Abstract

This chapter traces the phenomenological imprints of Said’s approach to orientalist authors of the nineteenth century. It does so by tracing his interest in political sensibilities embodied in literature, scholarship, and culture, through the notions of archival repositories and repertoires. In another section I discuss Said’s awareness of his own subjectivity as a site for the production of imperial culture, in respect of his embodiment of predominating cultural reservoirs, particularly his boyhood fascination with the character Tarzan. In a later section I track Said’s relationship to Marxism, noting Marxist critiques of his work. I discuss the positive influence of Raymond Williams on Orientalism, an influence that tends to be underestimated in the secondary literature. In the final section of this chapter I discuss Said’s varying notions of “traveling theory.”