Edward Said - Orientalism

A man of great intellect and courage, Edward Said (1935-2003) taught English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. This Palestinian writer and activist was widely respected for his ground-breaking research in the field of comparative literature and on his incisive political commentary. As well, he wrote classical music criticism for The Nation and political commentary for such publications as the Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, and al-Hayat, the Arab-language daily, which is printed in every Arab capital in the world.

He was born in Jerusalem, and with his family he emigrated (1948) to Cairo, about the time Israel declared its independence and the Arab-Israeli war began. The family moved (1950) to the New York, so that he could attended college. Later, Said studied at Princeton and Harvard, where he graduated Ph.D. in 1964. Most of his academic career was spent in New York as a professor at Columbia, but he was also a visiting professor at many leading universities.

Like Noam Chomsky, he became an intellectual of the first rank. Both activists more or less see the public role of the intellectual in terms of being the outsider, the amateur, and the disturber of the status quo. Both critique the media as impediments to an understanding of what governments actually do behind closed doors, thereby promoting a sense of resistance. He lectured at more than 150 universities and colleges in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Because of his advocacy for Palestinian self-determination and his membership in the Palestine National Council, he was only latterly allowed to visit Palestine.

Said published many important books, including Orientalism (1978), a critique of the Eurocentrism that had come to typify Orient...

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...s to the politics, oil economics, and the simple-minded dichotomy of freedom-loving democratic Israel and evil, totalitarian, and terrorist Arabs, establishing a clear view of the Near East has become difficult. My experiences in these matters made me write this. The life of an Arab Palestinian in the West is rather disheartening, for the web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, and so on is very strong. The nexus of knowledge and power that creates "the Oriental" and in a sense establishes him as a human being is not (for me) an exclusively academic matter. I have been able to put to use my humanistic and political concern for the development and consolidation of Orientalism (p. 52).

Works Cited

Said, Edward W. 1978. "Orientalism." In Studies in Culture: An Introductory Reader, ed. Ann Gray and Jim McGuigan. London: Arnold, 1997, pp. 42-53.