What to say about Said...

Here you go, Scottie -- I wrote the below in response to a pretty
blistering account of Said's work on another listserve.

Jim

******

Just last night I attended the opening evening of a conference at Drew
University entitled "An American Empire?: Globalization, War, and
Religion." Edward Said was originally scheduled to be the keynote
speaker. He cancelled due to health problems about a week ago, and
Richard Falk, an old acquanitance of Said, took his place.

Those interested in the specific content of the conference are welcome
to visit this webpage:

http://www.users.drew.edu/mnausner/ttc3.html

The conference seems to be legitimately questioning the nature and
extent of American Empire; the most intelligent presentations seem to
lead one to think past paradigms for understanding colonialism and
empire are bad fits for the current global situation. Empire needs to be
redefined.

Richard Falk began, of course, with a short eulogy of Edward Said.
The word "anger" was brought up more than once, along with a
brief recapitulation of Said's work and ideas. Said's early
work was about Joseph Conrad and colonialism, work that
clearly influenced his later ideas. The simple premise of
_Orientalism_ was summarized as the assertion that the
fine arts and academia, along with a number of other
cultural institutions, work together to create a vision of the Middle
East conducive to western political imperialism.

So far as this goes, the argument in _Orientalism_ works well and is
coherent. The history seemed selective to me, though -- painful, recent
memories of western incursions onto Middle Eastern sovereignty seemed to

completely obscure Middle Eastern expansionism of previous centuries
(that aren't that far gone). Still, as a description of the present
situation Said's argument is hard to contradict.

Critics of Said accuse him of caring for no one but the Palestinian
people, and the Arabs as defined by a group in opposition to the west.
If you think this is only a right-wing criticism, I had a gay professor
say the same thing in a grad classroom. Even the furthest left has their

criticisms and disenchantments with Said. Falk attempted to counter
this criticism with reminders that Said advocated a bi-national
Jewish/Palestinian state in Israel, caring for the security of both
sides of this dispute.

The important thing to me, of course, is that Falk felt the need to
address this criticism.

There was no sense that all problems in the Middle East were the result
of western imperialism. Falk himself seemed to speak with calm reason
most times and good humor at other times, clearly delineating between
those who seek out excuses for violence and those caught within cycles
of violence. One comment he made seemed to particularly stand out with
me: "You don't want to put people in a position where their only choices

are surrender or terrorism."

Falk interestingly pointed out religion as the arena in which a peaceful

anti-imperialism could be developed, reminding audiences that apartheid
was dismantled without the complete disintegration of S. African
society, that the Soviet Union collapsed, and that the Berlin Wall was
torn down. All these seemed impossibilities at one time, yet all came
to pass, and he urged the audience to be hopeful for the possibilities
for resolution of Middle Eastern tensions (which, he said, currently
revolved around the Palestinian situation).

After Falk's presentation, a panel of respondents came forward,
comprised of a professor from Malaysia, one from South America, and one
from the United States. While they all had their criticisms and clear
biases, only the US professor seemed unreasonably, even stupidly,
biased. The others seemed more interested in appealing to the audience
than condemning it.

Overall, my impression of Said and Co. in the past hadn't been too much
unlike Mr. W--'s description in his most recent e-mail to the list.
While I may not have phrased everything quite the way he did, I've
always thought that Said's (and Co.) primary concern was _his_ people
and
_their_ issues -- which is a perfectly legitimate, though painfully
limited, point of view. I'm happy to say my exposure to larger context
recently has shown me that this is partially true, but certainly not the

whole story.

Jim

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Received on Sat Sep 27 13:06:10 2003