Interrogating Knowledge Production Post 9/11: A Deleuzian Reading of Hamid Dabashi’s Understanding of “Post-Orientalism”

Abstract

This paper analyzes Dabashi’s understanding of the epistemic exhaustion of knowledge
production designated by the term “Orientalism” after 9/11, the reclamation of agency,
the dissolution of the categories of “the West” and “the East” and the role of the
intellectual. After examining these concepts, the attempt is to figure out parallels
between Dabashi's argument about “epistemic endosmosis” and Deleuze's
understanding of “unlimited semiosis” unleashed by capitalism. Dabashi's
foregrounding of the recodification of racial relations to adapt to the market logic will
be juxtaposed with Deleuze's concept of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization.”
Dabashi's proposition of the implosion of the binaries of “the East” and “the West” will
be juxtaposed with the Deleuzian concept of “schizoanalysis,” and the dismantling of
dualisms. Lastly, this paper attempts to trace affinities between Dabashi's
conceptualisation of a revolutionary intellectual and the Deleuzian concept of “war
machine” and the formation of a deterritorialized subjectivity that is able to contend
and relentlessly defy the effects of power to establish rigid identities and entities.