ABSTRACT
To say that Edward Said had a strained relationship to deconstruction might be to venture an understatement. This seems to be the case on a fi rst, or even second, reading. However, the nature of this relationship is not altogether clear and will bear some examination. Upon reading Said one will frequently fi nd dismissals of what he refers to as ‘deconstructionism’, but nowhere is it possible to fi nd a straightforward rebuke of Jacques Derrida. Now, as Nicholas Royle is fond of saying, ‘Here we might usefully take note of a comment made by . . . Martin McQuillan, “deconstruction is not a school or an ‘ism’. There is no such thing as ‘deconstructionism’: this is a word used by idiots”’.1 Given that Said was no idiot (hence it is not possible to fi nd in his writing any simple dismissal of Derrida) what is the nature of this thing that Said calls ‘deconstructionism’? In the fi nal chapter of Culture and Imperialism, in the context of a discussion of the ways in which academic knowledge in the US is confi gured by its relation to Empire, Said articulates a long-held and simmering niggle regarding ‘Theory’ in the humanities. He decries the commodifi cation and specialization of academic work (i.e. the idea that only an Indian expert can speak on India, a Russian specialist on Russia and so on). In this respect he cites, ‘the fantastic explosion of specialized and separatist knowledge . . . Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism, Occidentalism, feminism, Marxism, deconstructionism, etc. The Schools disable and disempower what was empowering and interesting about the original insights.’2
