歐美研究季刊 第45卷第2期

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EURAMERICA Vol. 45, No. 2 (June 2015), 279-299
© Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica
Orientalism’s Discourse
—Said, Foucault and the Anxiety of
Influence*

Jin Suh Jirn
Center for Foreign Language Education, Yuhan University
590 Gyeongin-ro Sosa-gu, Bucheon-si, Gyeonggi-do 422-749, Republic of Korea
E-mail:
Abstract
This article will reconsider Edward W. Said’s notion
of “traveling theory” in light of his most influential work
Orientalism and its appropriation of Michel Foucault’s
theory of “discourse,” which has prompted criticism from
a number of scholars, including James Clifford and Robert
J. C. Young. Rather than looking at the question of
whether Said misappropriates the work of Foucault, I will,
via Harold Bloom’s concept of “misprision,” argue that he
“misreads” the French philosopher in order to add a
political valence that is missing or attenuated in the
original work. Also, I will show why Said is less concerned
with constructing a theory of Orientalism than with
speaking truth to power about the distorted image of the
Received April 28, 2014; accepted March 4, 2015; last revised January 5, 2015
Proofreaders: Chih-wei Wu, Hsih-Keng Yen, Fang-Yi Chen
* Many thanks to Richard Terdiman for reading and commenting on an earlier draft
of this work.