Resisting Orientalism: Gramsci and Foucault in Counterpoint

Edward Said's Orientalism is one of the founding texts of postcolonial studies. Even though Said explicitly engages with the ideas of Gramsci, the book's conceptualisation of power has predominantly been seen as Foucauldian. This one-sided, Foucauldian interpretation sparked many critiques in which Said was criticised for conceptualising power as all-pervasive, lacking a theory of resistance, and thereby trapped within the very Orientalist framework he intended to dissolve. To unravel this paradox, I propose to undertake a contrapuntal reading that places Orientalism in a combined Foucauldian and Gramscian light. I analyse how the incorporation and interplay of both these intertexts informs and structures Said's approach. Conceptualising Orientalism as a discourse and as the product of hegemony in counterpoint allows one better to understand Said's conceptualisation of power and reevaluates the possibilities for resistance by emphasising the agency of intellectuals.

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