Marxism, early Soviet oriental studies and the problem of ‘power/knowledge’

The inadequacies of studying early Soviet oriental studies under the rubric of Foucault’s ideas about discourse and power/knowledge are discussed, showing how the field was constituted by interventions in a complex and shifting institutional and ideological environment. The dialogue between pre-revolutionary philologists and historians and young Marxist thinkers is considered, showing how key conceptions about the ‘East’ were subjected to criticism and reformulated. This open and dynamic field was closed down in the Stalin period as the distinction between scientific and statutory authority collapsed, reducing competing paradigms to mere articulations of drives for power. This collapse of power and knowledge into a single category anticipated some key aspects of the Foucauldian paradigm. The work of the philologist N.Ia. Marr, whose treatment of Indo-European philology and the hybridization of languages and cultures, is shown to anticipate important aspects of postcolonial theory in its Foucauldian form.