Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

245Following Foucault’s archaeological method, Said goes back to the Western archives todiscover that the discourse of Orientalism belongs to a long history ofdiscontinuitiesdiscontinuities that work in favor of Western colonial interests. However, hisdeconstruction of Orientalism is framed within the discourse of secularism. He formulates hissecularism as an antithesis to the discourse of Orientalism in his article, “Figures, Configurations,Transfiguration.” He argues: “we should begin our acknowledgement of a world map withoutdivinely or dogmatically sanctioned spaces, essences, or privileges. It is necessary therefore tospeak of our element as secular space and humanly constructed and interdependent histories thatare fundamentally knowable but not through grand theory or systematic totalization” (25). Insteadof the binarist discourse of the Orientalists, Said proposes a secular space with no borders wherepeople contribute to history regardless of their race or gender. However, the hybridized space ofopenness it offers as an alternative to the Orientalist paradigms, Said’s secularism remains withinthe limits of its own binarism, particularly when it situates itself in the space of humanism whichincludes the very Orientalism that Said criticizes. While he rejects the binarism of Orientalism,Said adopts Vico’s humanism which is itself binarist. Jonathan Arac notes in “The Social Text”that this view is “a Western formation that perpetuates the dominance of Western reason overother epistemologies” (42). Said, like the Orientalist, thinks in terms of binarism. In his book, InTheory, Aijaz Ahmad studies Said’s ambivalent humanistic stand. He argues that “what isremarkable about this …very resounding affirmation of humanist value is that humanism asideality is invoked precisely at the time when humanism as history has been rejected sounequivocally ”(164). Ahmad points out that while Said critiques the humanist tradition from