Why Read Edward Said Now?

More than twenty years after Edward Said's passing, what his admirers around the world would probably want most is to hear his voice, his voice raised in public on the subject of the Israeli killing and land-grabbing in Gaza and the West Bank. Not just for the power and articulateness of that voice, but also for its characteristic insistence on being critical when necessary of the Palestinian leadership, as he was in the last decade of his life about the Palestine Liberation Organization's acceptance of the Oslo Accords. When it came out in 1978, Orientalism was epoch-making. In the university, it was the founding document of postcolonial studies—of whose identity politics Said himself did not approve. But today, whether disputed, qualified, or taken for granted, Orientalism is no longer headline news. It is fair to ask, therefore, why Said still needs to be read. This book answers that he should be read anew not just for his righteous indignation, but also for the heroic model he sets of the intellectual in our time, forced to wrestle with seemingly incompatible commitments that are also our own. Did Said propose the exile's distanced critique or the advocate's worldly engagement? Can those contradictions find reconciliation in the defense of the Palestinian people and their right not to be bombed out of existence? In the era of Gaza, what should an intellectual try to be? In this slim volume, leading scholar and thinker, Bruce Robbins, shows that our world is still Said’s to illuminate.