EDWARD SAID VS MICHEL FOUCAULT: THE DIVERGENCE OF PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE, TRUTH AND POWER

Despite Edward Said’s acknowledgement of the strong impact of Michel Foucault’s works on his major study of Orientalism, Said quickly distanced himself from a Foucauldian perspective in his later writings. The aim of this article is to exhibit the divergence of Said from Foucault. I firstly show their convergent trajectories in Orientalism and then examine their divergent positions and dispositions in Said’s writings. In particular, while Said had a tendency to reject the existence of truth and knowledge outside discourse and power dynamics in Orientalism, he moves toward an anti-Foucauldian perspective in order to defend universal values such as justice, freedom and equality because of the pacifying impact of Foucauldian understanding of power, knowledge and truth in the resistance against the oppressors in his later writings. He manifests himself as a dedicated intellectual to the defense of universal values against power in opposition to moral and epistemological relativism rejecting the existence of universal values, expressed strongly in the writings of Foucault.