Beyond Said and the Saidian Paradigm: Towards A Strong Program Account of Cultural Representation

Abstract

This paper uses analytical and conceptual resources from Strong Program cultural sociology to develop a non-reductive account of cultural representation, which is a corrective to the hegemony of Said-inspired studies. The latter blinds sociology to the symbolic significance of cultural representation as a force for “social good” in the following ways: 1) generating intra- and inter-cultural forms of solidaristic relations and identities; 2) challenging oppressive social structures and the interests of dominant actors, institutions, and the state; 3) reconstructing and re-energizing progressive social values; 4) criticizing existing social and cultural conditions. To demonstrate these claims, the first part of the paper delineates the central analytical concerns and theoretical structure of Said’s Orientalism, before turning to discuss the book’s wider significance for the development of the “Saidian Paradigm”, the dominant and paradigmatic approach to the study of cultural representation today. The second part of the paper shows how Strong Program thinking and resources can be used and adapted to explain changes to, and the moral purification of, the symbolic meanings of Italy and the Italians in England and Britain in the decades spanning the 1820s to 1860s. The Italian case is highly instructive for demonstrating the capacity of Strong Program thinking to bring into view problematics, phenomena, and processes that remain largely unperceived when viewed through the limiting lens of Said-inspired accounts of cultural representation. The paper concludes by reflecting on the ways Strong Program resources can be used to drive forward the study of cultural representation in new and unexplored ways.