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The Illusion of a Future: "Orientalism" as Traveling Theory

The history of Orientalism is already slipping away, the current legends are now firmly established, but some basic questions lingering around it have not yet been posed. With the book's twentieth anniversary just behind us, we might well ask: Did Orientalism-as received opinion would have it-launch a new scholarly field known as postcolonial studies?' That the response has to be "no" is one that few are prepared to hear. Supporters and critics alike are unified around the claim that Orientalism has an altogether causal relationship to postcolonial studies. What I argue below, then, has to be more than the reading of a book since it involves a question with somewhat higher stakes and far-reaching associations than Orientalism's "meaning." Although it may seem at first glance digressive, that question is what the writing of Michel Foucault-indeed, of poststructuralism in general-has to do with Edward Said. It would be neatly appropriate to give answers to these questions by characterizing Orientalism in terms of its worldliness, by which I do not mean its global reach or supposedly transgressive crossing of bordersas the word worldly is often used-but rather its materiality, its selfpositioning in the sense that Raymond Williams once wrote of writing "in society." This is the way, I would argue, that Said himself uses it. The reception of Orientalism-this spectacular and depressing instance of trav-