Philosophy.Com

Edward Said & criticism

A question from this review by Matthew Abraham of two books on Edward Said at Logos:

'How does the individual consciousness resist and invent itself within and against the hegemonic and multiple pressures of a dominate culture, pressures that ensures the force of imperial domination and its attendant discourses such as orientalism?'

The main modernist answer focuses on the ability of the individual to break free of tradition and to start anew---as a burgeoning sign of critical consciousness---and that this represents a radical act of freedom, a necessary act of resistance that occurs between culture and system.

Criticism before solidarity in other words. It is necessary so as to remain alert to the seductions and trappings of power; attractions that often reduce the perceptive critic to a state functionary. In his 'Representations of the Intellectual,' Said states this insight thus:

Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you need the approval of a boss or authority figure; you want to keep a reputation of being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get a honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.

Abraham says that Said's consistent concern has been to explore the importance of the individual in society, working within and against traditions, large discursive structures, and daunting odds. This represents Said's self construction as a critical intellectual. The Saidian critical corpus represents a form of intellectual resistance, against popular representations and, in turn, misrepresentations of Islam and Muslims in Western culture, particularly the use of hostile and negative stereotypes (e.g. Arab irrationality, Arab intransigence to civilizing processes, and the Arab incapacity for self-government) As Said writes in Covering Islam:

It is only a slight overstatement to say that Muslims and Arabs are essentially covered, discussed, and apprehended either as oil suppliers or as potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Muslim life, has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Islamic world. What we have instead is a limited series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as, among other things, to make the world vulnerable to military aggression. I do not think it is an accident that talk during the 1970s of United States military intervention in the Arabian Gulf, or the Carter Doctrine, or discussions of Rapid Deployment Forces, or the military and economic "containment" of "political Islam," has often been preceded by a period of "Islam's" rational presentation through the cool medium of television and through "objective" Orientalist study (which, paradoxically, either in its "irrelevance" to modern actualities or in its propagandistic "objective" variety, has a uniformly alienating effect).

(p.28)
These words still ring true today, don't they.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at August 16, 2005 06:12 PM | TrackBack