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

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 critic From 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. Orientalism For 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 World His 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 question Here, 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.

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.

Said says he's instinctively drawn to the other side of power, but it's funny to think about Oscar Wilde's axiom that whenever anybody says something true, the opposite of what they're saying is also true. Said is instinctively drawn to power. He's been president of the MLA, and he loves to hear his mouth run. He has no poetry, no humor, no art -- just relentless self-righteous upper-class whining. He makes millions a year with his poseur-politics, but he couldn't write a poem if he had until the sun burned out. He represents everything that is wrong with academia today -- from poetry we have turned to ideology, from humor and wit we have turned to self-righteousness. This man is simply incapable of taking anything lightly, or even turning a witty phrase. He is a pompous bore from an upper-class family. Anyone this drawn to power, and so utterly without style, cannot be taken seriously.

Once again, Edward Said forces respect shows the extent of his talent as cultural critic, political essayist and world observer. Few intelectuals today can pretend applying a holisitic and methodological approach to world affairs and classical music at the same time. I highly recommend this book.Regarding the comment below by the nameless individual "nylawguy", i would just make the following remarks to reestablish the truth:- Edward Said is no longer a member of the PLO since 1992; however, I do not see why being a member of the PLO is such a problem: PLO members have been received at the White House on countless occasions last time I checked-Edward Said has not thrown stones at israeli soldiers since he was on the lebanese side of the border when he was pictured throwing a stone. Surprisingly enough, only the NY press made such a big fuzz out of that picture where evidently Edward Said did not aim at anyone- If you read carefully the book, you'll see that Said is actually one of the most vocal critics of Hamas' tactics, although he clearly tries to understand what led a desperate population of several million embrace Hamas so overwhelminglyI hope readers will take the time to read this book and draw their conclusions on their own

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. ....