Edward Said: 1936-2003

By Daniel Skinner

It is extremely rare in academia that intellectual pursuits are rooted in a sense of urgency for survival. Oftentimes, important questions of politics, power, identity and the prerequisites for a meaningful human existence become compartmentalized, so that students may become “experts” in a narrow range of scholarly knowledge. This vivisection of the most crucial questions that confront society often results in stuffy isolated academic departments, where the findings of scholarship never converge into a meaningful whole.

Edward Said understood the dangers of academic overspecialization perhaps better than anyone, and spent his life transcending the boundaries that politically neutralize much of academic thought. Truly grasping his writing requires no less than a willingness to accept that culture and politics are inextricable, and that we have no choice but to study and appreciate literature, music, sociology, philosophy, regional and cultural studies, politics, language and comparative literature on the same cultural plane. To do otherwise, Said thought, is to render academia impotent. Becoming an expert, in the traditional sense, seemed to Said a chimera, a foolish arrogance that would prevent scholarship from becoming relevant in the world.

In his voluminous writings, Said gave us ways in which to understand events in our own lives, regardless of the geopolitical borders that define our nationalities, or the power struggles that define our alliances and enmities. Said, in the spirit of Michel Foucault, insisted that power had to be confronted on the local level, as power relations permeated all aspects of life, where they formed pervasive impediments to human freedom. Unlike Foucault, Said thought these repressive structures could be beaten.

With passionate prose and impeccable scholarship, Said flipped the conventional view of colonialism on its head. For Said, the French, in their brutal suppression and occupation of Algeria, foolishly failed to recognize that their actions would permanently change Paris as well as Algiers. Said saw in cultural terms what Hannah Arendt had expressed politically, in her well-known formulation that “empire abroad means tyranny at home.” Said’s discussion of the relations between the center of power and the colony will surely help future generations of students come to terms with the frequently overlooked intersubjective nature of culture: that in their destruction of others, the powerful are all-too-likely to destroy what is worth saving in themselves. The seeds of destruction, for Said, lay in the cultural forms born of violence, exceptionalism, racism and all forms of oppression.

Said thought that the way in which we talk about oppression was crucial. He recognized that those who think themselves “exceptional” are often in fact “imperial.” This arrogance places distinct limitations on the ways in which nations deal with one another, and the way displaced peoples must react to their oppressors. In Culture and Imperialism, Said amplified Joseph Conrad’s image of the French, who in a desperate effort to conquer the “dark continent” of Africa, “lobbed” cannonballs “into a continent,” not daring to engage what they saw as a savage African population by way of human-to-human combat. Distance fosters a faith in the savagery of the “Other,” Said thought, and allows us to operate with the “us” and “them” mentality that has fueled generations of military aggression, and is now the avowed policy of the present United States Commander-in-Chief. The cultural arrogance that justifies the destruction of the “Other” is the same arrogance that brings an aggressor to invade another nation in the name of civilization.

The brutishly powerful, Said thought, remains powerful only without an understanding of those they dominate. But there is a fatalistic sense of justice in all of this: the fates of enemies are tied together, and military “victories” are necessarily defeats for all—if one can only see what aspects of life make it worth living.

It was his love of the totality of life that guided Said through the dark tunnels of the “Question of Palestine” (also a book title of his). With a deep respect for the truth, Said strongly condemned both Israeli and Palestinian leadership. He saw the Oslo agreements for the sham that they were and sympathized with those whose real struggles for self-determination were mocked by humiliating proposals for a new Palestine, in which Palestinians still would not be permitted freedom of movement. He caused a ruckus when he was photographed throwing a rock at an abandoned Israeli military outpost, but his words were more powerful and influential than any rock could ever be. He knew that the purveyors of repression—Arafat included—were not entirely acceptable to either side, yet his understanding of power enabled him to remain actively engaged and, in small ways, even hopeful, with a strong belief that those who struggle eventually win their freedom.

Perhaps most important was Said’s understanding that both sides were losing. To move beyond the stand-off was to move towards an affirmation that no culture, no race, and no religion truly embraces violence, but violence is instead born of destitution and hopelessness. And when the selfishness of the leadership of the two sides has a moment to subside, Said hoped, tired people everywhere will find a certain path out of their subjugation. The definition of freedom was crucial, for Said, as no people could call themselves free so long as daily life was moderated by a military state.

Edward Said died September 25 at the age of 67, after a more than ten-year bout with leukemia. Throughout his illness, he continued to write, teach and lecture. He was a Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, but also a music critic for The Nation, as well as a musician himself. His long friendship with the Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim, culminated the formation of an orchestra of young Palestinian and Israeli musicians, largely and sadly mocked and ignored by the powers on both side of the conflict.

His tireless engagement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was an inspiration for displaced people around the world, although it became a source of bitter controversy and debate here in the United States. Said lived his life in a constant struggle for the truth, caught between the “east” and “west” that both contributed to his rich cultural identity. But most importantly, he never failed to engage those—even his friends—who did not share his complex vision of the world. As testimony to the many levels on which Edward Said will be remembered, consider the words of Barenboim upon hearing of Said’s death: “The Palestinians have lost one of the most eloquent defenders of their aspirations. The Israelis have lost an adversary—but a fair and humane one. And I have lost a soul mate.”