David Sugarman 258 For some, the message of this approach is that language floats free of its context. The tension between language and context is abolished, as is history. But this need not follow. Said’s application of Foucault’s idea of discourse in his efforts to describe the construction of categories such as “East”, “West”, “the Orient”, “Islam” is a case in point.Far froma simple imperialist conspiracy against the East, orientalism, observes Said, is rather a: “... distribution of geopolitical awareness intoaesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical and philosophical texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distribution but also of a whole series of interests which, by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but maintains. 181 “Texts”, in this sense, are analysed in detail to explore the ways they both constitute and exemplify the “big facts”, the broad generalisations and the common sense of modern societies. Cultural concepts are never autonomous of their historical context and the authority that underpins them. More generally, the critique of reflective theories of knowledge is associated with the repudiation of those epistemologies which assume that material forces determine thought; and that thought reflects (albeit in complex ways) material forces. All this has significant ramifications for the study of law, ideology and consciousness, not to mention the practice of historians and social theorists. Particularly important, perhaps, is recent emphasis upon the multiplicity of meanings and the contingent character of historical representations (rather than on what lies “behind them” or their “real” meaning or effect). In any discourse there are alternatives. Why is one adopted rather than another? Amajor question becomes how were discourses used} In one discourse a particular group may win; in another discourse it may lose. Fromthis perspective games are being won and lost in quite different fields. Groups such as the middle class or entities such as popular culture no longer appear homogenous and undifferentiated. They are characterised by diverse spheres with diverse discourses that refuse to fit the traditional conceptualisations.Xhe signs are arbitrarv; they are not anchored in any strict class formation. Questions of discourse, institution and power have to some extent replaced ideology, culture and experience as master categories. This emphasis upon the primacy of language is not without its problems. In See, ibid. Said, Orientalism, op. cit., p. 16. See, for example, G. S. Jones, “Rethinking Chartism”, in G. S. Jones, Languages of Class, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 90-178, J. Seed, “Unitarianism, Political Economy and the Autonomies of Liberal Culture in Manchester, 1830-50” Social History, 7, 1982, pp 2-26; J. Brewer. “Commercialisation and Politics”, in N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb, (eds ), The Birth of a Consumer Society, (London: Europa, 1982), pp. 197-264. 180
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