 Like his post @-@ modern intellectual mentors , the philosophers Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault , Said was fascinated by how the people of the Western world perceive the peoples of and the things from a different culture , as well as the effects of society , politics , and power upon literature ; these preoccupations led him to become a founding intellectual of post @-@ colonial criticism . While Orientalism remains his principal cultural contribution , Said 's influential critical interpretations of the works of Joseph Conrad , Jane Austen , Rudyard Kipling , William Butler Yeats and others further bolstered his intellectual reputation . 
