Edward
Said: The Fearless Critic of US Policy
By
Ibrahim S. Malick
SAT Contributing Editor
EDWARD
SAID, an advocate of the Palestinian cause, a professor of literature
at the Columbia University, a critic who wrote authoritatively
of Conrad and Beethoven, died in New York City last week at age
67 after battling leukemia for many years.
Said,
who was born in Jerusalem, was best known for his 1978 book "Orientalism,"
which, for Said, had many definitions. One was, "a style
of thought based on a distinction between the Orient and the Occident."
That style often reduced and simplified the exotic other. He saw
it at work in a lot of post-9/11 writing, which he criticized
in his articles, interviews and teach-ins.
One
of his friends Professor Talal Assad of Graduate Faculty, City
University of New York in a letter to Said's widow, Miriam Said
which he shared with SA Tribune writes:
"It was with genuine shock and
sadness that I learnt on Friday of the sudden death of Edward
Said. For large numbers of people around the world he was an intellectual
and moral inspiration. I can remember how excited I was, as were
many of my colleagues who specialized on the Middle East, when
his book Orientalism first appeared. Here was a statement that
articulated brilliantly what so many of us had felt was wrong
with Middle East Studies in Western universities - its theoretical
mediocrity and its political bias - and did it so much more clearly
than we were able to do.
"Orientalism
helped us to move forward with greater confidence. Said's academic
legacy is, of course, secure. Everyone who is seriously interested
in the question of colonialism in the humanities must of course
begin with his work. However, Edward Said was not merely an outstanding
academic but a unique public intellectual. He was also a man of
great eloquence and undaunted courage who called powerfully for
justice for the Palestinians - and not only for the Palestinians.
As a US citizen he was a fearless critic of American imperial
policy, yet he did not hesitate to denounce aspects of Middle
Eastern politics for what he considered their intolerance, corruption,
and incompetence. It is therefore a matter of deep regret for
me, as for many others, that this voice will no longer be with
us."
Edward Said was a friend to Homi Bhabha, professor of English
and American Literature at Harvard, who remembers him as a man
of great tastes in all things. "From literature to philosophy
to politics to music, that wide range and landscape of intellectual
interests and beliefs fed straight into the kind of generous and
cosmopolitan person that he was. From the way he dressed--which
was in itself an aesthetic experience, enormously elegant, enormously
handsome. I feel I just have to say this given the way in which
disease ravaged him, but even in the midst of that he was alive
intellectually, he was alive physically. He really was a live
wire. "
What
thrust Edward Said into prominence beyond the circles of academic
theory was his advocacy for the Palestinians. Shibley Telhami,
a Palestinian-American scholar who grew up in Israel, said Edward
Said was a vital spokesman for the Palestinian cause 20 and 30
years ago--a time when Yasser Arafat was vilified even more so
than now in American eyes. Said, by way of contrast, was passionate,
articulate, urbane.
In
an interview Shilbley Telhami said Said probably was the first
really to have an impact on the image of the Palestinians on a
large scale in America in the '70s and '80s. And he encouraged
a lot of others to follow suit in a way, but there were very few
people who had that capacity at that time. He was a professor
of an Ivy League university who looked the part. Who looked, quote,
"like us," and spoke like us, only more eloquently.
At
Arafat's invitation, Said joined the Palestine National Council.
Back in 1988 he spoke in support of the Palestinian uprising,
or Intifada, and of the unity the Palestinians had achieved.
Shibley
Telhami says in later years Edward Said became more of a rejectionist.
"First he became disillusioned with Arafat, in part because
Said recognized the authoritarianism of Arafat. And anyway therefore
he rejected what was coming out of the PLO and the Palestinian
Authority and Arafat. But he also rejected what was on the table
for the peace process, including the Oslo agreements, including
the so-called recent road map and American diplomacy in the region."
In
the year 2000 Said threw a rock at an Israeli guardhouse near
the Lebanese border. That provoked criticism at Columbia, but
the university declined to censure him. Professor Homi Bhabha
of Harvard says that while Said was passionate in support of Palestinian
nationalism, he was equally passionate about justice and was just
as skeptical of the borders between nations as he was of the boundaries
between academic disciplines. Edward Said wrote of exile, a subject
which may have begun as something autobiographical, but Homi Bhabha
says it was something that became philosophical for Said.
Prof.
Bhabha in an interview last week said: "In 'Reflections on
Exile' he writes: "The exiled knows that in a secular and
contingent world, homes are always provisional. Borders and barriers
which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory can also
become prisons and are often defended beyond reason or necessity.
Exiles cross borders, break barriers of thought and experience."
