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Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of Postcolonialism.Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, New York & London: Routledge, 1990. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for his book Orientalism (1978), a foundational text which critiques the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient. His model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle Eastern studies.Stephen Howe, "Dangerous mind?", New Humanist, Vol. 123, November/December 2008."Between Worlds", Reflections on Exile, and Other Essays (2002) pp. 561, 565.
Born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, in 1935, Said was a United States citizen by way of his father, who had served in the United States Army during World War I. After the 1948 Palestine war, he relocated the family to Egypt, where they had previously lived, and then to the United States. Said enrolled at the secondary school Victoria College while in Egypt and Northfield Mount Hermon School after arriving in the United States. He graduated with a BA in English from Princeton University in 1957, and later with an MA (1960) and a PhD (1964) in English Literature from Harvard University. His principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor W. Adorno.
In 1963, Said joined Columbia University as a member of the English and Comparative Literature faculties, where he taught and worked until 2003. He lectured at more than 200 other universities in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
As a public intellectual, Said was a member of the Palestinian National Council supporting a two-state solution that incorporated the Palestinian right of return, before resigning in 1993 due to his criticism of the Oslo Accords.Andrew N. Rubin, "Edward W. Said", Arab Studies Quarterly, Fall 2004: p. 1. Retrieved 5 January 2010. He advocated for the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure political and humanitarian equality in the Israeli-occupied territories, where Palestinians have witnessed the increased expansion of Israeli settlements. However, in 1999, he argued that sustainable peace was only possible with one Israeli–Palestinian state. He defined his oppositional relation with the Israeli status quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has "to sift, to judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual".
In 1999, Said and Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, which is based in Seville, Spain. Said was also an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), a compilation of their conversations and public discussions about music at Carnegie Hall in New York City.Democracy Now!, "Edward Saïd Archive", DemocracyNow.org, 2003. Retrieved 4 January 2010. .
In 1919, Wadie and his cousin established a stationery business in Cairo, Egypt.
Although he was raised Protestant, Said became an Agnosticism in his later years.Amritjit Singh, Interviews With Edward W. Saïd (Oxford: UP of Mississippi, 2004), pp. 19, 219.Said, Edward, Defamation, Revisionist Style, CounterPunch, 1999. Retrieved 7 February 2010. .
In retrospect, he viewed being sent far from the Middle East as a parental decision much influenced by "the prospects of deracinated people, like us the Palestinians, being so uncertain that it would be best to send me as far away as possible." The realities of peripatetic life—of interwoven cultures, of feeling out of place, and of homesickness—so affected the schoolboy Edward that themes of dissonance feature in the work and worldview of the academic Said. At school's end, he had become Edward W. Said—a polyglot intellectual (fluent in English, French, and Arabic). He graduated with an A.B. in English from Princeton University in 1957 after completing a senior thesis titled "The Moral Vision: André Gide and Graham Greene." He later received Master of Arts (1960) and Doctor of Philosophy (1964) degrees in English Literature from Harvard University.
Said also worked as a visiting professor at Yale University, and lectured at more than 200 other universities in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.Dr. Farooq, Study Resource Page , Global Web Post. Retrieved 3 January 2010.Omri, Mohamed-Salah, "The Portrait of the Intellectual as a Porter" Editorially, Said served as president of the Modern Language Association, as editor of the Arab Studies Quarterly in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, on the executive board of International PEN, and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, the Council of Foreign Relations, and the American Philosophical Society.Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin, Eds., The Edward Saïd Reader, Vintage, 2000, p. xv. In 1993, Said presented the BBC's annual Reith Lectures, a six-lecture series titled Representation of the Intellectual, wherein he examined the role of the Intellectual in contemporary society, which the BBC published in 2011.
In his work, Said frequently researches the term and concept of the cultural archive, especially in his book Culture and Imperialism (1993). He states the cultural archive is a major site where investments in imperial conquest are developed, and that these archives include "narratives, histories, and travel tales." Said emphasizes the role of the Western imperial project in the disruption of cultural archives, and theorizes that disciplines such as comparative literature, English, and anthropology can be directly linked to the concept of empire.
Orientalism proposed that much Western study of Islamic civilization was political intellectualism, meant for the self-affirmation of European identity, rather than objective academic study; thus, the academic field of Oriental studies functioned as a practical method of cultural discrimination and imperialist domination—that is to say, the Western Orientalist knows more about "the Orient" than do "the Orientals."
Western Art, Orientalism continues, has misrepresented the Orient with stereotypes since Ancient Greece, as in the tragedy The Persians (472 BCE), by Aeschylus, where the Greek protagonist falls because he misperceived the true nature of The Orient. The European political domination of Asia has biased even the most outwardly objective Western texts about The Orient, to a degree unrecognized by the Western scholars who appropriated for themselves the production of cultural knowledge—the academic work of studying, exploring, and interpreting the languages, histories, and peoples of Asia. Therefore, Orientalist scholarship implies that the colonial subaltern (the colonised people) were incapable of thinking, acting, or speaking for themselves, thus are incapable of writing their own national histories. In such imperial circumstances, the Orientalist scholars of the West wrote the history of the Orient—and so constructed the modern, cultural identities of Asia—from the perspective that the West is the cultural standard to emulate, the norm from which the "exotic and inscrutable" Orientals deviate.
In Orientalism, Said described Bernard Lewis, the Anglo–American Orientalist, as "a perfect exemplification of Establishment Orientalist whose purports to be objective, liberal scholarship, but is, in reality, very close to being propaganda against his subject material."
Lewis responded with a harsh critique of Orientalism accusing Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases.
Said retorted that in The Muslim Discovery of Europe (1982), Lewis responded to his thesis with the claim that the Western quest for knowledge about other societies was unique in its display of disinterested curiosity, which Muslims did not reciprocate towards Europe. Lewis was saying that "knowledge about Europe was the only acceptable criterion for true knowledge." The appearance of academic impartiality was part of Lewis's role as an academic authority for zealous "anti–Islamic, anti–Arab, Zionist, and Cold War crusades."Saïd, Edward, "Orientalism Reconsidered", Cultural Critique magazine, No. 1, Autumn 1985, p. 96. Moreover, in the Afterword to the 1995 edition of the book, Said replied to Lewis's criticisms of the first edition of Orientalism (1978).
Both Said's supporters and his critics acknowledge the transformative influence of Orientalism upon scholarship in the humanities; critics say that the thesis is an intellectually limiting influence upon scholars, whilst supporters say that the thesis is intellectually liberating.Kramer, Martin (2001). Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America.Andrew N. Rubin, "Techniques of Trouble: Edward Saïd and the Dialectics of Cultural Philology", The South Atlantic Quarterly, 102.4 (2003). pp. 862–76. The fields of post-colonial and cultural studies attempt to explain the "post-colonial world, its peoples, and their discontents",Emory University, Department of English, Introduction to Postcolonial Studies for which the techniques of investigation and efficacy in Orientalism, proved especially applicable in Middle Eastern studies.
As such, the investigation and analysis Said applied in Orientalism proved especially practical in literary criticism and cultural studies, such as the post-colonial histories of India by Gyan Prakash, Nicholas DirksNicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind, Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. and Ronald Inden,Ronald Inden, Imagining India, New York: Oxford UP, 1990. modern Cambodia by Simon Springer,Simon Springer, "Culture of Violence or Violent Orientalism? Neoliberalisation and Imagining the 'Savage Other' in Post-transitional Cambodia", Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34.3 (2009): 305–19. and the literary theories of Homi K. Bhabha,Bhabha, Homi K., Nation and Narration, New York & London: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1990. Gayatri SpivakGayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, London: Methuen, 1987. and Hamid Dabashi ( , 2007).
In Eastern Europe, Milica Bakić–Hayden developed the concept of Nesting Orientalisms (1992), derived from the ideas of the historian Larry Wolff ( Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, 1994) and Said's ideas in Orientalism (1978). The Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova ( Imagining the Balkans, 1997) presented the Ethnology concept of Nesting Balkanisms ( Ethnologia Balkanica, 1997), which is derived from Milica Bakić–Hayden's concept of Nesting Orientalisms.
In The Impact of "Biblical Orientalism" in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (2014), the historian Lorenzo Kamel, presented the concept of "Biblical Orientalism" with an historical analysis of the simplifications of the complex, local Palestinian reality, which occurred from the 1830s until the early 20th century. Kamel said that the selective usage and simplification of religion, in approaching the place known as "The Holy Land", created a view that, as a place, the Holy Land has no human history other than as the place where Bible stories occurred, rather than as Palestine, a country inhabited by many peoples.
The post-colonial discourse presented in Orientalism, also influenced post-colonial theology and post-colonial biblical criticism, by which method the analytical reader approaches a scripture from the perspective of a colonial reader. Another book in this area is Postcolonial Theory (1998), by Leela Gandhi, explains Post-colonialism in terms of how it can be applied to the wider philosophical and intellectual context of history.
During a lecture conference at the University of Washington in 2003, Said affirmed that Israeli Jews had grounds for a territorial claim to Palestine (or the Land of Israel), but maintained that it was not "the only claim or the main claim" vis-à-vis all of the other ethnic groups (including Jews and Arabs) who have inhabited the region throughout human history:
Said's argument against the Religious Zionism traditionally espoused by Jewish fundamentalists (i.e., citing God to project the Jewish/Israeli claim as superior to the Arab/Palestinian claim) asserted that such justifications were inherently irrational because they would, among other factors, enable Christians and Muslims of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds to lay superseding territorial claims to Palestine on the basis of their faith.
Said disliked the Oslo Accords for not producing an independent State of Palestine, and because they were politically inferior to a plan that Yasser Arafat had rejected—a plan Said had presented to Arafat on behalf of the U.S. government in the late 1970s.Saïd, Edward (21 October 1993), "The Morning After". London Review of Books, Vol. 15, No. 20. Especially troublesome to Said was his belief that Yasir Arafat had betrayed the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their houses and properties in the Green Line territories of pre-1967 Israel, and that Arafat ignored the growing political threat of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories that had been established since the conquest of Palestine in 1967.
In 1995, in response to Said's political criticisms, the Palestinian Authority (PA) banned the sale of Said's books; however, the PA lifted the book ban when Said publicly praised Yasir Arafat for rejecting Prime Minister Ehud Barak's offers at the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David (2000) in the U.S.Said, Edward (23 July 2001), "The price of Camp David", Al Ahram Weekly. Retrieved 5 January 2010. .
In the mid-1990s, Said wrote the foreword to the history book (1994), by Israel Shahak, about Jewish fundamentalism, which presents the cultural proposition that Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians is rooted in a Judaism requirement (of permission) for Jews to commit crimes, including murder, against Gentiles (non-Jews). In his foreword, Said said that Jewish History, Jewish Religion is "nothing less than a concise history of classic and modern Judaism, insofar as these are relevant to the understanding of modern Israel"; and praised the historian Shahak for describing contemporary Israel as a nation subsumed in a "Judeo–Nazi" cultural ambiance that allowed the dehumanization of the Palestinian Other:Werner Cohn: What Edward Said knows. Retrieved 15 June 2012.
In 1998, Said made In Search of Palestine (1998), a BBC documentary film about Palestine, past and present. In the company of his son, Wadie, Said revisited the places of his boyhood, and confronted injustices meted out to ordinary Palestinians in the contemporary West Bank. Despite the social and cultural prestige afforded to BBC cinema products in the U.S., the documentary was never broadcast by any American television company. Culture and resistance: conversations with Edward W. Said By Edward W. Said, David Barsamian, p. 57
Said described the incident as trivial and said that he "threw the stone as a symbolic act" into "an empty place". The Beirut newspaper As-Safir (The Ambassador) interviewed a Lebanese local resident who said that Said was less than ten metres (ca. 30 ft.) from the Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers manning the two-storey guardhouse, when he threw the stone, which hit the barbed wire fence in front of the guardhouse.Sunnie Kim, Edward Said Accused of Stoning in South Lebanon, Columbia Spectator, 19 July 2000. In the U.S., Said's action was criticised by some students at Columbia University and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith International (Sons of the Covenant). The university provost published a five-page letter stating that Said's action was protected under academic freedom: "To my knowledge, the stone was directed at no-one; no law was broken; no indictment was made; no criminal or civil action has been taken against Professor Saïd."
In February 2001, the Freud Society in Austria cancelled a lecture by Said due to the stone-throwing incident.Edward Saïd and David Barsamian, Culture and Resistance – Conversations with Edward Said, South End Press, 2003: pp. 85–86 The President of the Freud Society said "the majority of decided to cancel the Freud lecture to avoid an internal clash. I deeply regret that this has been done to Professor Said".
In the event, despite being sick with leukemia, as a public intellectual, Said continued criticising the U.S. Invasion of Iraq in mid-2003;Democracy Now!, "Syrian Expert Patrick Seale and Columbia University Professor Edward Said Discuss the State of the Middle East After the Invasion of Iraq", DemocracyNow.org, 15 April 2003. Retrieved 4 January 2010. and, in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper, in the article "Resources of Hope" (2 April 2003), Said said that the U.S. war against Iraq was a politically ill-conceived military enterprise.Said, Edward. "Resources of Hope", Al-Ahram Weekly, 2 April 2003. Retrieved 26 April 2007. .
Elsewhere in the musical world, the composer Mohammed Fairouz acknowledged the deep influence of Edward Said upon his works; compositionally, Fairouz's First Symphony thematically alludes to the essay "Homage to a Belly-Dancer" (1990), about Tahia Carioca, the Egyptian dancer, actress, and political militant; and a piano sonata, titled Reflections on Exile (1984), which thematically refers to the emotions inherent to being an exile.Rase, Sherri (8 April 2011), Conversations—with Mohammed Fairouz , QonStage. Retrieved 19 April 2011."Homage to a Belly-dancer", Granta, 13 (Winter 1984)."Reflections on Exile", London Review of Books, 13 September 1990.
The tributes to Said include books and schools. The books include Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward W. Said (2008) that features essays by Akeel Bilgrami, Rashid Khalidi, and Elias Khoury; "Conference: Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward Said." 25–26 May 2007. Bogazici University. European Journal of Turkish Studies. Ejts.org. Retrieved 5 January 2010.Jorgen Jensehausen, "Review: 'Waiting for the Barbarians'" Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 46, No. 3 May 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2010. Edward Said: The Charisma of Criticism (2010), by Harold Aram Veeser, a critical biography; and Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representations (2010), with essays by Joseph Massad, Ilan Pappé, Ella Shohat, Ghada Karmi, Noam Chomsky, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Daniel Barenboim.
In 2002, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan, the founder and president of the United Arab Emirates, and others endowed the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University; it is currently filled by Rashid Khalidi.
In November 2004, in Palestine, Birzeit University renamed their music school the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.Birzeit University, Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.
The Barenboim–Said Academy (Berlin) was established in 2012.
In 2016, California State University, Fresno started examining applicants for a newly created Professorship in Middle East Studies named after Edward Said, but after months of examining applicants, Fresno State canceled the search. Some observers claim that the cancellation was due to pressure from pro-Israeli individuals and groups.
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