Social Text

Social Text appears in Edward Said’s record of the international debate around Orientalism: it published a note on the postcolonial in 1992, placing the journal among the venues through which postcolonial criticism and related discussions circulated. The available evidence identifies that publication but does not describe the journal’s structure, its editorial policies, or the note’s contents.

Publication and Context

The reference is to “Notes on the 'Post-Colonial',” published in Social Text, issue 31/32, in 1992, on page 106. Said cites the item in a discussion of critical work responding to colonialism and postcolonial thought. The citation establishes a publication link, not the journal’s institutional history or the argument advanced in the note.

Connection to Orientalism’s Reception

Said describes Orientalism as becoming, through translation and subsequent debate, “several different books.” He notes that readers and critics in different regions made use of the work in ways he had only partly anticipated. In that account, Social Text’s 1992 publication provides a concrete bibliographic trace of the wider postcolonial discussion associated with the book; the evidence does not establish that the note itself was a response to Orientalism.

Limits of the Evidence

Said’s account emphasizes that the uses and reception of his work differed by intellectual and political context. He describes productive engagements with postcolonial approaches across several regions and disciplines, while also noting that Orientalism could be read less productively as a defensive gesture for or against the West. The citation to Social Text supports identifying the journal as a venue for a postcolonial-related publication, but does not specify how that item was received or what position it took in these debates.