Twentieth-century
North American criticishi
1975. Walker
near-total
oblivion surrounding Hurston at the time. and
n
e
.rZora". initially published in Ms magazine
T o r
ere
the
239
in
re
Hurston was unable to publish in her later years. Walker's campaign
hy
l e d to renewed interest in her work (interest in other black
. Hu
ers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Nella Larsen, is much
posteolonial feminist
i s l since the 1980s. Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) launched
Spivak
Chakravorty
and others
developed
a
i c a n Posteolonial Studies (see Chapter 12). Postcolonial theory
da a vibrant part of literary studies in America, as represented by
ikravorty Spivak. Homi K. Bhabha and Robert J. C. Young. Spii23Chk
of Gilbert and Gubar in "Three Women's Texts and
piex eritique
a
Of
Imperialism 98>) delineates core issues for a combined postnd minist eritique. Gilber and Gubar. argues Spivak, unwittingly
"anioms of imperialism" (Spivak 1985. 243). They read Bertha
o n l y in psychological terms as Jane Eyre's "dark double" (248).
t h e animalization of Bertha, a dark colonial woman. also raises
r
ssuies The plot of Jane Exre requires Bertha to "act out the transfor-
the house and kill
of
s o that Jane Eyre can becOme the feminist individualist heroine
an "allegory of the
3nish tiction (25). Spivak therefore reads Jane Evre as
meral epistemic violence of imperialism. the construction of a self-immolating
lonial subject for the glorification of the social mission of the colonizer":
3ertha. the dark colonial woman. is "sacrificed as an insane animal for
of her self
into a
on
r sister's consolidation
demonie other. to "set fire to
(251). Jean Rhys's rewriting of Jane Evre in Wide
Sirgasso Seu (1966) makes this process visible and enables Spivak's own
e . By allowing Bertha to tell her story Rhys keeps Bertha's "humanity.
ued her sanity as critic of imperialism, intact
ntimate a thing
as
personal
and human
(249). Because it is the case
identity might
nevertheless
determined by the politics of imperialism (250). Spivak, drawing on
s
rgues that the issue of female personal identity that preOCcupied 1960s
leminist literary criticism cannot be considered in isolation from
*olonial and posteolonial dimensions.
CTAn feminist literary criticism inherited and initially reproduced the
in the first
uTalismthat characterized mainstream canon-building
worid. Thus Showalter
tne twentieth century in the English-speaking
tradiGubar initially claimed to be unearthing the tenmale
ad
the rdea ol a unified
the case of these early feminst etlorts
erved a strategic purpose in st.tking out the new field. even if many
Nodoubt
t in
ant ditferenees
conditions were neglected.
a n d complicating
critieism, there
Cuh
roundbreakingbook sulfered harsh
to deubt the
nl
gniticant
itn
tn
a
is
no
rea-
Benjaminian
eiation
of their s e n s e of rev
hIstory, Jt is
VOICe sounded out of literary
of
unis
the Whole and
w a s less than
as is usual.
ds.
alidt
that
in
If Gilbert
its
simplicity.
S4rom Ductual m to poststructurali
of n nes of becoming becoming-minor becominganimal (un Kat.
And
Melvle). becomng-woman tin Woolh. becoming-imperceptuble
some of the lines of ecomng Deleuze and uattari explored in
n tel
telatiun to
hterature (see Chapter 10 of 4 Thousand l'lateuus) Perhaps the dist
ness of Dcleuze and Guattari's literary thecory. in the midst of endlesd
hleratmg concepts and neologisms Is the ongong attempt to conno
keep reconnecting lhterature amd the imagination (lantasy. delirium ih
investment) and formal experimentation and political expeTimentation
ndinal
Jacques Derrida
One of the best introductions to Jacques Derrida (1930 2004) 1or a lte
iterary
crtical audience is his collection of
essays. Acts of Lilerature (1992) edited
Derek Attridge. In Chapter 1 we discussed
Derrida s reading of Plat
Phaedrus |Derrida 1981bl and
in
Literature [Dernda 1992b]).
Chapter his essay
5
on
Mallarme
in
In his "Introduction: Derrida and the
Questioning of Literature"
outlines Derrnda's understanding of literature as "potential
"resistance"
o's
4ta
Atrida.
dge
challenge and
presence" the
"logocentrism or the "metaphysics of
assumptions. concepts and oppositions ofl the Western philosophical
to
tradtion
since ancient Greece and Plato
(Attridge 1992. 3-4). As we discussed earher
(see Chapter 1). for Derrida
this tradition sets up a system of binary oppos
tions. such as
presence/absence. essence/appearance,
inside/outside. same/other. man/woman,
terms are
understood
as
extemal
to
true/talse.
etc. Within each
each other, the
good/evil
opposition. the two
tormer term is
valued. and
the latter devalued. The valued term is understood
as an
"inside completely
insulated from the "outside inhabited
the
by
devalued term. Derrida's
readings (e.g. his reading of Plato's Phaedrus) focus on
moments in
philosophical
and
literary
texts, 1.e. moments
self-deconstructive
the binary
oppositions they have establ1shed. crosSsing the border undoing
opposing
termsand thus resisting logocentrism trom within. In The between
Second
Sex
(1949
Simone de Beauvoir argued that
patriarchy is based on the binary opposition
man/woman (see Chapter 10). while in
Orientalism (1978) Edward Said
argued that the binary opposition West/Orient was
fundamental to the project
of imperialism (see
Chapter 12). Beauvoir and Said illustrate
why
"logocentrism requires subversion and why there is a strong ethicalclearly
dimesion
to Derrida's call to
challenge and resist "logocentrism.
For Atridge
literary studies are "dominated"
philosophy, because they lack "philosophy's by logocentrism. more ihan
long tradition" of self-cmtical
retlection (Attridge 1992. 3). At
the very least Derrida and
Atridge are call
self-retlexIVe iterary eriticism that
logocentriISIm. It can be argued that Derrida participates in the critiquc
chose to perform close
of Mallarmé and
readng
other modernist
literary
texts
tance to
tnett
because
exactly
logocentrism
ing
for
a
Ice announces,
is "particularly strong" (4). or that their
"better than clsewhere",
iterar
the "subverSIon of
logocen
7sm
Fminisms, postcoloniul theory, roce
describe the
modern Western function
of
rac
Sedgwick
was of corse
Edward Saids (1935 2003) pathbreaking Orientallin (1978)
nosing Foucault's work to postcolonial theory and Postcolonial Studies
familiar with
transposing
dopts
Said adopts
m
o
d
m
e
r
n
Foucaults concept of "dicoure in order to describe the
Western discourse of Orientam
I have found it useful here to employ Michel Foucault's notion of a d
course. to identily Orientalisn. My contention is that without
ining Orientalism as a discourse, one cannot posibly understanid t
enormously systematie discipline by which European culture was ablie to
manage andeven produce-the Orient politically, sociologically, mrilitariy
jdeologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenimen
period.
(Said 2003, 3
Orientalismjs the "nexus of knowledge and power creating the Oriental (as
an cssence and in a sense obliterating him as a human being" (27) As a lit
erary critic by training, Said is especially attentive to literature. analyzing the
ways in which literary works construct the Orient as the binary opposite of
the West and as an eternal and immutable essence without history. While
showing the participation of European literature in the project of colonialism
and the discourse of Orientalism, Said is keen to claim a degree of freedom
and originality for the writer and scholar:
(Unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted. I do
believe in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts constituting a discursive forma-
tion like Orientalism .. Foucault believes in general that the individual
text or author counts for very little.. [M}y analyses employ close textual
readings whose goal is to reveal the dialectic between individual text
or writer and the complex collective formation to which his work is a
contribution.
(23-4)
Said anticipates New Historicism here (see Chapter 11). His double readings
explore texts both in their complicity and their degree of freedom. Rather
than asking whether a text reproduces or resists Orientalism and imperialism,
close reading would specify in what sense a text reafirms Orientalism and in
what sense it questions it.
In Culture ad Imperialism (1993), the sequel to Orientalism, Said retines
his method further and addresses contemporary American neoimperialism.
He names and theorizes his method of reading as "contrapuntal" reading.
exemplified by his reading of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Said's starting
point is his diagnosis of an authoritarian hardening of two intellectual camps
In the 1970s and 198Os: a neoimperial or neocolonial camp (representai
postcolonial
within
what
by
literature
'they are",
and
malaise:
as
V S.
Naipaul,
the single
an
of the
tor example)
p
o
s
cause
of'
the
"blaming
camp
present" (Said
1993, 20).
US
-
i
n
d
e
p
e
n
d
e
n
c
e
for
as
Europeans
developmentwhich
This
"the last
"triumph" of tlie
with the
last chapter
misfortunes
t
sweepingly
continuing
anticolonial
World "fo
the Third
Thindl World
blaning
Femninisns,
324
the
race
heory,
is
a
superpower"
(341)
m
tt
e
r
al
l
i
m
e
rn
na
at
ti
io
on
na
er
ri
io
ou
us
s
se
has
its s y n p l o m s
o n e of
that
"apostles of
Said claims
and
poststructuralist
horizons" (29).
of
other
s e n s e that
and a
Foucault and
in
iberation
change"
of
"dramatic
(29).
been a
in the politics stuck within a Circle
"disappointment
a
are
theory
to: we
postcolonial
look forward
to
positions
Said
there is *nothing
i n c l u s i v e critical
resignation,
Said
connects
neoinmperialism
in his
American
"constriction
Tadicalism:
Foucault's
perceived
Against
his
and particularly
"contrapuntal"
reading
as an
and
open
a dialogue
two
the
between
staging
of the
task
antagonisns
to the urgent
"loud
contributing
the
and
practice
authoritarian
to bothbccause their
is equally opposed
Said
camps
anti-imperialists"
attitude
Said's Soeratic
of
debate of pro- and
"interchange" (29).
righteousness disable
and
the just, the
dogmatism
the blameless,
polarized
faithful, led
by
the
"stand
and others" (29),
is that inside each camp
about themselves
truth
the
term. Counler
who know
a musical
omnipotent, those
adapts
reading
"contrapuntal"
simultaneous sounding
of
the
technique "involving
polyphonic musical
2003). Said
melodies" (Collins Dictionary
Said's concept
point is
a
parts
of two or morevisions
or
Heart
from Conrad's
of
Darkness, made
derives two
possible by
marginality" (Said
outsider", his "exilic
colonial
Conrad's
The first vision is a
(32).
subjectivity"
"dislocated
have an
1993, 27) and his
on the Nellie
Marlow's British audience
and
Marlow
vision. Kurtz,
time" (33)-and Conrad
are "creatures of their
worldview
they
an
imperial
nor can he imagine
is outside" their worldview
cannot show us "what
this
simultaneous
"self-consciousness as an
-
"alternative to
vision is the
imperialism" (28). As
sense
imperialism" (26).
racist text,
as we
a
result, the "oppressive force"
of
historical force of
that there is "no way out of the sovereign
Darkness
(Chinua Achebe, similarly, read Heart of
discussed in
as
a
Chapter 8.)
narrative makes possible a second
However, the self-reflexivity of Marlow's
and the "disvision. Marlow's "meticulously staged" narrative performances
as
locations" in his language self-reflexively "draw attention to themselves
artificial constructions" (Said 1993, 32). This "unsettles" the reader's idea of
in a world being made and
unmade.. all the time" (33). Thus, at theveryleast, Conrad "shows us" that
Marlow's colonial vision is "contingent, acted out for a set of like-minded
British hearers, and limited to that situation" (26). Further, and more impor
empire and
of
"reality itself",
so
that "we
are
tantly. Conrad thereby allows for another world beyond his own grasp. The
very "provisionality" of Marlow's narrative situates it at the "juncture" of his
imperial world with "another, unspecified but different" (27), so that Conrad
allows certain kind of reader to sense "a
larger history... just outside
Marlow's worldview (26) and "inaccessible" to Conrad
himself (32). Conrad
in effect intuits that what he calls the
darkness is beyond him and has
a
world
volunteered for service in France and returned to theM
respectable protestant businessmen with American citizenship hef
war.
He
-
\it Sernes
dle Ea_
Eas
before making
arranged marriage to the daughter of a Baptist minister from Nazareth.
In Out of Place
(1999), the memoir of his childhood and youth, Said
don.
father, who called himself William to
his
emphasise
American id
overbearing and uncommunicative. His victorian strictnessadopted
lentit
instilled
in Said"ado
of
"a deep sers
generalised fear", which he spent most of his life
Said owed the driveness
trying to overcome. To his ffathe
that brought him his remarkable
of leisure or
achievements.
described h
he wrote.
"Ihave no con
relaxation and, more
no sense of
cummulative
"Everyday for me is like particularly,
empty summer behind it, and an
the
beginning
of a new term at
school,
oncep
achievemen
with a vast ana
uncertain toniorrow before it".
and
to Said, his
According
un-Arab Christian name
sense of
induced a split in his
identity, between "Edward", his
adolescen
ridden
outerself, and the "lo0se,
of
my
irresponsible, fantas
inner life."
himself asmetamorphoses
Bright but rebellious,
having been a leadingprivate
he described
troublemaker at Cairo's Victoria
style public school. Whose
as Omar Sharif.
snooty captain Michael
college, the British
Shalhoub would later
achieve celebrit
Sent at his father's
insistence to Mount
Said blossomed
Hermon, a private
but lacked the
academically
in
school
Massachusetts
outstanding
student. He
right
attitude
to be
which he found
responded positively to the American acknowledged as an
more
approach in Cairo. imaginative and stimulating than approach to essay writing
the
The contrast
buttoned-up British
between his
recognition clearly marked himburgeoning academic distinction and
much as the work of his
deeply. He would claim that the absence of formal
more
Blackmur, Antonio Gramsci, widely acknowledged intellectualit was his experience, as
Theodor Adormo,
that influenced his
mentors,
including RP
anti-authoritarian outlook. Raymond Williams and Michael
Said's engagement with
Foucault
Palestine drew on
affection for his
deep emotional
Jerusalem aunt Nabiha, his father's:
roots,
life to
working with Palestinian refugees in 's sister, who after
particularly his
1948,
Cairo,
political aspects of the dispute in Said's
devoted her
she
she never devo
although
discue
Until
presence.
his 30s,
occupied with his studies,
discussed
the
Edward
wae
progressively
was too
grac
graduate school, developing his critical smoothly through Princeton
Princeton and
and Harvapremusic, especially the
and
methodologies
rvard
at which he
his
indulging
piano,
ndulging
hi
s
passion
achieved
passion
an
almost
for
competence, to take much interest in the
professional
la
of
his
politics
the Arab
homeland. It
of
defeated
1967, which unleashed a second
wave of
was
the
traum
refugees fromn the 1948 exodus), that shocked him out ofrefugees (many of tho
hem
what he would
his earlier complacency,
come
ne
to
him
reconnecting with his former self.
already
see as
in
Postcoloniel Literature
21
Said's writings on
English literature, such as Cultural and Imperialism (199), and
western classical music drew heavily on his sence being on outsider Like Joseph Corirad,
subject ot
his P'hD
thesis and first
published book, he retained an "extra-ordinarily
persistent residual sense of his own exilic marginality", which enabled him to deploy a
the
kind of double vision in his readings of the English novel, discerning the invisible
colonial
plantations that guarantee the domestic tranquillity of Mansfield Park, or finding in
Conrad's selt-consiously
circular narrative forms the
sense
of the
potentiality
challenges to western hegemony that would erupt during the post-colonial era
of
tne
Where African writers such as Chinua Achebe dismissed Conrad as a racist,
suggesting that, whatever his gifts as a writer, his political attitudes must make hin
despiable to any African, Said saw such reasoning as amounting to spiritual, intellectiuai
and aesthetic amputation. Contrary to the assumptions sometimes made about him, he
did not consider that the hidden political agendas and attitudes of cultural suprernacy
that he regarded as informing the canons of western culture from Dante to Flaubert
necessarily diminished their artistic integrity or cultural power.
Versatile and subtle, Said
better
elucidating distrinctions
than formulating
systems. A Christian humanist with a healthy respect for Islam, he was a member of the
was
at
academic elite; yet he inveighed against academic professionalism, venturing into
territories well outside his area of speciality, insisting al ways that the true intellectual's
role m ust be that of the amateur, because it is only the amateur who is moved neither by
the rewards nor the requirements of a career and who is therefore capable of disinterested
engagement with ideas and values.
The unusual
complexity of his background-privileged yet marginal, wealthy yet
powerless- allowed him to empathise with dispossessed people, especially the victims
of Zionism and its western supporters, while enjoying in the fullest measure the
cultural riches of New York, a city that rang louder than any other with
Jewish
achievement and success
Edward Said, who has died aged 67 on September 25, 2003 was one of the leading
literary critics of the last quarter of the 20th century. As professor of English and
comparative literature at Columbia University, New York, he was widely regarded as
the
outstanding representative
of the
post-structuralist
left in America. Above all, he
the most articulate and visible advocate of the Palestinian
where it earnet him many enemies.
was
The broadness of Said's
approach
to
cause in
the United States
literature and his other great love, classical
musik, eludes easy categorisation. His most influential book, Orientalism (1978), is credited
with
helping to change the direction of several disciplines by exposing an unholy
between the enlightenment and colonialism. As a humanist with
thoroughly
alhance
serular
Lit Series
22
Utiok,
hus critique o n the great
to be self-contradictory,
traditions
the
tradition of
deploying
humanistic
a
conforts to
of hurnanism, giving
culturally
Whatever its
sensitive a r e a s
flaws, however,
discourse
fundamentalists
while calling
off-limits,
as
t h e i r tradition o r texts
Tesearch into
western enlgitenment
such
into
seemed to m a r .
to attack the
who
cultur
high
criticis
regarded any
question
the
integrity of critica
as Islam.
Orientalism appears
at a n opportune
countries
non-western
(many
of
time,
enablin,
whom c a u s e
from
academics from
the mood of politica
upwardly nobile
take advantage of
to
from colnialism)
tarniies who had benefited
"narratives of oppression"
themseles with
associating
c o r f e x t r e s 6 it helped to engender by
representations
interpreting and debating
transmitting,
of
out
c
a
r
e
e
r
s
successful
creating
of the non-western "otherT"
Said's influence, however,
and
scholarly
was
of academic
confined to the world
for from being
in America, he distinguished
discourse. An intellectual superstar
television
opeta critic, painist,
and public lecturer.
as an
Latterly, he
was one
of the
celebrity, politician,
most trenchant
of Yasser Arafat. He
leadership
magazine commentary,
rightwing
Palestinian
peace process
dubbed "Professor of terror"
and
the
by
the
struggling against
his status a s Palestinian refugee
the sarne magazine accused him of falsifying
American
eukaemia,
expert, popular essayist
media
critics of the Oslo
was
himself
to enhanve his
advcacy of the Palestinian
in 1999, when he
cause,
and of falsely
was
claiming
to have been at
chool in Jerusalem before completing his education in the United States
The
circdes in New York was predictable
hostility Said encountered from pro-Israeli
Palestinians and
Israeli violations of the human rights of
Middle East. From the other side of
his outspoken condemnations of US policies in the
Palestinians who accused him of
the conflict, however, he encountered opposition from
to Zionism.
sacrificing Palestinian rights by making unwarranted concessions
given his trenchant attacks
on
As early as 1977, when few Palestinians were prepared to concede that Jews had
historic claims to Palestine, he said, "I don't deny their claims, but their claim always
entails Palestinian dispossession". More than any other Palestinian writer, he qualified
his anti-colonial critique of Isreal, exlaining its complex entanglements and the problematic
character of its origins in the persecution of European jews, and the overwhelming impact
of the Zionist idea on the European conscience.
Said
are
recognised
measured owed
that Isreal's
everything
exemption
to the
from the normal criteria
Holocaust. But while
by which natio
recognising its unique
significance, he did not see why its legacy of trauma and horror should be exploitea
deprive the P'alestinians, a people who were "absolutely dissociable
an
entirely Furopean complicity" of their rights.
from what has x
Pastwonial Lterature
23
Thequestion to be asked, "he wrote in the politics of Dispossession (1994), is "how
g
can the history f
anti- semitism and the Holocaust be used as a fence to exempt
Isreal from arguments and sactions against
it for its
behaviour towards the P'alestinians,
rguments and sanctorns that were used against other repressive governments, such as
South Africa ? How long are we going todeny that the cries of the people of Gaza. are
diretly connerted to the policies of lsreal government and not to the cries of the victims
ot Nazisn?
Sad insisted
that the task of Isreal's critics
was
not to
reproduce
for P'alestine
a
ideology of diaspora and return, but rather to elaborate
Arabs and Jews. Elected to the Palestine
secular vision ot demoCracy as applicable to both
Said avoided taking part
National Council (P'NC) in 1977, as an independent intellectual,
while using his authority to make strategic interventions.
in the tunctional struggles,
because of the legacy of the
as
Rejecting the policy ot armed struggle impermissible
advocate of
conditions of the Jewish people - he was an early
the
and
sperial
Holocaust
adopted
Isrea>'s right to exist. The policy
two-state solution, implicitly rexcognising
mirror-inmage
ot
a
1onust
a
was
the
at
the PNC meeting in
In
adapting
Algiers
in
1988.
Said used his influence
English version of the Arabic draft text,
insufficient
although his modifications were
the
rephrase the Arabic,
to satisfy the
to
Reagan
Arafat's
that appeared in
dictating the crucial words
administration, which ended
because the
assembly (convened in Geneva
UN
the
of
general
session
speech to a special
in New York), there
Arafat a visa to attend the UN
by
US state department
retused to
grant
American media, explaining
tireless representations in the
Said's
that
doubt
can be little
Palestinians
on the part of the
"historic
compromise"
a
to
amounted
that the declaration
to
US-PLO dialogue that would lead
the
for
the
way
the Jewish state, opened
towards
the Oslo process.
the Madrid conference and
however, Said
adopted
an
increasingly
momentum,
As the peace process gained
declaration, he argued, was
from the PNC. The Oslo
critical stance and in 1991, resigned
lsraeli withdrawal from
an
scenerio, previsioning
towards Isreal; the
status of
unfairly
on the final
weighted
arnd
agreement
territories
of the other
Versailles".
Gaza and Jericho in advance
surrender, a Palestinian
"an instrument Palestinian
The best
Jerusalem amounted to
of
of
thorn in the side
Palestinian
authority.
the
censorship by
became the subject of
exile
Palestinian
conscience
the liberal
known and most distinguished
s t a n d a r d - b e a r e r s of
one of the
IPresident
o w n people,
surTounding
Epresentatives of his
corruption
and
intolerance
illiberal climate of
To the end, Said
n
tne
increasingly
Arafat and his regime.
remained a