Edward Said

This volume is the first book-length examination of Said's remarkable career, providing a critical survey of his writings and an interim assessment of his achievements in both the cultural and political spheres. This collection includes essays on the Arab-Islamic context of Said's work, his reception among Israeli and American Jews, the institutional contexts of his cultural criticism, and his interventions in Middle Eastern politics.

This volume is the first book-length examination of Said's remarkable career, providing a critical survey of his writings and an interim assessment of his achievements in both the cultural and political spheres. This collection includes essays on the Arab-Islamic context of Said's work, his reception among Israeli and American Jews, the institutional contexts of his cultural criticism, and his interventions in Middle Eastern politics.

Library Journal

Said is a leading intellectual and critic, and his new book, Culture and Imperialism , is a major achievement that should be read widely. It explores and illuminates two major points: that the European effort to rule foreign lands grew out of a broad cultural willingness to bring European ``civilization'' to ``primitive'' peoples who deserved subjugation and that resistance to European rule evolved into the decolonization struggle and assertions of new cultural identity. Said's analysis is compelling because he links his political conclusions to deep cultural and literary analysis. His eminence as a literary critic and professor of literature at Columbia University allows him to present his provocative views through careful readings of the literary canon: Charles Dickens's Great Expectations , Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness , E.M. Forster's Passage to India , and others. He presents the resistance to European rule by analyzing works of Third World intellectuals who articulated the liberation struggle and the assertion of new identities. His final section looks at the American drive for empire, later than Europe's and even more strongly invoking a self-justifying sense of mission. Throughout, Said presents his challenging ideas with great intelligence, extensive cultural knowledge, a clear and gracious writing style, and a flexible and humane spirit. In comparison, the collection of articles analyzing Said's critical and political influence aims at a more specialized audience. The ten essays by academics and journalists vary in appeal. Several illuminate interesting aspects of Said's work, particularly his own emphasis on being in exile between two cultures. Others, however, are so enmeshed in the jargon of current academic discourse that they will fascinate only the most committed readers. The most interesting article is the 1989 interview with Said, which ranges over his experiences in Cairo as a child and more recently as a scholar, his frustrations over media representation of Palestinian issues, and, again, his thoughtful, open approach to political and cultural ideas.-- Elizabeth Hayford, Associated Colls. of the Midwest, Chicago

Michael Sprinker is also Assistant to Associate Professor of English at Oregon State University.