Edward Said “States” refutes the view Western journalists, writers, and scholars have created in order to represent Eastern cultures as mysterious, dangerous, unchanging, and inferior. According to Said, who was born in Jerusalem at that time Palestine, the way westerners represent eastern people impacts the way they interact with the global community. All of this adds to, Palestinians having to endure unfair challenges such as eviction, misrepresentation, and marginalization that have forced them to spread allover the world. By narrating the story of his country Palestine, and his fellow countrymen from their own perspective Said is able to humanize Palestinians to the reader. “States” makes the reader feel the importance of having a homeland, and how detrimental having a place to call home is when trying to maintain one’s culture. Which highlights the major trait of the Palestinian culture: survival. Throughout “States”, Said presents the self-preservation struggles Palestinians are doomed to face due to eviction, and marginalization. “Just as we once were taken from one habitat to a new one we can be moved again” (Said 543).
Being exposed for such a long time to other cultures, Palestinians have had to deal with the effects of transculturation. Transculturation, as defined by ethnographers, is “to describe processes whereby members of a subordinate or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture” (Pratt 491). In other words Palestinians have absorbed parts of the different cultures they are now part of due to the nakba, or catastrophe, which marks the exile of more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from what is known today as Israel. On November 30, 1947 the United Nations v...
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... showing people that the Palestinians are indeed human.
Acknowledgements
The essay “States” is a great piece of literature that tries to convey a message important to society. Although, at first, it seemed as if analyzing this piece would be an easy job it was not easy at all. One has to read within and against the grain to understand Said. That is why I would like to thank Prof. Griffin, and my classmates Mariia and Fan for giving me their different insights on Said.
Works Cited
Said, Edward Wadie. “States.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 537-575. Print.
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 485-497. Print.
Jefferson, Thomas. “From Notes on the State of Virginia.” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Ed. Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, Bonnie Lisle. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. 378-383.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
An Anthology For Readers and Writers. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 1283-1296. Print.
This marked the beginning of the Palestine armed conflict, one of its kinds to be witnessed in centuries since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War 1. Characterized by a chronology of endless confrontations, this conflict has since affected not only the Middle East relations, but also the gl...
Abcarian, Richard, Marvin Klotz, and Samuel Cohen. Literature: the Human Experience. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. Print.
Israel was a very hard place to live when it first was established. We often found sickness, which caused many families to start over again. Because of this, there were many authors who expressed their feelings during this time. This can be seen this in the story Dr. Schmidt. In this story, it is clear that there are a lot of old and new Jews, topics relating to Zionism, and a gap between Ashkenazi Jews and Yemenite Jews. These topics have helped readers relate to these stories, and motivate them to live a better life. This is why the state of Israel has been so successful in its short life. The drive to succeed has shaped the State of Israel for the better.
Prono, Luca. “Literature.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures: New England. Santa Barbara: ABC, 2004. Credo Reference. Web 25 April 2014.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. Print.
There are so many different texts that are out there. People from different cultures and communities write texts that we usually do not take seriously. We don’t want to see their point of view about things. We just want them to understand our point of view but not theirs. “States” is a transcultural text. A contact zone is the space in which transculturation takes place. Mary Pratt defines “Transculturation as a process whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant metropolitan culture” (323). Palestinians are surrounded by dominant cultures. Pratt uses “transcultural” to describe the dominant groups or cultures because there are so many
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Ways of Reading 8th Edition. Eds. David Bartholomae, A.P. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2008. 499-511.
After World War II the British gave Palestine to the United Nations, in 1947 the UN resolved to “partition the country into two states. Roughly 57% of Palestine would become a Jewish state while 43% was to be a Palestinian Arab state.” The Palestinians rejected the plan in support that the Arab league declared the partition illegal. There was a lot of violence in Palestine during this time...
Abcarian, Richard. Literature: the Human Experience : Reading and Writing. : Bedford/Saint Martin's, 2012. Print.
“Palestinians do not control their own fate but instead live under the power of other states” (82, Yambert). The one state that directly controls the fate of Palestinians in the occupied territories is Israel and for the Palestinians who do not reside in Israel, other governments control them. The history of Palestine and how Israel came into existence is essential to understand in order to break down the present day conflict. The most dominant and important player in the Palestinian – Israeli conflict has been the United States of America, which has completely shaped the predicament in order to fulfill its interests. Before delving into the role of the United States, it is essential to go back in time and familiarize with the history of Palestine and Israel.
When Yasser Arafat addressed the United Nations General Assembly, he tried to articulate the actions the Palestinian Liberation Organization had taken and to justify those actions. Arafat points out that the struggles with Imperialism and Zionism began in 1881 when the first large wave of immigrants began arriving in Palestine. Prior to this date, the Muslims, Jews (20,000) and Christians all cohabitated peacefully (pop. 1/2 million). In 1917, the Belfour Declaration authorized increased immigration of European Jews to Palestine. 1 From 1917 to 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine increased to 600,000 and they rightfully owned only 6% of the Palestinian arable land. Palestine population at this time was now up to 1,250,000. 1
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 10th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2013. Print.