography(1966); his use of postructuralism in Beginnings (1975); and his use of Foucaults Discourse theory Orientalism(1978), a foundational text in postcolonial scholarship. Both phenomenlogical and Discourse theories contain specific and different notions about being the world. In taking up these theories, Said works through issues of individuality atextuality that complicated the claims of humanism in the second half of the twetieth century. Said focuses on these issues in developing his concept of worldlinein the 1970s and 1980s. In presenting this concept, Said affirms the need for a mopolitically aware criticism in the contemporary, postcolonial world.

1 2TH E

U C I UN D E R G R A D U A T E

RE S E A R C H

JO U R N A L

A u t h o r

A b s t r a c t

F a c u l t y M e n t o r

Jane O. NewmanSchool of Humanities

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Int roduct ion: Cal l ing Al l Cr i t ics to aWorldly Perspective

Edward Said, a Palestinian American, was a staunch andwell-publicized advocate for Palestinian rights.1 His book,

Orientalism (1978), was an important and controversialachievement for the politically active Said and the field ofcriticism. In Orientalism, Said critically examines the misrep-resentations of Palestinians and other Orientals propa-gated in the Western world. In doing so, he introduces apostcolonial method into the field of critical analysis. In lieuof twentieth-century decolonization movements, postcolo-nial authors analyze cultural and literary artifacts from aposition critical of Western hegemony. It also calls for thestudy of those voices traditionally marginalized and silencedin Western discourses. This call for a more inclusive schol-arship became associated with multiculturalism in the 1980s.

In fact, literary scholars of the time were so divided on theissue of multiculturalism that the American ComparativeLiterature Association (ACLA) could not find enough com-mon ground to put together its annual report onComparative Literature in America (Bernheimer).Postcolonial criticism was deemed too political by many ofits opponents.

An overtly political criticism challenges the doctrine ofscholarly disinterestedness espoused in literary criticism andthe humanities in general. Said poses such a challenge to hispeers in his call for what he terms a worldly critical per-

spective. In The World, the Text, and the Critic(1983), he arguesthat reading critically should involve an awareness of thepolitical circumstances surrounding the reader, the text andthe author. Essential to this awareness is a thoroughly secu-lar humanist view of the world. As Said revealed it in hisposthumously published Humanism and Democratic Criticism(2004), Change is human history, and human history asmade by human action and understood accordingly is thevery ground of the humanities (10). Saids humanist stanceis cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitanism is receptiveness to newideas and cultural forms and detachment from nationalistperspectives.2 In Humanism and Democratic Criticism, a cos-mopolitan attitude contributes to Saids critique of human-ism, especially literary humanism, as it has been practiced inthe American academy since the nineteenth century.Specifically, Said attacks the elitist, apolitical, and exclusive-

ly European traditions of literary study in America. In hisview, the duty of humanists is to be truly cosmopolitan intheir consideration of other cultures and the political reali-ties of cultural interplay. His critique could be read as Saidspostcolonial prescription for literary study.

While Saids idea of worldliness was an important basis forhis postcolonial method, its development relied on struc-turalist and poststructuralist debates.3 In The World, theText, and the Critic, he acknowledges his indebtedness toMichel Foucault for his concept of worldliness,

Foucaults contention is that the fact of writingitself is a systematic conversion of the power rela-tionship between controller and controlled intomere written wordsbut writing is a way of dis-guising the awesome materiality of so tightly con-

trolled and managed a production (47).4

Foucaults influence is central to Saids point that no text orauthor may be viewed apart from social and political cir-cumstances. Saids first book,Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of

Autobiography (1966), also contains substantial theoreticalreflection about a texts basis in historical circumstances.

One can track Saids developing concept of worldliness viahis reliance on key French theorists who impacted his firstthree works: Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, andMichel Foucault. In particular, Said used the phenomeno-

logical views of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in his book onConrad to analyze the links between Conrads historical cir-cumstances and his fiction. In Beginnings(1975), Said engagesin an analysis of ConradsNostromo similar to that found inhis own first book, but this time he includes Foucault as anew theoretical influence. In Orientalism (1978), Foucaulttakes a more prominent and problematic role in Saids devel-oping concept of worldliness. Said uses FoucaultsDiscourse theory, but criticizes it as well. According toFoucault, Discourse encompasses all of societys commu-nicative actsboth verbal and non-verbaland it is so dif-fuse in Western society that any human activity is influencedby it. As he developed his concept of worldliness, Saidmaintained a humanist belief in the power of human willand agency while relying on Discourse theory.

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1 Said articulates a basis for Palestinian rights in The Question of Palestine (Times Books,1979). Ella Shohat provides a brief account of Saids political involvement in her essayAntinomies of Exile: Said at the Frontiers of National Narrations (1992) in Edward Said:

A Critical Reader (Blackwell, 1992).2 Saids activism on behalf of Palestinians complicated his cosmopolitan ethic. For an in-depth analysis of this problem, see Benita Parrys Overlapping Territories and IntertwinedHistories: Edward Saids Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism in Edward Said: A Critical Reader(Blackwell, 1992).

T h e U C I U n d e r g r a d u a t e R e s e a rc h J o ur n a l

T H E I N F L U E N C E O F F R E N C H T H E O R Y O N E D W A R D S A I D S C O N C E PT O F W O R L D L I N E S S

3 Structuralism can be characterized as positing the fixed centrality of meaning in sociallyconstructed systems, mainly systems of language. In contrast, meaning in poststructuralisttheory can be widely dispersed and deferred. Structuralism and poststructuralism both rely agreat deal on the ideas of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.4This essay was originally published as The Text, the World, the Critic, in Bulletin of theMidwest Modern Language Association 8.2 (Fall 1975): 123.

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Discourse and other theories comprising the wider criticaltheory boom since World War II in America are largelyEuropean, but they nonetheless provide theoretical basesfor much postcolonial criticism, including that of Said. Hisindebtedness to European theory for his postcolonial

method is an aspect of Saids work that tends to be over-looked. It is, therefore, meaningful to analyze the influenceof Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault on Saids concept ofworldliness.

Joseph Conrad : Reconci l ingIndiv idual i ty with the External Wor ld

In an essay presented at the symposium of The Languagesof Criticism and the Sciences of Man in 1966,5 EugenioDonato writes that a number of critics in America turnedto existentialism and phenomenology only a few years

ago for methodological guidance (89). Said, a Harvardgraduate student in literature from 1958 to 1963, took partin this critical trend. He lays out the thesis for his book thus:

We should investigate the idiom of Conrads ren-dering of his experience: the words and images hechose to express himself. In philosophical terms,this study attempts a phenomenological explo-ration of Conrads consciousness, so that the kindof mind he had, both in its distinction and energy,will become apparent (Joseph Conrad and the Fiction ofAutobiography7).

Said focuses on personal letters to track how Conrad per-ceived the world during his literary years, from the 1880s toConrads death in 1924. Thus, Said uses contemporary the-oretical interventions of European philosophers to inter-pret Conrads writing as part of his worldly experience.

The critics Donato refers to include the French philoso-phers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In gen-eral, Sartres existentialist philosophy proposes that therecomes a point at which the conscious recognition of theindividual self (the I) forces one to define ones ownbeing apart from everything else in the world. This situationis both vexing and liberating for individual consciousness,or subjectivity. Phenomenology, on the other hand,attempts to understand the structures of consciousness thataccount for an individuals experience in and of the world,such that subjective experience goes hand in hand withobjective experience. In Sartres existentialist phenomenolo-gy, one such structure is affect (the emotions), which is both

a behavioral response to outside influences and a mark ointernal vexation. Yet, affect is still focused on ones subjective reality.

InJoseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Said calls fo

a reading of Conrads shorter fiction in conjunction with hiprivate letters to understand how Conrad reconciled hisubjectivity with his place in the world. According to Saidthe outbreak of World War I triggered a change in Conradthat allowed him to enact this reconciliation. To Said, ThShadow Line(1917) indicates the point in Conrads fiction a which this change occurred. In this story, Said sees thdecomposition of Conrads old individualityall his personal history of poses, insecurity, fear, and shameand with it, the decomposition of modern Europe (192Everyone in a postwar Europe would have to construct personal new order. In Saids reading, this universal need fo

order galvanized Conrad. Having dealt with an impetus toorder his own past, Conrad saw a parallel between his personal history and the history of Europe. He would now bable to see his individuality in the context of his place in thsocial world. Said sees this development reflected inConrads construction of the Narrator in The Shadow LinThe Narrators shameful insecurity reflects Conrads tortured past while the Narrators time ashore with the venerable Giles reflects Conrads belief in Europeanism(194). Thus, in The Shadow Line, Conrad finally achieves full harmony between experience and understanding (195)In Saids analysis, Conrad finally is able to situate his sub

jectivity (understanding) in a mutual relationship with thexternal world.

His assessment is more reflective of the phenomenology oMerleau-Ponty than that of Sartre. For [i]n contrast tSartre, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes mutuality, interdependence, interrelatedness (Dyson-Hudson 236). IndeedMerleau-Ponty attempts to maintain the two contrariewhich define manhis situational or historical aspect anhis inner or subjective aspect (Oxenhandler 235). In Saidphenomenological reading of Conrads letters and worksConrads main achievement was to reconcile these two contraries. Moreover, as Oxenhandler writes:

If consciousness, throughout the writings ofMerleau-Ponty, might be defined as that whichalways remains itself while becoming other, themost crucial form of this behavior is manifested inregard to time which is a ceaseless rtention orreaching back coupled with a ceaseless protensionor reaching forward (244).

127T H E U C I U N D E R G R A D U A T E R E S E A R C H J O U R N A L

M a r t i n V e g a

5This was the same year in which Harvard University Press published Saids dissertation,Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography.

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According to Said, Conrads coming to terms with the exter-nal world involved the problem of reconciling the past andpresent in such a way that would not lead to a debilitatingover-reflection, or reflection at the cost of meaningfulaction.6

In his dissertation, Said cites the following passage fromThe Metaphysical in Man, (1947):

Language surrounds each speaking subject, like aninstrument with its own inertia, its own demands,constraints, and internal logic, and neverthelessremains open to the initiatives of the subject (as well as to the brute contributions of invasions,fashions, and historical events ( Joseph Conrad andthe Fiction of Autobiography2).

Said uses the same passage in a more extensive quote in hisessay, Labyrinth of Incarnations: The Essays of MauriceMerleau-Ponty 1967). In that essay, Said lauds Merleau-Pontys effort to show in his phenomenological philosophythat we are in and of the world before we can think aboutit. This is a move that, rather than being anti-scientific,seeks to put science on a proper footing and to restore itto experience (4). Merleau-Ponty, Said continues:

shows how human reality can best be understoodin terms of behavior (action given form) which isneither a thing nor an idea, neither entirely mental

nor entirely physical. Instead of rushing from oneabsolute incompatibility to another, torn betweenthem, his mode of thought is dialectical, weavingamong realities without absolutes (5).

Likewise, in his book on Conrad, Said attempts to weavetogether different realities (Conrads emotions, his life as asailor, his life as a British citizen, and his writings) in adialectical way, each one constitutive of Conrads worldlycircumstances.

Nevertheless, the reference in the 1967 essay is also impor-tant because it signals Saids recognition of, and a certainagreement with, Merleau-Pontys view of language as theprimary structure accounting for ones way of understand-ing and engaging with the world. Said emphasizes Merleau-Pontys synthesis of linguistics with phenomenology andindicates the connectedness of various continental philo-sophical movements of the mid-1900s, such as existential-ism, phenomenology and structuralism. As Donato asserts

in his essay, phenomenology and existentialism, to which lit-erary critics, including Said, turned for methodological guid-ance just a few years ago, gave way to new methodologiesby the 1960s (89). That is, literary critics turned fromMerleau-Ponty and Sartre to the anthropological theories

(especially structuralism) of Claude Lvi-Strauss and theFreudian readings of Jacques Lacan (Donato 89). Despitethis turn, Merleau-Ponty serves as an important precursorto structuralist and then postructuralist theories.

Problems of Individuality andS ys te m i n Beginnings

In Beginnings, Said deals with the challenges structuralist andpoststructuralist theories posed to literary-critical idealsabout the relationship between authors and their texts. Incontrast to the assumption that what an author intends to

do determines his/her creative work, the new theoriesposited the existence of cultural mechanisms that usurp theinfluence of the author. Foucault, whom Said invokes inBeginnings, shifted around the same time from a structuralistorientation to a poststructualist perspective. Said makes par-ticular use of Foucaults ideas of will and socially con-structed narratives/histories to inform his reading ofConradsNostromo.

The setting ofNostromo is the fictional colonial SouthAmerican Republic of Costaguana, which is beset by revo-lutionary activity. The story occurs mainly in the port town

of Sulaco, whose economy hinges on the nearby San Tomsilver mine inherited by the British businessman CharlesGould. Gould is consumed with his fortune, to the pointthat he participates in the corrupt politics of the republic tokeep it. Nonetheless, the volatile politics of Costaguanathreaten his hold on that fortune, and revolutionariesattempt to seize the mines silver. The would-be hero of thenarrative, Nostromo, is charged with the duty of saving thesilver. Accompanied by the lawyer/journalist MartinDecoud, Nostromo takes the silver with him on a boat tokeep it out of sight. Decoud does not make it through theordeal. Nostromo, on the other hand, survives, but the sil-ver is presumably lost. To the reader, Nostromos integrityseems impeccable until he takes on his most important duty.To the people of Sulaco, despite the apparent loss of the sil-ver, Nostromos golden reputation remains intact.

Yet, Said is not as concerned with the surface actions of thecharacters in Nostromo as with the intentions informingthose actions. As Said explains:

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6 Meaningful implies some kind of hope for the future, something to work towards.

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The real action [] is psychological and concernsmans overambitious intention to author his ownworld because the world as he finds it is somewhatintolerable: this action underlies the historical andpolitical events inNostromo (118).

However, according to the structuralist theory, language isautonomous, carrying more cultural assumptions and mean-ings than the author intends; this aspect is very much a partof the world. According to Said, in the world of Sulaco thepeople have collectively constructed a history that elidesanything potentially detrimental to the integrity of the state,which contending forces threaten to pull apart. Yet, the peo-ple are not necessarily aware of the propagandistic forcetheir discourse has attained. As Said puts it, [i]n Foucaultsterminology one can also say that Sulacos archives containrarified versions of its history (120). The archives are the

formal and informal historical and cultural records ofSulaco. The evasive and propagandistic qualities of thisselective Sulacan history, to Said, is the way of political life,and Conrad portrays it realistically and archeologically(120). Thus, where one might think an analysis of charac-ters intentions would be purely psychological in nature,Said puts these intentions within a modern politicalframe. (It may not be a stretch to say that with this moveSaid anticipates a postcolonial critique of imperialistic ide-ology.)

Said goes on to argue that the narrative anxieties of the

characters reflect Conrads troubles with his own writing.According to Said, what the people of Sulaco cannot com-prehend is the presence of a devilish process the purposeand logic of which is profoundly antihuman (133). Thisprocess is antihuman in that human action is not deter-mined by human will, but by a system that is already at playin society. Thus, human will is not central to action. As Saidsays:

the action at the beginning of the novel seems towind its confused way forward until a hero appearswho can dominate it in order to give it intentionand method, whereas it eventually becomes appar-ent that the action has merely been searching for ahero (Nostromo or Gould) to own, to use, toenslave (133).

The reason is that action resides not in the individual but ina system external to the individual. Thus, Said extracts thefollowing lesson fromNostromo: [m]an is never the author,never the beginning, of what he does, no matter how will-fully intended his program may be (133).

The absence of authority is a crucial issue in theories abouthe modern condition. In the literary genre of the noveConrads Nostromo implies this absence of an authority athe loss of faith in the ability of novelistic representatiodirectly to reflect anything except the authors dilemmas

(137). Such a stance constitutes a break from previous novels. For example, [w]hereas in the classical novel there habeen both a desire to create or author an alternate life andhave that mimic real life, the later version of this desirewas a rejection of this very desire and a shifting of concerpreeminently with the authors scriptive fate and dilemmas (137). According to Said, Decoud reflects Conradauthorial situation. As Said says, Decoud is Conrads portrayal of himself as [] the author for whom even the simplest sentence was very hard to begin (130). Thus, Saitakes Conrads case as exemplifying a shift in focus to thproblems of authorial intent.

Yet, there is also a marked political aspect to Beginningswhich is connected with Saids view of the critics need tforge ahead in a setting seemingly hostile to the traditionahumanistic idea that human cultural production can stanapart from wider societal forces. Saids notion of beginnings, as a reaction to the loss of the influence of thauthor, is one that legitimates the critics material in lieu oan expanded view of culture. This notion also serves as modus operandum for a progressive scholarship that disrupts established scholarly tradition. Among his critical theory contemporaries, Said sees Foucault as best demonstrat

ing this kind of scholarship, despite the seemingly smapossibility for individual agency and change Foucault allowin the cultural system he posits. In Orientalism, Said focuseon this problem of agency in society.

Oriental isms Reconci l ia t ion of Ind iv idual i ty and System with in a

Postcolonial Perspect ive

In Orientalism, Said undermines the disciplinary assumptionintrinsic to the modern Orientalist tradition and useFoucaults Discourse theory to describe this tradition. In review of Orientalism, James Clifford provides an analysis osome problems with Saids use of Foucault. In particulaClifford focuses on Foucaults The Archeology of Knowledg(1972). This analysis examines the beginning formulationof Foucaults Discourse theory in The Order of Things(1970)formulations tied to a critique of humanistic assumptionsUnderstanding this critique is useful because it both helpSaids critique of Orientalism and complicates his humanistic assumptions.


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Beginnings of Foucaults Discourse Theory

Foucaults Discourse theory arises from his critique of thehuman sciences,7 and the need to develop a more accurateaccount of the human condition in Western society. In The

Order of Things(1966), Foucault rejects the idea of Man asthe central factor to cultural understanding. According toFoucault, Man is itself a product of the grand reorderingof knowledge in 19th century Europe. Foucault analyzesculture as a network of constructs, such as this one.Accordingly, he proposes to use psychoanalysis, ethnologyand linguistics to describe a Western phenomenon he callsDiscourse.

The social mechanisms Foucault describes seem to overrideindividual agency. For example, as Foucault argues in TheDiscourse on Language, in recent times three particular

discursive functionsthe author-function, commentary,and disciplineswork to make individuals seem to have acertain amount of power, or authority, when their produc-tivity is more or less determined by Discourse. These con-ditions of the productivity, or materiality, of Discourse areprecisely what it seeks to hide. For Foucault, the rules ofgoverning Discourse are more important than the meaningbehind what is communicated through an individuals cre-ative work.

Discourse Theory Explained

As Foucault argues in The Discourse on Language (1972),Discourse constitutes a societys rhetorical codes. Discoursedetermines what is acceptable as knowledge. This will totruth, as Foucault calls it, relies on social institutions, on:

the whole strata of practices such as pedagogynaturallythe book-system, publishing, libraries,such as the learned societies in the past, and labo-ratories today. But it is probably even more pro-foundly accompanied by the manner in whichknowledge is employed in society, the way in whichit is divided and, in some ways, exploited in a soci-ety (219).

Thus, Discourse exerts its societal force in an almost all-encompassing network and obtains its greatest force whenmost diffuse, or divided, in a society as a whole. Foucaultnotes the judicial system and the medical field as two exam-ples of discursive systems with wide-ranging influences.

Discourse, then, is not merely what is exchanged in com-munication, but has a powerful material effect.

Discourse Theory in Oriental ism

Modern Orientalism, according to Said, was inauguratedand legitimated by the works of the French anthropologistSilvestre de Sacy and the French philologist Ernest Renan inEurope in the early to mid-nineteenth century. According toSaid, Sacy, as an Orientalist anthropologist, substituted themost exemplary, essentialist traits of his supposed subjectfor its historical reality. Sacy did so within a supposedlyobjective frame because, according to Said, Sacy believedthat everything could be made clear and reasonable, no mat-ter how difficult the task and how obscure the subject(125). Sacys wide-sweeping summation of the Orient isexhibited in the Tableau historique de lrudition franais, a work

commissioned in 1802 by Napoleon and intended to holdthe whole of human knowledge (126). Said terms Sacyswork a Rational Anthropology because Sacy upheld theobjective and scientific legitimacy of his Orientalparadigms.

Rather than merely indicating the essential traits of theOrient, Sacy, in effect, created what Said calls a sealedspace (125) in which to disseminate knowledge about theOrient. According to Said, Sacys examples:

are powerful for two reasons: one because they

reflect Sacys power as a Western authority deliber-ately taking from the Orient what its distance andeccentricity have hitherto kept hidden, and two,because these examples have the semiotical powerin them (or imparted to them by the orientalist) tosignify the Orient (125126).

Thus, Sacys paradigms, in purporting to deliver what can beknown about the Orient, an act Said paints as imperialistic,gain support from Orientalist language.

The effects of language in this sense are not at all immate-rial, for they rely on institutions in society. As Said claims,

In everything I have been discussing, the languageof Orientalism plays the dominant role. It bringsopposites together as natural, it presents humantypes in scholarly idioms and methodologies, itascribes reality and reference to objects (otherwords) of its own making. Mythic language is dis-course, that is, it cannot be anything but systemat-ic; one does not really make discourse at will, or



7 Human sciences, at the time Foucault wrote referred mainly to anthropology and psy-chology, but still fell under the wider category of the humanities.

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statements in it, without first belongingin somecases unconsciously, but at any rate involuntarilyto the ideology and the institutions that guaranteeits existence (177).

Therefore, Discourse becomes a vehicle for ideologythehabits and assumptions that precede consciousness ofthose same habits and assumptions. Discourse gains itspower in societal institutions by propagating within variousinstitutions, such as those listed by Said. This is the rela-tionship Said attempts to depict in discussing Silvestre deSacys institutional ties to the College of France, the FrenchForeign Ministry, and the Asiatic Society, for example (124).

Yet, Said has some trouble reconciling individual agencywith Discourse theory. He promptly follows his statementthat one does not really make discourse at will, or state-

ments in it with the qualification without first belongingto the mechanisms (ideology, institutions) that perpetuate it. This leaves open the possibility for human will to enterDiscourse, but only after considering ones immersion insociety, so that social reality comes first, and human willcomes afterward. This idea has clear affinities with Saidssecular humanism. To affirm his point, Said mitigates thequalification by stating that belonging to an ideology andinstitutions is at any rate involuntary. In this manner, Saidconveys a qualified acceptance of Discourse theory.

Still, Said diverges from Foucault in allowing a greater role

for individual intervention in Discourse. According to Said:

unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am great-ly indebted, I do believe in the determining imprintof individual writers upon the otherwise anony-mous collective body of texts constituting a discur-sive formation like Orientalism(Orientalism, 23).

Said, however, cannot completely disavow the Discourseanalysis driving his critique of Orientalism. Using the exam-ple of Ernest Renan, Said writes, Renan was a figure in hisown right neither of total originality nor of absolute deriva-tiveness (130). Thus, Said could discuss Renans biograph-ical background and its influence on his Orientalist work, as well as Renans impact on the Orientalist tradition, andnonetheless maintain that Renans Orientalist opportuni-ties were already created for him by pioneers like Sacy(130). A proper worldly perspective, Said argues, shouldconsider both individuality and collectivity as dialectical(24), neither one dominating the other. In this way, Saids worldly perspective retains the phenomenological idea ofplacing different aspects of reality on par with one another

and in mutual relations. For Said, an individual can have efficacy in society but is also always subject to the forces osociety.

For students of literature, this last assessment might rais

such questions as: how might an author be influenced bhis/her worldly circumstances? For what can we legitimately hold an author accountable? How might my circumstances influence my reading of a given text? What kind osocial responsibility does critical analysis entail?

Conclusion: Art iculat ing aPostcolonial Cr i t ica l Posit ion

Ten years after the publication of Orientalism, and five yearbefore the publication of its more literary sequel, Culture anImperialism(1993), Said published a short essay, Throug

Gringo Eyes: With Conrad in Latin America, in which hsuggests a way of reading that resists imperialist ideologies Writing from a postcolonial perspective, Said claims th[a]ll Conrad can see is a world dominated by the Westandof equal importancea world in which every opposition to the West only confirms its wicked power (277) Thus, Conrads worldview was limited to his WesterEuropean perspective, even if he was pessimistic abou Western politics. Still, he exonerates Conrad. To SaiConrad (18571924), having lived as a British citizen at thheight of Britains imperial power, was at last unable tthink outside the potent ideology of empire. Yet, author

and critics cannot be let off so easily, for:

They have done their work after decolonization;after the massive intellectual, moral, and imagina-tive overhaul and deconstruction of Western repre-sentation of the non-Western world; after the workof Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, C.L.R. James,Walter Rodney; after the novels and plays of [Ngugi wa Thiongo], Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie,Gabriel Garca Mrquez, and many others (281).

Said thus makes reference to the larger context of postcolonial authorship and criticism, which involves consideration of the postcolonial situation in the real world, the historical fact of decolonization. What came out of the postcolonial situation, then, were new perspectives suited to thanew situation.

A postcolonial perspective relies on a critical analysis oones circumstances and the assumptions one has inheritedAccording to Said, Nostromo affords us such an opportunity to characterize our own attitudes, specifically as th


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projection, or the refusal, of the wish to dominate, thecapacity to damn or the energy to comprehend and engagein other societies, traditions, histories (281). He would rec-ommend the latter for each dyad. Ultimately, Saids purposeis to make the point that literary criticism can, and should,

take into account voices shut out of the academic literarycanon as a matter of political and social responsibility.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Alex Gelley for his patiencein helping me to understand Foucault. Professor JaneNewman was instrumental in guiding this project throughits crucial early stages and providing subsequent intermit-tent comments from abroad. Dr. Lini Chakravorty provid-ed helpful critiques of various drafts. This project grew outof a strong research support system in the School of

Humanities, including the Humanities Honors Program.Program Director, Professor Victoria Silver, checked theprogress of this project, and Matthew Ancell, the Programwriting tutor, provided valuable feedback. I thank my fellowHumanities undergraduate researchers for their encourage-ment. This project was funded by a Summer UndergraduateResearch Program Fellowship sponsored by theUndergraduate Research Opportunities Program at UCI.

Works Cited

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