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DISCUSSION

Orientalism and AfterNivedita Menon

AIJAZ AHMED begins his critique of

Edward Said [EPW, July 25] by recognisingSaid's "beleaguered location in the midst of

imperial America'. However, as he goes on

to say, 'Suppression of crit ie is m. .. is not

the best way of expressing solidarity' [PE

98].

This response to Ahmed's immensely

stimulating essay takes heart from that state-

ment, for I am in solidarity with what I

believe to be the vision which animates both

his critical reading of Said as well as his

polemics against the intellectual formation

which can loosely be categorised as 'post -

modern'.1 That is, a vision of the revolu-

tionary alliance of 'theory' and 'practice' ef-

fecting a radical transformation of structures

of power—a vision of justice, equality,

democracy. At the same time, it is the con-

fidence that this vision is shared in some way

or the other by Said and Foucault and even

by that 'reactionary anti-humanist' Derrida

(PE 107] that moves me to take issue.

with Ahmed, who closes off entirely the

possibilities of reading the discourse of post-

modernism as emancipatory critique. It is

indeed no coincidence that orientalism as

well as the general intellectual trends which

put into question the notion of a trans-

cendental subject have come into pro-

minence at this historical moment. However,

while Ahmed links these trends with the

'global offensive of the right', positing them

as serving the purposes of international

capital [PE 107] it is equally possible to

argue that they are attempts precisely to cope

with and understand the steady erosion,

specially since the 70s, of the revolutionary

project as it was once conceived.

There is no more the comforting certainty

that the 'progressive' position on any issue

can be read off in a st raightforward man-

ner from a clearly delineated body of theory.

The explosive multiplicity of identities makes

every act of political in tervention an exer-

cise fraught with contradiction at various

levels. Of necessity each such act must

negotiate these levels with the understanding

that identities are constituted around nodal

points that shift and dissolve constantly. In

the Indian context, a few examples will suf-

fice to illustrate the impossibility of defin-

ing the 'progressive' or 'revolutionary' pro-

ject once and For all: feminists protesting the

Muslim Women's Bill in 1986 finding them-

selves on the same plat form as the BJP and

the consequent toning down of feminist

demands for a uniform civil code in the face

of BJP's support for it; secularists appalled

at the ban on Satanic Verses coming to terms

with its significance in the context of

minority identity in an increasingly com-munalised political space; radicals am-

bivalent about the rank populism and inade-

quacy of job reservations in an economy

rapidly cutting off employment oppor-

tunities, readjusting their understanding in

the face of upper caste hysteria over the very

reservations they had been ambivalent

about.

In other words, the 'we' that could once

refer unproblematically to 'secularists' 'com-

munists', 'feminists' or 'nationalists' is a

fragmented, tenuous, shifting 'we' a we that

must stake out its ground afresh at every

step. Ahmed refers to what he calls Said's

strategic deployment of 'we' and 'us' to 'refer

in various contexts to Palestinians, third

world intellectuals, academics in general,

humanists, Arabs, Arab-Americans and the

American citizenry at large' [PE 101]. He

clearly suggests a slipperiness in using 'we'

and 'us' in this shifting fashion. And yet, is

Ahmed himself not present in three of these

'we's, aren't most of us (and here I mean 'we

who read EPW )? These are not even

necessarily mutually contradictory categories

that Said posits himself as being part of,

unlike the 'we's that constituted themselves

in the three instances discussed above.

It is precisely because terms like secularism

and nation no longer offer themselves to us

in a form we recognise that we find the old

certainties not just inadequate but counter-

produc tive Is it only Said and postmoder-

nists who express a growing ambivalence

about nation and nationalism' [PE

109]—indeed, are they the only ones who

should? At this historical juncture, how are

Indians who would term themselves part of

a 'progressive' and 'democratic' 'we' to im-

agine their nation, given, for example, the

communal identity overshadowing every at

tempt at regional autonomy? The commit-

ment to a rejuvenated federal structure is

itself poised on the knowledge that on the

Babri Masjid issue, the only bulwark against

an openly Hindu communal party running

a democratically elected state government

appears to be the central government; can

we disown the ambiguity in this position?

How are Africans to imagine their nations,

when national boundaries are arbitrarily

drawn colonial creations but national libera-

tion was won precisely on the basis of those

boundaries, leaving a tangled legacy of tribal

and ethnic identities which continues to un-

fold itself? The most sweeping statements

about 'nation' and 'state' as coercive iden-

tities, complains Ahmed of Said, 'are fre-

quently delivered alongside resounding af-

firmations of national liberation' [PE 109].

It would be more fruitful to see this not so

much as a contradiction as a productive ten-

sion whose resolution can only be at the cost

of fixing identity arbitrarily at one point or

the other. Ahmed himself is not free of am-bivalence On the one hand, he argues that

Said holds colonialism entirely responsible

for all the ills of the third world, absolving

indigenous elites of blame entirely [PE 108].

On the other, he is indignant at Said's 'fer-

vent' defence of Rushdie against the Islamic

world [PE 113]. In other words, when Said

does indicate 'our' culpability; Ahmed is un-

comfortable, and justifiably, in my opinion,

given that Islam is the new bogey of the

west.2 Ambivalence and paradox are not

impurities that can be cleansed from our

thinking, they are inscribed in human iden-

tification and activity. With the proliferation

of ethnic, religious, tribal, racial and caste

identities, not to mention the dislocation in

class positions generated by structural

transformations of capitalism, it has become

increasingly clear that the revolutionary pro-

ject cannot be f ixed along are axis without

a refraction of its emancipatory potential.

We only have to think of Zulu nationalism

in South Africa, the break-up of the

Soviet Union along 'national' lines, or of

Afghanist an today to recognise the enor-

mous significance and necessity of maintain-

ing the tension between different understan-

dings of what constitutes a nation.

Ahmed consistently reads Said's argument

in such a way that any complexity is reduc-

ed to self-contradiction, To take one pivotal

example, Ahmed argues that Said offers

three mutually incompatible definitions of

orientalism, as (a) 'an' interdisciplinary area

of academic knowledge (and in this sense

necessarily a modern discipline, Ahmed

points out); (b) a mentality traversing g r e a t

many centuries' and (c) taking the late 18th

century as a rough starting point, as a

western style for having authority over the

orient [PE 103]. These three definit ions are

picked out from two pages of Orientalismand placed in quick succession one after the

other, each starkly contradicting the next.

Dante and Aeschylus are mentioned as ex-

amples in the second definition. Ahmed

points out, 'five lines before the 18th cen-

tury is identified in the third definition as

a roughly defined starting point' [PE 104].

Going back to Said himself, we find his

statement at the outset that by orientalism

he means 'several things, all of them...

interdependent'. The first, which he says is

the most readily accepted definition, is the

academic one, and certainly in this sense it

is a modern discipline, as Ahmed points out-Related to this is what Said calls a more

general meaning—this is the second defini-

Economic and Political Weekly September 26 19922133


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tion, in which a much broader field is

posited, 'Orientalism as a style of thought

based upon an ontological and epistemo-

logical distinction made between the

"Orient" and (most of the time) the "Occi-

dent". It is this particular understanding that

can accommodate thinkers from Aeschylus

to Marx, and Said acknowledges that con-

siderable methodological problems arise

from such a broad understanding. From the

interaction between the first meaning (whatSaid calls the 'academic') and the second (the

'imaginative'), the third meaning is arrived

at, something 'more historically and

materially defined' than the other two,

which he posits as starting roughly in the late

18th century [1979: 2-3]. Later, as Said

recapitulates his argument, it becomes even

clearer what the links are between the three

definitions which appear entirely contradic-

tory when isolated from their context—

'Orientalism is not only a positive doctrine

about the orient that exists at any one time

in the West' (the second definition) 'it is also

an influential academic tradition' (the first)'as well as an area of concern def ined by

travellers, commerc ial enterprises, govern-

ments...'(the third) [1979: 203]. At other

points Said explicitly refers to the orientalism

starting in the 18th century as 'modern

orientalism', thus differentiating it from the

other understanding that can accommodate

both Dante and Marx [1979: 22, 203).

This is not to suggest that Said's argument

is beyond criticism, which indeed it has faced

often enough. A familiar and justif ied at-

tack, for example, is the one made on the

historicism inherent in Orientalism (which

is why it is all the more surprising that

Ahmed lumps him with the 'anti-humanisms

. . . propagated now under the signature of

anti-empiricism, anti-historicism...') [PE

107]. However, this essay is not intended to

interlock with Ahmed's reading of Said in

as detailed a textual analysis as his and I use

the above discussion only to illustrate that

Ahmed's response to any ambiguity, paradox

or equivocality is to condemn it as in-

coherent and self-contradictory, 'Orientalism

and After' is used here as a point of entry

into current debates on the validity of the

post-modern project in general. I would

point to three significant areas of concern

suggested by Ahmed's critique—(a) the

question of the relationship between

'discourse' and 'reality', (b) whether

representation is always and only

'misrepresentation in the post-modern

understanding, (c) the source and location

of resistance if 'discourse.' is conceived as

monolithically as Ahmed argues it is in Said

(and Foucault).

(a) When Ahmed is 'surprised' by the

word style' in Said's third definition of

orientalism ('a western style for dominating

the orient) [PE 105] he foregrounds the issueof discourse -as- language, the backbo ne of

Marxist critiques of discourse analysis. In

Said writing, Ahmed holds, imperialist

ideology 'appears to be an effect mainly of

certain kinds of writing' [P 104]. Again, in

the context of an essay in which Said men-

tions anti-imperialist intellectuals like Cabral

and Fanon, Ahmed notes disapprovingly

that what appears to be important is

Cabral's 'discursive position, not that he

launched and led the armed struggle' [PE

110].

The contention is that there is a materialreality which exists outside and prior to

discourse to which discourse can only refer.

For example, Michele Barrett .distinguishing

between .the two, writes, 'Virginia Woolf

once said, "a republic might be brought into

being by a poe m" .. . Yet however colossal

the material effects of this poem, they would

have no bearing on the question of whether

the poem itself had a material existence'

[1980: 89]. Certainly there is a sense in which

'discourse' can be understood as speech or

language generally, but the sense in which

the social space is understood to be discur-

sive is entirely different. Such an understan-ding sees human activity to be in dynamic

interaction between linguistic and non-

linguistic performances which cannot be

separated from each other. The totality of

human activity cannot in other words, be

labelled as either linguistic or non-linguistic,

it includes both elements within itself. For

example, persons cooking are performing

'real' activity in the material world, but they

read recipes whose directions are followed.

or they remember instructions given to them

verbally. These two aspects of the perfor-

mance, the linguistic and non-linguistic, can-

not be separated from the totality which

makes up the material activity of cooking.

This totality is what is meant by 'discourse'.

Thus it is possible for Foucault, for exam-

ple, to write of Marx having revealed 'an

entirely new discursive practice on the basis

of political economy' [1972: 188].

Natural objects such as stones would con-tinue to exist if we did not think about them,

but their being as 'stones' is derived from

a process of narrativisation. It is only within

particular classificatory systems which have

been historically constructed that the objects

we call 'stones' are 'stones' as opposed to

trees' or 'mud'. Or indeed, that they are 'ob-

jec ts ' at all, as opposed to being 'people'. In

all the ways that human beings interact with

the world, no object is experienced except

in a discursive formation. Discourse and

reality cannot therefore be posited against

each other.3

Cabral's 'discursive position', then, is notderived simply from his ideas as expressed

in his writing but refers to the complex

articulation by which Cabral is constituted

as a resisting subject in a colonial situation,

as a writer, a poet, a revolutionary.

Moreover, these points of identity formation

do not exhaust all possible configurations

by which Cabral could experience himself

as a subject, but in the context of the field

covered by Said and Ahmed, these particular

2134 Economic and Political Weekly September 26, 1992


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configurations are foregrounded.

Regarding Ahmed's discomfort with

'questioning the very facticity of facts', what

this discussion has attempted to establish is

that no fact presents itself to us innocent of

narrative structures which give it the mean-

ing it has for us. To that extent, it may reflect

not nihilism, but a critical self awareness if

historians do 'start putting the word "fact"

in quotation marks' [PE 107).

(b) Ahmed understands Said's position tobe based on the assumption that 'represen-

tation is always-already a misrepresentation'

[PE 108]. This accusation is made at several

points, directed both at Said as well as post-

modern positions in general—the Nietz-

schean position of all representations being

misrepresentatio ns' [PE 109] or "Said's

equivocation on this key question is delivered

in what appears to be a precise formulation,

namely, that the line between a representa-

tion and a misrepresentation is always very

thin' [PE 107]. This is a caricature of the

post-modernist understanding of represen-

tation, perpetrated by, among others, no lessa philosopher than Habermas who, in The

Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,

criticises 'Derrida's purposely paradoxical

statemen t that any interpretation is in-

evitably a false interpretation and any

understanding a misunderstanding...'4 As

Derrida points out in response; he has never

made such a statement. What he has said

about representation/misrepresentation is

far from being a nihilistic denial of

meaning—'The relation of "mis" (mis-

understanding, mis-interpreting, for exam-

ple) to that which is not "mis" is.. .that of

a general possibility inscribed in the struc-ture of positivity, of normality, of the "stan-

dard". All that I recall is that this structural

possibility must be taken into account when

describing so-called ideal nor ma li ty .. . or

interpretation, and that this possibility can

be neither excluded nor opposed' [1988: 157].

If representation is understood to refer to

a reality which it tries to approximate as

closely as possible, then indeed a mis-

representation is clearly recognisable by its

deviation from the real. But what if the very

distinction between representation and

reality is understood to be discursively con-

stituted? The argument therefore, is not that

the line between representation and mis-

representation is very thin but that both are

implicated within a discursively cons tituted

context outside which the distinction itself

between the two breaks down. Having said

this, it clearly follows that within a context,

it is possible to speak of something being

misunderstood or misinterpreted. However,

this claim cannot be made on the authority

of some reality but only with reference to

the context itself.

Let me illustrate by taking up an instance

where I would claim that Ahmed has mis-represented Said's argument. Discussing

Said's essay, 'Figures, Configurations,

Transfigurations' [1990] Ahmed quotes a

'damning' judgment on non-European

literatures. He is astonished that 'the author

of Orientalism, no less', should in this essay,

claim that it is (in Said's words) 'a mistake

to try to show that the "other" literatures

of Africa and Asia' can be studied as

'respectably' as European literatures which

he characterises as 'high', 'autonomous' and

'aesthetically independent' [1990: 13-14;

quoted by Ahmed PE 114]. One would havethought, Ahmed goes on, that 'the whole

point of orientalism was that these literatures

are not autonomous, that they were too com-

plicit in colonialism to be spoken of primari-

ly in terms of high aesthetics' [PE 114].

Indeed one would have expected precisely

such a line of argument from Said and yet,

on reading 'Figures', the passage referred

to is discovered, exactly as Ahmed has

quoted it. Where then, is the alleged mis-

representation?

This instance is illustrative precisely of the

question of context determining meaning.

On following the entire line of thinkingbehind the quoted passage, Said's argument

appears to be that in studying non-European

literatures, two points must be kept in mind.

First, that any such study must be intimately

linked with slavery, colonialism and racism.

These literatures can only be discussed in the

context of their 'embattled circumstances' in

post-colonial societies or as subjects taught

in metropolitan centres where they are

relegated to 'secondary spots' on the cur-

ricular agenda Second, and this is what

Ahmed calls the 'damning' passage, Said

argues that it would be tantamount to put-

ting white masks on the black faces of non-European literatures if, in an attempt to

combat their marginalisation, their value

was asserted in terms of their being as

autonomous and aesthetically satisfying as

European literatures. The implication is that

such an approach would not only beg the

question of the 'autonomy' of European

literatures (which the concept of orientalism

has decisively problematised) but would

depoliticise non-European literatures, render

invisible their 'more obviously wordly affilia-

tions to power and polities'.

Here we have a group of words which in

their immediate materiality as sign, present

no ambiguity. There is no suggestion that

cither reading has distorted the order of

words or made omissions, and yet each

reading can claim that the other is a

misinterpretation. Given the discursive

universe of Said's writing and political ac-

tivity, and more specifically of the broad

argument in 'Figures', I would argue that

Ahmed has misread Said. 'This comprehen-

sion of the sign in and of itself, in its im-

mediate materiality as a sign is. the in

dispensable condition of all hermeneutics

and of any claim to transition from the sign

to the signified. When one attempts, in ageneral way, to pass from an obvious to a

latent language, one must first be rigorous-

ly sure of the obvious meaning. The analyst

for example, must first speak the same

language as the patient Thus, none other

than Derrida, accused of various crimes

against clarity and understanding [1990(a):

32-33).

What I am arguing is that Ahmed has

misunderstood the obvious meaning itself of

the passage from Said because he is reading

it in the context, not of Said's manifest line

of argument, but of his own understandingof the post-modern project he sees as latent

in Said's work. Since this project, for

Ahmed, is reactionary, elitist and spawned

by the needs of advanced capitalism, even

the surface meaning of the passage for him

is entirely different.

At this point a further move is necessary,

that of recognising the new reading offered

to be furth er open to reinterpretat ion. Each

new interpretation is poised in its turn on

a moment of undecidability, it is an inter-

pretation with a 'mis' inscribed in its struc-

ture There can be no point at which this play

of meaning is decisively halted. Nor does it

follow from this that each interpretation isas valid as every other—one takes a position

clearly by offering an interpretation at all,

and by affirming that within the discursive

universe in which one functions, this inter-

pretation is the most ' correct' or even the

only one possible. Further, one does attempt

to demonstrate that this particular context

or discursive universe is one which renders

visible the widest range of meaning. It is

precisely this process of legitimating and

authorising discourses that gets foreground'

ed once we suspend the notion of some

ultimate truth or reality against which

representations can be measured. Relativism

is thus a false problem. As Richard Rortypoints out, 'The philosophers who get called

relativists are those who say that the grounds

for choosing betw een. .. opinions are less

algorithmic than had been supposed' [1982:

166-67 ].5

Ahmed argues that 'worthwhile distinc-

tions between a representation and a mis-

representation' are made with reference to

'historical and social circumstances' [PE

105]. Surely 'his torica l and social cir-

cumstances' do not exist in the 'real' world

to be merely discovered by historians?

Whether people killing one another is under-

stood as 'communal riot' or 'propertydispute' or an instance of 'class war' is not

inscribed in the killings themselves. Where

a news report sees 'Hindus' and 'Muslims',

a Marxist analyst sees, say, displaced

handloom workers in conflict with the ris-

ing trading class. Is either understanding

'false'? To align all meaning through a pre-

established grid imposes order only at the

expense of rendering invisible the poly-

valence inherent in human interaction. At

the same time, it bears repeating that in this

instance both the journalist and the Marx-

ist analyst share a context in which they

would agree on the fact that killings had oc-

curred, and would contest say, government

efforts to deny it. The boundaries of discur-

Economic and Political Weekly September 26 19922135


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sive universes are not clear and impermeable

as Ahmed argues but are fuzzy and realign

themselves constantly. Ahmed charges Said

with not addressing the question, 'as any

Foucaultian would, whether or not state-

ments and their autho rs, can actually cir-

culate so very freely between discursive

fields...' [PE 115. note 10]. However,

Foucault questions precisely this kind of

reification of discourses. The divisions bet-

ween discourses, he argues, 'are always

themselves reflexive categories. . . (O)fcourse, they also have complex relations with

each other, but are not intrinsic, auto-

chthonous and universally recognisable

characteristics' [1972; 22], Symbols and

meanings do constantly get displaced from

one discourse to another in social and

political interaction. Hence, for example, the

entirely different significance of the demand

for a uniform civil code within feminist

discourse and within Hindu communal

discourse

(c) Ahmed quotes Said's disowning of

Foucault in The World, the Text and the

Critic, pointing to its uncanny similaritywith his own critique of Said. This passage

charges Foucault with not making 'even a

nominal allowance for emergent movements,

and none for revolutions, counter-hegemony

or historical blocs' (quoted PE 109]. This is

a familiar criticism, and one that is linked

to the charge of anti-humanism, for where

there is no continuous revolutionary subject,

it is argued, there can be no resistance.

Ahmed uses the adjective 'reactionary' with

'anti-humanism' more than once in his essay,

and anti-humanism is presented as anti-

human, almost. And yet, it is humanism as

an a historical essence tha t is being rejectedby these strands of thinking, not the notion

of human beings as actors. As Laclau points

out, the attempt is to demonstrate that the

validity of humanist values is constructed by

'particular discursive and argumentative

practices' that have a recent history. 'This

history of the production of "Man" ... has

been one of the great achievements of our

culture; to outline this history would be to

reconstruct the various discursive surfaces

where it has taken place—the juridical,

educational, economic and other institu-

tions..... The "hum an being", without

qualification, is the overdetermined effect ofthis process of multiple construction' [1990:

125]. In other words, as recently as three cen-

turies ago, the idea of human beings as

bearers of rights in their own capacities did

not exist. And when we direct attention to

the process by which human beings in this

sense were created, we come up also against

the ways in which 'humanism' is constantly

under threat, along the lines of gender, race,

class, caste and so on. What is called anti-

humanism therefore, is a double movement.

On the one hand, it points to the historical

and contingent nature of the identity of

'human beings' as 'equal' with the 'right' tofulfil their potential equally, while affirm-

ing the ideal of this vision. "Nothing seems

to me less outdated' writes Derrida, 'than

the classic emancipatory ideal' (1990(b):

971]. On the other hand, rejecting the no-

tion of some ahistorical essence which could

be called 'humanism' means foregrounding

the perpetual threat to the vision of the

'classic emancipatory ideal'. Thus there is a

very strong sense in which anti-humanism

can be understood as a theory of resistance,

but its fulcrum is not a unified subject, nor

is the emancipatory ideal to be realised onceand for all. Emancipation itself must be

recognised as disaggregated, split along dif-

ferent axes, just as identity is not just a

positive conglomerate of different subject

positions but an ever temporary and con-

tingent construction, forming anew at the

intersections of shifting subject positions. As

Joan Scott puts it, 'subjects are produced

through multiple identifications, some of

which become politically salient for a time

in certain contexts....... (T)he project of

history is not to reify identity but to unders-

tand its production as an ongoing process

of differentiation... subject to redefinition,resistance and change' [1992: 19].

Does it follow that 'resistance can always,

only be personal, micro and shared only by

small, determinate numbers of individuals

who happen, perchance, to come together,

outside the so-called "grand narratives" of

class, gender, nation? [PE 109] Ahmed's

formulation suggests that the only concep-

tion of resistance that emerges from this

understanding is that of futile scrabblings

of finite groups at the base of a vast and om-

nipotent discourse of power But when

power itself is conceived of as discontinuous

and shifting, 'revolution' becomes multiple.The 'so-called grand narratives' do not roll

on, majestic and unimpeded, 'out side' the

chaotic and flurried activity of disintegrated

post-modern individuals. On the contrary,

rejecting grand narratives renders visible the

plurality of subjects and legitimises the

multiplicity of sites of resistance. To accept

that the democratic project is open to

perpetual redefinition at innumerable and

unpredictable points is in fact to radicalise

the understanding of democracy itself.

It still remains to respond more fully to

Ahmed's reading of Said but I will not at-

tempt that task here; however, it may be thata critical engagement with 'Orientalism and

After' has rearticulated some elements of

current debates in ways which make visible

further spaces of contestation.

Notes

[Sarah Joseph's comments on this essay helpedme clarify the argument. Special thanks toFarida Khan for generous assistance with wordprocessing facilities.]

1 Without going into the debates about struc-turali sm, post-st ructuralism and post-modernism and the extent to which thesehave features which overlap or differ, I amusing the term 'post-modernism' for the pur-

poses of this essay, to refer to the strands ofthinking that problematise a unified andessential notion of identity and historicise

humanism.

2 Said himself does display a sensitivity to this

aspect particularly in 'Figures, Configura-tions Transfiguration', an essay Ahmeddiscusses later.

3 The discussion in this section is inspired byErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's

response to Norman Geras, 'Post-Marxismwithout Apologies' in Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time

[100-103].4 Quoted by Derrida in Ltd Inc [157].

5 Quoted by Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections

[104].

References

Barrett, Michele [1980], Women's Oppression

Today, Verso, London.Derrida, Jaques [1988], Lt d Inc, Northwestern

University Press, Evanston.—[1990(a)], 'Cogito and the History of

Madness', Writing and Difference,(translated by Alan Bass), Rout ledge,London.

— [1990) j, 'Force of Law: The Mystical Foun-dation of Authority', Cardozo Law Review,Vol II, Nos 5-6.

Foucault, Michel [1972], The Archaeology of Knowledge, (translated by A M SheridanSmith). Pantheon Books, New York.

Laclau, Ernesto [1990], New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, Verso, London.

Said, Edward [1979], Orientalism, Vintage

Books, London.-[I990], 'Figures, Configurations, Transfigura-tion', Race and Class, Volume 32, No 1.

Scott, Joan [1992], 'Multiculturalism and thePolitics of Identity', October 1961.

2136 Econ omic and Political Weekly September 26, 1992

orientalism and after_edward said

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