 Postmodern postcolonial theorists offer a more radical critique of European progress narratives than Amin does.  Michel Foucault, the French historian of ideas, is a major influence on the school. Foucault holds that discourses are what constitute and empower the subjects that make history.  Thus he takes discourses as the fundamental objects of historical study.  In Orientalism, Edward Said (1935–2003) applies Foucault's method of discourse analysis to 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century writings about the Middle East by British and French novelists, travelers, and academics (Said 1978, 201). At the heart of the discourse of Orientalism is the conviction that the countries of the Middle East lag behind those of Europe and can only improve under the tutelage of Europeans (172, 205–06).  Said argues that the discourse of Orientalism laid the foundation for the colonial project and supported it once it was underway (210).  In addition to Said, the historians of the subaltern studies movement have adapted a Foucauldian view of history, in their case to analyze Indian colonial history (Prakash 1994, 1480).  They have drawn attention to historical actors they term “subaltern.” These are non-elite Indians that challenged the discourses of both colonialism and anti-British nationalism by exploiting inconsistencies in those discourses (1482–3). Although at odds in many ways, both discourses drew heavily from progress narratives (1475).  In general, postmodern postcolonialists aim to show that the typical universal history is one discourse among many incommensurable discourses, none of which are without inconsistencies. 