 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.
