Abstract

Although they are his preferred analytical strategies, critique and extension only emerge fully in Said's later works. Critique entails recognizing prior thinkers' conceptual, theoretical, and methodological advancements while scrupulously acknowledging and specifying their limitations. Extension amplifies those advancements into marginalized domains. Applying these strategies to Said's readings of Freud and reflections on compartmentalization, this paper argues that whereas in earlier projects Said finds in Freud corroborating evidence for the shift from filiation to affiliation, later modified to account for the potential of affiliation to inhabit the emergence of a secular critical consciousness, in later projects he rereads Freud in a manner that allows him to transpose Freud's insights about identity beyond Jew and European. Similarly, it argues that what induces Said to "jettison" (or compartmentalize) his autobiographical experiences (reading Conrad in the Middle East) in the early phase of his scholarly career is sublimation. Both arguments suggest how African literary criticism and Freudian psychoanalysis may engage each other in productive dialogue.

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