Comments by Shori Asada, a walker in the handle valley: Orientalism and Asia Minor (Deman, Sayyid, emperors...) ）

Original book: Dialogue with Shogun Asada, a pedestrian of the Handle Valley

Translation: Vena, Chai Lairen

Proofreader: Man Gillang

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Orientalism and Asia Minor

Deman and Sayyid

Asada:

Mr. Shangu met Paul Deman at Yale University in the past and most recently edward Said at Columbia University. Of course, Sayyid is not a figure comparable to Deman, and Mr. Shōtani and he have not formed such a deep friendship with Deman. However, if I consider the change in Mr. Shotani's own position, I still feel that this is two symbolic encounters.

Karatani:

I probably read Said for the first time when I went to the United States in the '80s, and it was interesting. After a conversation with Deman, he described it to me this way: "He (Sayyid) wrote more than he thought. [Laughs]

Asada:

Sayyid's work is indeed lengthy.

Karatani:

After all, Deman belongs to very few people who write about it. However, although he was not forgiving, he still had a good feeling for Sayyid to a considerable extent. Deman said he was a journalist and thought criticism should go on in this way.

However, at the time within the university, deconstruction had been completely institutionalized. That is, even if you write a whole bunch of papers, there's nothing that can be interpreted as criticism. In this respect, Sayyid has a journalistic side.

Asada:

Truly. For better or worse, they try to use news-style methods to attract a wide audience. After all, he was the one who used Jonathan Swift as a model.

Karatani:

So when I talked to Sayyid recently, I asked him what he thought of deconstruction. When I heard him say, "It's right but boring," I couldn't help but respond with "I feel the same way." In short, it is said that Derrida is not good [いやだ], Delez is good [いい].

Asada:

Also, if it's time to talk about methods, Michel Foucault also...

Karatani:

Yes, Foucault.

Asada:

In any case, instead of exploring text games and the like, it is better to grasp it from Nietzsche's perspective and grasp it in the grid of power relations.

Karatani:

Yes, in this sense, deconstruction is political.

However, Said argues that the Yale School's deconstruction cleanly removes the excess, the political part, that Derrida holds in the French context, and turns it into a method that anyone can use with peace of mind. And, precisely because it looks dangerous at first glance...

Asada:

Because of the destructive gesture performed, the system of meaning is pushed to the paradox of self-reference...

Karatani:

Because of this, it also gives us a certain sense of conscience satisfaction, so Sayyid says it is harmful in a double sense. Well... I thought so since the beginning of its popularity.

Asada:

Why did deconstruction become so popular in the United States?

Derrida's major achievements were achieved in the sixties, but they became popular in the seventies. The reason for this, I think, is the existence of the social context of the post-radical atmosphere in the United States in the seventies. The story of progress that is constantly spreading on the outside of purity is ruined with the loss of the outside, and then dominates, which can be said to be an ironic emotion, or a cynical emotion as an irony of itself.

Deconstruction is exactly this kind of thing—in a sense, it's alien to America, a nation with a frontier spirit.

Karatani:

However, judging from the fact that it is constantly being reproduced mainly within the university system, this can also be said to be an American phenomenon. Derrida, in part, like the new criticisms that preceded it, spread across the United States after it became the norm.

On the other hand, if anything happens to the former radicals, the Japanese All-Communists have become unscathed cram schools, while the American radicals are said to be teaching in kindergartens (laughs). It seems that children are indoctrinated with very radical ideas in kindergarten (laughs). However, I feel that such people have retained the outside. The people who deconstruct in college have almost no external audience.

Asada:

At the Johns Hopkins Symposium last November (1984), Said spoke about the topic of "High Literary Criticism and the External World," a French translation published in Criticism magazine.

In that publication, he said that when he was going to the general meeting of the Modern Language Association, he saw the counter of the university press, which often published high-level literary criticism, and asked who would read such a book. The person at the counter replied that people in this field would intentionally read each other, so as to ensure that about three thousand copies were sold.

Karatani:

Well, that's the way it is. I think just by putting the outside audience in mind, the perception will be different. What Deman said at the beginning, I think, is based on his self-perception that he does not have such a condition. However, the people after that did not even have such self-awareness.

Asada:

Then it will settle for the status quo in the closed academic world...

Karatani:

In contrast, several rather barbaric people emerged. That is Jameson and Sayyid. The so-called deconstruction can be said to be a Gödelian thing.

Asada:

Only in the limits of this cycle of continuous folding of the interior itself can one glimpse the outside ...

Karatani:

That's right. In contrast, the two men blatantly brought the outside in. Such barbaric acts are interesting aren't they.

Of course, there are many problems if you think about it rigorously, but in the American context, I think it is necessary to force something to say about deconstructing such a meticulous and refined thing.

Asada:

Of these two, I thought Jameson was too savage.

Regardless of the need to get out of the symbolic 'cage of language', he used that as a starting point to conceive of a so-called capitalized 'history' that exists in a deeper reality, and said that the fulcrum of the dialectic of the intermediary [medium] should be found in the imagination of the people in the middle imagination and fantasy layer. As Sayyid quoted in Eagleton's comment, this is nothing more than a kind of 'nostalgic Hegelianism'.

In this respect, Said's thinking about politics is more realistic than Jameson's because he involves a more decentralized network of power relations.

Karatani:

Moreover, Jameson is a general conscience-like being of the American left-wing elite, and Said can be said to be a 'badass'. The Palestine Liberation Organization in which he participated in the United States could only be a niche presence...

Asada:

Therefore, he should have crossed many difficulties.

Karatani:

It is said that because he wrote a draft of Arafat's Speech at the United Nations, he was recorded on the popular list of assassinations by Jewish organizations and anti-Arafats, so he used to ride in a bulletproof car. That is to say, he was in a more specific situation than Jameson. And, although I had had the illusion before I actually met him, said that not only was he not a Palestinian refugee, but even grew up in an elite educational environment in the eastern authorities, and he was not a pretentious person.

Asada:

Well, after all he's also written about Glenn Goodell and the like....

Karatani:

Yes, he's the one who writes this kind of stuff and doesn't seem unnatural. His theory of Palestine just popped out... [Laughs).

Asada:

Then his involvement may be a real decision....

Critique of Anti-Mysticism and Orientalism

Karatani:

Indeed it is.

Although it has nothing to do with deconstruction, because I have been thinking about things like the Gödel problem when I met him, the whole person is probably in an inexplicable state (laughs). Whether it's a text or a work, or a system of difference that differentiates itself, if I think about it there, there will always be mysterious things popping into my head.

Asada:

The system attributes what happened because of external shocks, self-differentiation due to internal, and so on.

Karatani:

Then you will fall into mysticism. Later, I asked Sayyid what he thought of things like spirit, spirit, and so on. His answer gave me a sense of empowerment. He said: "I don't care about that kind of thing. Since I'm all on the list of assassination hits, death is just a matter of that. I'm just going to think about my family. ”

In retrospect, this kind of speech was probably a normal thing more than twenty years ago, but it made me realize how loose my lifestyle has been so far.

Asada:

In other words, only those idle people who live in the greenhouse will be troubled by the world after death...

Karatani:

Exactly. When the whole world is at war, there is still leisure to think about the world after death (laughs).

Asada:

All in all, I think Said has been consistent in his anti-mysticism. This is clearly reflected in the afterword to The World Text Critic, published in 1983. Sayyid rejected all "religious criticism" and turned to "secular criticism."

The so-called "religious criticism" can be roughly divided into two categories.

One is to summarize and seal off the various events that occur everywhere as external "others", such as Orientalism based on the typical "East".

To greatly simplify Saeed's statement, the other is to mystify and mystify such diverse external forces directly into things like the self-differentiation of texts, inconclusivities, or paradoxes. For example, deconstruction based on so-called capitalized "text".

The direct one-size-fits-all approach to these two "religious criticisms" is indeed very barbaric, but it is indeed crisp and clean.

Karatani:

To say something ugly is to incite the wind and set the fire. The book "Orientalism" is the same, from beginning to end, it talks about the same point of view (laughs).

However, even so, he would not take the direct view of the East as an external way to show it.

Asada:

Rather, that approach is Orientalism.

Karatani:

That's right. So I read the book expecting it to tell me what the actual East looks like, but I didn't find anything like that until the end (laughs). The so-called "real Arab world" is the embodiment of Orientalism.

Asada:

Thus, the relationship between the West and the East is codified in the space of speech as an ambiguous binary structure, and is continuously analyzed by Foucault. In the end, it is still talking about how the West integrates its exterior into the so-called East and portrays it as an object of contradiction.

Karatani:

Saeed, who has only explored the Middle East, said countries like India and China, while important, are not meant to explain.

Later, I thought about Japan's relationship with North Korea and China. It is precisely because it is a closely connected relationship that there are many reversals. For example, until the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese said that saints would only appear in China, but after that, they began to call Chinese "Chinese yankees". It was even more extreme with North Korea, and during the Edo period, North Korean cultural envoys were always invited.

Japan's view of Asian history – that is, Japan's Orientalism – arose precisely from the idea of concealing such a past and reversing the relationship between good and bad.

There is no such contradictory relationship between European and American countries and Asian countries, and if there is, it only exists with Arab countries. Historically, Arab dominance is evident. After all, the origin of modern Times in the West was born here.

Asada:

Exactly. Because of the attempt to conceal this fact, the islamic world has fabricated the preservation of the heritage of ancient Greece and Rome and its transmission to Europe during the Renaissance, but this is extremely biased. First of all, Greece and Rome were the regions of the Mediterranean world and not Europe....

Karatani:

Orientalism arises from a sense of guilt toward the Arab world. I think the relationship with ordinary Asian countries is a different matter.

Asada:

In other words, such relations have made Arab to Europe and the United States, and China and Korea to Japan to become internal others.

Karatani:

Yes. That traumatic experience is at the heart—though it feels like psychoanalysis.

Japanese Orientalism and the Emperor system

Asada:

As mentioned earlier, we also have Orientalism in this sense. This is an important fact. Especially relations with North Korea.

Karatani:

That's right. It would be reasonable to just have this relationship with China.

Asada:

Speaking of Korea, the ancient history of Japan is not so much influenced as a poor chapter contained in the ancient history of Korea.

Karatani:

Probably in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, I always thought of hiding this fact...

Asada:

It has been a lie since the time of Emperor Tenmu.

Karatani:

In a sense, the imperial system itself contains Orientalist overtones.

Asada:

With regard to the emperor, there is a reference to the scapegoat theory and the like that the emperor is also an outsider excluded from the community, and that he has something in common with the external discriminated people at the lower level. In fact, however, the Emperor was previously clearly (supposedly) a person outside the heavens [外から來た]

What works here may be the mechanism of turning a simple external object into an internal external after extreme internalization. Although in the final analysis, this is due to the isolation of "traffic".

Karatani:

Yes. And the emperor system always plays a role when Japan is against Asia, because we want to bring the emperor, who has transcended internally, into all of Asia. The so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Circle and the like have such a meaning in it.

In short, although there is nothing wrong with criticizing Orientalism in Europe and the United States, if there is a slight mistake, it will fall into this kind of Orientalism in Japan.

Asada:

This is the most dangerous situation.

Karatani:

Undoubtedly, because of Sayyid's relationship, criticism of Orientalism became quite popular, such as among Japanese scholars in the United States. But the need to accept Said's Orientalism seems to have become a consensus.

The first thing they read was the literary history of Mitsuo Nakamura. Although the Japanese are writing about Japan, the content is typical of European and American Orientalism, and the literary history written in English is basically on such a line. In this way, a cycle of self-confirmation by Europeans and Americans has been formed. Realizing that this cycle had to be broken, through Sayyid's book, they discovered things like my Origins of Modern Japanese Literature.

Although this is a good thing, these outstanding scholars who have departed from European and American Orientalism will plunge headlong into Japanese Orientalism.

Asada:

That would be nerve-wracking. Moreover, some Japanese people still think that it is no problem to become like this, which is even worse.

Karatani:

Therefore, I do not want to see Japan criticize Orientalism with self-criticism in Europe and the United States. This kind of behavior is Orientalism, isn't it?

The Japanese cannot simply hold the view that they are victims of Orientalism. There is no point in talking like this. It must be recognized that it is Japan that is reproducing Orientalism.

Asada:

I am afraid that a closer look, whether in Asia or elsewhere, reveals that the reproduction of Orientalist things is ubiquitous. Even to take the center of attention away from Europe and just cling to a different point of view is to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Karatani:

At the end of the day, it's not enough to just stare at one country. In this way, people who study China in the United States basically have to learn Japanese, but those who study Japan only need to know Japanese.

In this way, most people who study China can avoid the Japanese Orientalism just mentioned. Instead, they will have the rather orthodox prejudice that Japan has historically been just part of The Chinese cultural community.

Asada:

In reality, however, Japan, if not part of China, is just a fart [シッポ].

Karatani:

Oh, yes. At the very least, there is something in their approach that corrects our biases.

About China

Akira Asada: And either way, China is completely plural, so it is not a simple matter to homogenize China in the same way that Japan is to be homogenized.

Shōtani: Well, historically it's also discontinuous.

Akira Asada: In the vast expanse of geography, there are always many centers, and they move away from each other. Power also moves only in a non-contiguous manner. Therefore, whether it is a hierarchical system with a solid center, or a seemingly non-central homogeneous space like the emperor system, it is impossible to catch it (for China).

However, if we look at it again from this perspective, this is the general reality of history, and the structure and its one-line development [as the Japanese emperor system] has captured are nothing more than fictions—and such a fact will be realized.

Shōtani: Here, too, I painfully draw out Marx's concept of "transportation." The so-called "transportation" is the principle of not letting (things) be centralized.

Asada: That said, it's not a non-central harmony (ハーモニー, harmony).

Shotani: Well, there's always a center, just the majority.

Asada: The majority of the center, the deviation and movement in between, this is "traffic", right?

Shogu: Not in the case of Hegel but Marx, I think this is the most important question.

Asada: This can be seen very clearly in China.

So I think of Le Mao's TheOry of Contradictions. Although some guys say that contradictions (in "Contradictions") are only juxtaposed and not three-dimensionally unfolded, in fact, what Le Mao calls "contradictions" is almost a difference and harmless thing, with the feeling that it will deviate from the past to the other side (へ). Or rather, by deviating from the mistakes of "discarding" contradictions.

Even in the theory of war, Hegel's situation is to wake up and resurrect on the second floor by staging a deadly struggle on the first floor, and then ascending in a progressive manner; In contrast to this form, Le Mao's situation is to escape from that house and wander through the vast space, in general, deviating from the deadly points and engaging in guerrilla warfare.

Shogu: So, the same is true of the Long March.

Asada: The anti-Hegelian theory of contradiction and war may be quite Chinese.

Shōgu: The difference is that in China there is something like Cheng Zhu Lixue [Zhu Zixue] that logicalizes the legitimacy of domination, and there is a considerable logical violence here. Speaking of legitimacy, the result often becomes discontinuous. Mongols and Manchus invaded and then dominated, what is there to be orthodox about this kind of thing?

Asada: So, in order to give logical consistency to something that can actually only be the successor of non-continuums, the transcendent logos had to be forcibly constructed at the meta level.

Tsukitani: Yeah, I think it's something very tense\tension.

Asada: However, when we first arrived in Japan, the emperor of the so-called "One Generation" existed as a hidden meta-level from the beginning, so [Japan] lost that tension and tension.

Tsutomu: So on that opposite extreme [対極], there seems to be a (Japanese) kokushoku that seems to reject all transcendence, but that's because the meta-level (the emperor system) that has been hidden contains the production [bao], which is possible.

Asada: I think this kind of thing is the most understandable thing when you look at the history of Edo thought. Sure enough, here we must read the Debate And Debate Scripture carefully. Zhuzixue, which was institutionalized in the Edo period, was originally criticized by (the great Japanese thinker) Ogi Ogi, and then moved towards (Japanese) Kunikoku Yunyun... Oh, if you don't come out of these inferior repeat machines, you can't do it.

Shōtani: Well, I have to reorganize the perspective\point of view on this.

Reversed Orientalism

Tsutomu: Let me cut it off, when discussing Asia recently, there are a lot of people who actually adopt the "Riyuki [ウラ] view of Japanese history."

Asada: Ah, as opposed to the Yayoi thing, the Jomon thing; As opposed to the things of the common people, the things of the mountain people and so on. Then these things have a hidden connection with the whole of Asia Minor and so on.

Shotani: Ah, yes, right. These claims are interesting, but the conclusion is only SF\sci-fi. It is not possible to conduct research in this way, but we must first understand what is in this space of speech. And the place where such a space was established is the history of Edo thought. If you skip this place, the result becomes a different orientalist feeling—"deep Asia" or something.

Asada: Indeed, if we materialize the "Japan of the Inside" in relation to the "Japan of the Surface", it is just a reversal of the advantages and disadvantages, as we have just seen in the relationship between Japan and North Korea. Isn't that Orientalism?

Stalk Valley: Yes. Well, you have to consider more intricate situations.

Asada: Or rather, reality is a complex thing. Turn it into a simple binary opposition such as table/inside [オモテ/ウラ], surface/deep, inside/outside, self/other, and so on, and there will be a mythical story.

Tsutomu: And Japan is originally Asia Minor. Thus, some criticize Western Orientalism and as a result create Asia minor as its reversal. These people will only do this over and over again. This repetition machine is disgusting - ignorance! [Laughs). Marx said that ignorance does not prosper, is this not prosperity! [Laughs).

Asada: Not only ignorant, but shameless (laughs).

Shōtani: In short, when people impulsively get caught up in this kind of discussion, it's best to be consciously aware of this. For such impulses are due to some kind of structural repetitive compulsion. In a sense, this means that it is combined with the imperial system. Even if it is proposed as a critique of the imperial system, it will still become like this. I'm not interested in the emperor, but the guys who criticize the emperor are the ones who are easily attracted to the emperor (laughs).

Asada: And isn't the so-called greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere concept what some people mean by the Critique of Orientalism?

The first was the liberation of the Countries of Asia Minor from the colonial domination of the European and American powers; Then, the West [Western], which is opposed to the contradiction between the whole and the individual, forms an Oriental-style co-prosperity circle in which the whole and the individual are softly reconciled.

In this case, in the order of the at first-glance non-centrist honor [ホロン] that is possible according to the illusory center of the emperor, the illusion of the unity of the whole and the individual as one is indicated as an Oriental thing, which has an advantage over the rigid hierarchy of Western centralization—which is typical of (merely) reversed Orientalism.

Shōtani: In that sense, the current discussion in Japan centered on conservative circles is all Orientalism. It's the exact same thing over and over again.

Asada: And, as before the war, there were economic problems.

Japanese Imperialism and Asia Minor

Shōtani: In reality, Asia Minor is now the Market for Japan. So, even if you criticize Orientalism in an Enlightened way, say something like Asia to open your eyes to reality, it turns out that you are talking about visiting the Japanese market, and finally you just confirm that the prejudice on this side, which contains the so-called "conscience" prejudice, comes back. Well, although it seems to be more and more able to move around, can this be said to be "traffic\communication"?

Asada: (Not only for Asia Minor, Japan) It's the same for Europa.

Handle Valley: Hmm. Only Paris can be regarded as France's "Western-like," Occidentalism. Self-confirmation with backpacking.

Asada: Also, lately the Japanese have been wonderfully confident, thinking that France is a backward country, and then when they go to Paris, they find that it is really dirty, and it is good for Japan or something (laughs). Of course, [Japan's] bias against Asia Minor is even more excessive.

Shogaya: For this reason, I have to think that the classical [Lenin] theory of imperialism is still necessary.

Asada: That's it! Because [Japan] is engaged in the division of the world market.

Handle Valley: Yes. If you stay in Japan's consumer society, you can't detect it. It's self-evident.

Asada: For example, recently, I read ryuaki Yoshimoto's speech and I was dumbfounded.

According to him, there are hungry people in the Third World, so what is the compulsion to drunkenly dream of death in Japan? - This argument is wrong! If you want to ask why, on the one hand, there is the question of the place where production should be the main body of thought, and on the other hand, the question of the place where consumption should be the main body of thinking," said Takaaki Yoshimoto. However, I wonder if the so-called consumer society in Japan is based on poverty in the third world.

It is true that in places where there is no movement of labour, where the definition of international value is not smooth, a rigorous theory of unequal exchange cannot be unfolded, but even so, it is quite conceivable that what is produced by an average of 5 hours of labor in the Third World is exchanged for what is made of an average of 5 minutes of labor in Japan. Of course, it is dangerous to put such comparisons into parentheses and hang them, and can only be said to be irrational [uncommon].

Tsutomu: That's evidence of how closed japan's postwar thinking is. I wonder if this is less than the ideology of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, which instead focuses on reality. Advocating the latter, they wanted to forcibly justify Japan's aggression.

Asada: Now, there is not even a sense of evil.

Shogaya: As I said earlier, what is the reconciliation of the whole with the individual, the integration of oneself with the other, in Asia – whether it is Mount Everest or Bali, it is the same in this regard. Sightseeing trips for Japanese consumers – there is a feeling of a cultural anthropological backpacking resort. On the other side, however, there is an embarrassing and mediocre reality.

Asada: Asahi said before, Sayyid's critique of Orientalism and its system of knowledge [テクスチュア], but in the end this criticism is inevitably the same. The liberation from the logos=Philuscentric hierarchy, the playfulness of the centerless female text... That's Asia Minor—as it goes.

Handle Valley: Forcing the existence of such a place is the method of sightseeing tourism marketing number. Saeed once said that Barthes's Empire of Symbols was also Orientalist. This is true, but Barthes said that his object was not the actual Japanese...

Asada: This (Bart's Empire of Symbols) is another story of "ガラバーニュ" (Michel Henry Henry's overhead travels "グランド・ガラバーニュの旅"), how does tonyo itself... Barthes's statement, while obviously raising the bar AT position, is also fair.

Stalk Valley: Yes. However, whether it is Tibetan tantra or Korean shamanism, if it really exists, it becomes pure mysticism in that instant. Then, it becomes time to go sightseeing there.

Asada: Postmodern Asia, Postmodern · Japan!!

Shogu: That's the worst kind of Orientalism. What is exported from the West to domestically [inversely imported] has become even more inferior.

Bart and Christia

Asada: At this point, Bart is on a critical line. I think Bart is still good compared to Christeva.

Well, Kristeva's theory is to look for the symbolic maternal chaos that occurs before deconstruction, as opposed to the symbolic patriarchal order that exists on the surface, and its potential subversive power. She was satisfied when she found this so-called motherhood in China, but she was rather unhappy with Japan.

After she returned to China, she said this in an interview with "アール・プレス", in short, where there is no patriarchal system, the infringement of maternal things is meaningless. There, everything fell into narcissism based on a pre-Oedipal mother-child relationship. Although this creates an alternation between the stable and the violent, they cannot form a dialectical relationship—I can only say that it is naïve and naïve to argue about it.

Thus, Maurice Pinguet, a former friend of Barthes and Foucault, deliberately did not say "suicide" in order to rebel against Christian morality, but the result was also a reference to patriarchal prohibitions and violations of them in the West, maternal fetters and betrayals in Japan. That's the limit of psychoanalytic argument, right?

Shōgu: Discussions like Kristeva's are exactly the same as the ordinary history of Chinese thought. China has long been caught in tension between Confucianism and Taoism. Of course, Chinese Buddhism is on the line of Lao Zhuang. Christeva, whatever, just repeats the meaning in another term.

However, in Japan, even lao Zhuang, who said that there was no naturalness, criticized it as artificial, and took the terrible unprincipledness as the principle (laughs). In short, (Japanese) Kokugaku affirms this Japanese-style generative logic as a feminine thing, so something like a critique of patriarchy like Lao Zhuang can only be idle .)

I think this feminine thing is different from what Kristeva said. But I wondered if Barthes wanted to discover this.

Asada: Yes, the scattering of symbols that is thinner than what Kristeva said—not so much baroque as rococo. Then with regard to Derrida, although the specific differences are different, I think he went farther and deeper than the Christia stage (ずっと先まで行ってる). However, even if that place is reached, there is still a danger of Orientalism.

Shōtani: In Japan, people who read Bart and Derrida perceive this must exist.

Asada: For example, to criticize sounds and phonetic scripts, Asia minor is like a treasure trove of ideographs, which is why it becomes the feeling of "writing [エクリチュール]の幸さきはふ国". In addition, the guys who used "テル・ケル" also used clumsy and ugly Kanji to show people (laughs).

[Translator's note: Akira Asada really doesn't understand what the second half of this sentence says]

Speech, divorced from politics, is impossible

Handle Valley: That's what it says.

Well, in this way, in the unfolding of post-structuralism, now that the ideological props are very complete, the next step is how to use it.

As Althusser said, something that appears like this has become a meaningless form, and what meaning it can have, depending on the context, can be completely different. If you don't pay attention to this, even if you continue to say the same thing, you may have the opposite meaning as before.

Asada: In that sense, nietzsche, Foucault, or the analysis of knowledge and power that Sayyid is doing, I think is now becoming particularly important.

Stalk Valley: Yes. This perspective is needed now.

Asada: It is true that the political concepts of Sayyid and others are too crude and rigorously problematic, but they will at least be a stimulus.

Tsutomu: In conclusion, it is time to stress once again that there can be no separation from politics. I think it's in this place that Orientalism becomes [a reminder].

(First "GS" No. 3, 1985 Monthly Issue "Around "Orientalism")