Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said

A very good introduction to the issues facing Gaza today .

loved the book

For almost a quarter century, Edward W. Said, professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, public intellactual, and Palestinian freedom fighter par excellence has worked tirelessly to bridge the gap between the personal and the political. Whether he is arguing for an end to state sponsored torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prison camps, the need for more democratic reform within the Palestinian Authority, or Jane Austen as a mirror of the colonial enterprise, Said never fails to enlighten and inspire. Along with Noam Chomsky in this country and Pierre Bourdieu on the European Continent, he is that rare breed: the tenured intellectual within the Academy who is brave enough to stick his neck out of the ivory tower and reconcile theoretical constructs with the political reality on the ground.In Power, Politics, and Culture, Gauri Vishwanathan, one of Said's colleagues at Columbia, has cast a wide net and gathered interviews from India, Pakistan, the Arab World and Israel. Remarkable for their conversational quality, these interviews reflect as much the interviewers' politics and social concerns as they do Said's responses to them. True to form, Said is never reluctant to throw down the gauntlet and challenge an interviewer. Speaking with Hasan M. Jafri of the Karachi (Pakistan) Herald, in an interview conducted soon after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued his famous death fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, Said pursues Rushdie's funfamentalist detractors with the same trademark energy he might devote to castigating a Shamir or a Netanyahu. To wit: " I am an absolute believer in absolute freedom of expression. As a Palestinian, I have fought Israeli attempts to censor my people in what they can write or read. A lot of our battle for liberation has to do with freedoms of thought and opinion and expression. I firmly believe in them. So, let me say, regardless of the reason, I believe there should be no censorship at all." He continues: "...I am very disturbed by the whole thing ( the Rushdie affair ) and I just wish that Salman Rushdie could lead a normal life.....It's a huge price to pay for an individual. He has lost the ability to be free. He can't move around as he wishes. He can't see his son. His second marriage failed while he was in hiding. I feel it shouldn't happen to anyone. Our world is big enough to have people like Salman Rushdie writing as they do and to debate what they say. But to condemn him to death and to burn his book and to ban it - those are horrible, horrible things." Incidentally, Pakistan was in the grip of anti-Rushdie riots after the announcement of the fatwa, but on Said's request The Herald printed all of his comments in Rushdie's defense.His bete noir, The New Republic, gets similar treatment. In a panel discussion chaired by William McNeil ( formerly of the News Hour), and joined by both Christopher Hitchens and Leon Wieseltier, Said reads from a theater review published in that magazine. ...."Where did the follwing review appear: The description of a play at the American Repertory Theater in this town: 'The universalist prejudice of our culture prepared us for this play's Arab, a crazed Arab to be sure, but crazed in the distinctive ways of his culture. He is intoxicated by language, cannot discern between fantasy and reality, abhors compromise, always blames others for his predicament and, in the end, lances the painful boil of his frustrations in a pointless, though momentarily gratifying act of bloodlust.' " Said turns to Wieseltier: "I disagree with you Leon; I'm sorry, I don't believe that could appear about an Indian or an African in any other magazine in this country."As an antidote to their prejudices about at least one Arab, Leon and his friends at TNR would be well advised to read Power, Politics and Culture. As for the Ayatollahs, they will surely have to. Anything Said says or does, as evidenced in these interviews, is an event in the Middle East. Before long, pirated editions of this book, in Persian, will be available in the myriad bookshops on Enghelab Avenue, the student ghetto outside Tehran University. Arabic copies will sell from Casablanca to Riyadh. In this country too, this volume will hold readers spellbound. Whether he is talking literary theory or street politics, Edward Said brings an immediacy to whatever it is he is discussing that is truly unique.

Said gives good insight into politics, especially in the middle east. I didn't enjoy the literature section as much because I wasn't familiar with the authors.

This collection of interviews gives an excellent overview of the two sides of Edward W. Said's life and work: the literary critic and the political commentator / agitator.Literary and music criticFrom the 1970s on, E.W. Said was confronted with the postmodern (deconstruction) movement. But, he saw immediately the immense flaw in the discourse: `their criticism takes language as language and then proceeds to discuss literature as embroiled in the problems of language ... (they are) uninterested in the life of society and very far removed from the world of politics, power, domination and struggle.'To the contrary, what moved E.W. Said were `anger at injustice, intolerance of oppression and ideas about freedom and knowledge.'(For a devastating verdict on postmodernism, see G.G. Preparata.)Strangely, as a musicologist, he admires T. Adorno, who shamefully dismissed the music of I. Stravinsky (the greatest composer of the 20th century) on Marxist (?) grounds.OrientalismFor E.W. Said, the West's vision on the Orient is completely biased. The Orient is (was) occupied by the West, milked by the West for its resources and humanly squashed by the West.Third WorldHis light beacon for the struggle of the populations of the Third World was Frantz Fanon (`The Wretched of the Earth') who analyzes the problem of how charismatic revolutionary leaders could become themselves oppressors of the `liberated' and turn into a new power elite.Palestinian questionHere, E.W. Said is an angry man, for `without justice there cannot be peace.'His (ir)real dream is a bi-partisan State with a Palestinian majority.In any case, Israel has to assume total responsibility for the dispossession and confiscation of land, the destruction of the Palestinian society and the deprivations, the sufferings and the killings of the Palestinian people.Of course, these interviews contain many repetitions, but they give an in depth view of the evolution of E.W. Said's ideas concerning the real world and literature with a body.Not to be missed.

Edward Said rightfully sees the Muslim politicians as well as the secular leaders in the Middle East as lacking a "discipline of details". However by reading this book we have hope that some day the awakening and the current Arab Spring will prevail over the longtime dictatorships in the region. His analytical thinking helps us see specific issues with western intellectuals, academics, and the media coverage of Middle Eastern controversies. He forces us to look at "both sides" of the issues in the region not just the "Orientalist" side.

Knowledgeable and informative

Know what Edward Said has to say about Palestine, the Western ethos, and literature in general. Enjoyed reading this panoramic collection of his interviews.

The book was fairly used, but the book itself is really useful, containing lots of ideas summarised from his other books. Really useful if you need to 'quote' from Said.