This third definition connects knowledge about the Orient to power over the Orient. Said draws on the insights of Michel Foucault, a French philosopher and historian, to develop this connection between knowledge and power. Foucault rejected the Enlightenment’s confidence in the capacity of human reason to attain objective knowledge and truth. He did not believe there was any such thing as knowledge for knowledge’s sake, nor did he accept that the quest for knowledge is a disinterested enterprise. What we hold to be true is instead a product of a particular discourse.

XREF: Connects to Foucault's power/knowledge framework, which reappears throughout Said's Orientalism and in broader postcolonial theory. DEFINE: Defines the Foucault-influenced linkage between knowledge and power that underpins Said's third definition of Orientalism.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 204