Remembering global humanist Edward Said

Muhamad Ali, Fellow East-West Center, Hawaii
muhamad@hawaii.edu

Edward W. Said, an international scholar famous for his theory of Orientalism, died in New York on Sept. 25 at the age of 67 after a battle with leukemia. Said was a literary critic but was also known as a prominent Palestinian activist. Leading lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi described his death as a "huge loss for the Palestinian cause, for the world and for humanity".

For Said, Orientalism centered on the ideas and practices, intellectual or otherwise, produced by Westerners about the "East". The Orientalists created their own discourses about the East for their own needs and interests. Orientalism was ideological, largely associated with imperialism, where distinctions between Western superiority and oriental inferiority were systematically built up.

Said looked at "oriental" studies to understand the way cultural domination operated. The Western view of the East as sensual, corrupt, vicious, lazy, tyrannical and backward exemplified this power, Said argued.

Said said that there was no such thing as an overall, monolithic Orient, and that it was not really a fixed category of study.

He explored processes of representation of other cultures, societies and histories, the relationships between power and knowledge, as well as methodological questions. According to Said, Orientalism involved several aspects, including the changing historical and cultural relationship between Europe and Asia, the scientific discipline in the West, and the ideological suppositions, images and fantasies about "the Orient".

In other words, Said also established that colonial discourse was intrinsic to European self-understanding, determining how Europe and Europeans could locate themselves -- as modern, as civilized, as superior, as developed and progressive -- only by reference to an "other" that was represented as the negation of everything that Europe imagined or desired itself to be.

Said attempted to demonstrate that the Orientalists always attempted to control the East with the knowledge they had. Power was regarded by Said as not necessarily political, but also cultural.

Said's approach was emancipating because it left the interpretation of Islam to Muslims. He argued that a political interpretation of Orientalism was possible, but did not realize that his critique of Orientalism could be regarded by his critics as equally political.

In response Said wrote that he regarded himself as an advocate of humanism. He argued that the paramount issue in the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a human goal -- peaceful coexistence.

The political scientist Leonard Binder shares Said's view that Orientalist discourse in general is "violent" in its effect on the Islamic world, but the discourse of Islamic apologetics is also so in its impact on the West. Instead of being trapped in violent and inhospitable discourse which has been so far expressed by either "Orientalists" or Muslims, scholars need to envisage some compromise and dialog.

Binder writes, "We have not yet gone beyond this stage of the limited violence of discourse toward some deeper understanding of the being of the other, but at least we have not yet drawn back to the greater violence of silence."

Orientalist discourse is not always purely academic, but it is not inherently violent either. The time has come for Muslims or peoples in the East to benefit from a number of positive orientalist methodologies and products (encyclopedias, libraries, translations, etc.), which Muslims themselves have perhaps little capability in doing so. And vice versa.

All intellectuals from the West and the East should be aware of their limits and shortcomings, and should avoid vested interests of imposing unequal relationships if they want their discourse to be meaningful and useful for others.

Dialog must feature mutual understanding, and as such humanism will become possible.

Said recently reminded us of a global interdependence: "We must admit that no one can possibly know the extraordinarily complex unity of our globalized world, despite the reality that the world does have a real interdependence of parts that leaves no genuine opportunity for isolation." A fitting parting message for any attempt at crucial dialog and discourse.

The writer is studying for his PhD in history.