Edward Said and the Work of the Critic

Paul A. Bove; Ed.

Description

For at least two decades the career of Edward Said has defined what it means to be a public intellectual today. Although attacked as a terrorist and derided as a fraud for his work on behalf of his fellow Palestinians, Said's importance extends far beyond his political activism. In this volume a distinguished group of scholars assesses nearly every aspect of Said's work-his contributions to postcolonial theory, his work on racism and ethnicity, his aesthetics and his resistance to the aestheticization of politics, his concepts of figuration, his assessment of the role of the exile in a metropolitan culture, and his work on music and the visual arts.In two separate interviews, Said himself comments on a variety of topics, among them the response of the American Jewish community to his political efforts in the Middle East. Yet even as the Palestinian struggle finds a central place in his work, it is essential-as the contributors demonstrate-to see that this struggle rests on and gives power to his general "critique of colonizers" and is not simply the outgrowth of a local nationalism. Perhaps more than any other person in the United States, Said has changed how the U.S. media and American intellectuals must think about and represent Palestinians, Islam, and the Middle East. Most importantly, this change arises not as a result of political action but out of a potent humanism-a breadth of knowledge and insight that has nourished many fields of inquiry. Originally a special issue of boundary 2, the book includes new articles on minority culture and on orientalism in music, as well as an interview with Said by Jacqueline Rose.Supporting the claim that the last third of the twentieth century can be called the "Age of Said," this collection will enlighten and engage students in virtually any field of humanistic study.Contributors. Jonathan Arac, Paul A. Bove, Terry Cochran, Barbara Harlow, Kojin Karatani, Rashid I. Khalidi, Sabu Kohsu, Ralph Locke, Mustapha Marrouchi, Jim Merod, W. J. T. Mitchell, Aamir R. Mufti, Jacqueline Rose, Edward W. Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Lindsay Waters

Sujets

• History of ideas
• Literary theory

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822380092
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Edward Said and the work of the critic

   

PAUL A. BOVÉ, EDITOR

Edward Said and the work of the critic: speaking truth to power

Duke University Press

Durham and London 

©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Typeset in Quadraat by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. The text of this book originally was published as volume , number  (summer ) ofboundary ,with the exception of the following additional material: Ralph P. Locke, ‘‘Exoticism and Orientalism in Music: Problems for the Worldly Critic’’; Aamir R. Mufti, ‘‘Auerbach in Istanbul: Edward Said, Secular Criticism, and the Question of Minority Culture’’ (originally published inCritical Inquiry); and Jacqueline Rose, ‘‘Edward Said Talks to Jacqueline Rose’’ (a portion of which originally was published in Critical Quarterly, no. ).



 . / Introduction



 Said talks to Jacqueline Rose/ Edward



. . . panic of the visual: a conversation with/ The Edward W. Said 

  before racism:/ Race the disappearance of the American 

 / Criticism between opposition and counterpoint

 matter of language/ The



 / In responses begins responsibility: music and emotion 

 sublime lyrical abstractions of Edward W. Said/ The

 of aesthetics: after orientalism/ Uses







 . / Edward W. Said and the American public sphere: speaking truth to power 

 in the stacks: colonial archives, land mines,/ Sappers and truth commissions 

 recoveries, refusals/ Counternarratives,



 . in Istanbul: Edward Said, secular criticism,/ Auerbach and the question of minority culture 

 . / Exoticism and orientalism in music: problems for the worldly critic 

Notes

Index

vi







Edward Said and the work of the critic

  .   

Introduction

I am for dialogue between cultures and coexistence between people: everything I have writ- ten about and struggled for has pointed to that as the goal. But I think real principle and real justice have to be implemented before there can be true dialogue.—Edward W. Said, ‘‘The Limits to Cooperation,’’ inPeace and Its Discontents



Said’s work embodies three values essential to intellectual responsibility: breadth and depth of knowledge, historical and scholarly rigor, and a pro- found basis in political morality of a kind that alone makes civilization pos- sible. Minus any one of these virtues, intellectuals become clerks, profession- als with specialized interests and career ambitions. These are character virtues that form a career. They transform works into an oeuvre that depends on and projects the virtues of character, that embodies and forms them. They give the product of intellect shape and focus, and make it into a project that, despite its variations and appearances, has integrity that still needs to be identified and made exemplary. These virtues have guided Said in a career-long struggle to end conflict and further the effort to build civilizations whose cultures benefit from the coales- cence of various peoples and their histories. In the name of justice between equals, dialogue can advance the construction of institutions and the tell- ing of stories that both promote greater understanding and recognize, espe-