Edward Said

Edward Said
Said in Seville, Spain, 2002
Born
Edward Wadie Said

(1935-11-01)1 November 1935
Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine
Died24 September 2003(2003-09-24) (aged 67)
New York City, U.S.
Burial placeProtestant Cemetery, Brummana, Lebanon
CitizenshipAmerican
Education
Spouse
​
(m. 1970)​
Children2, including Najla
Relatives
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
Notable ideas

Edward Wadie Said[a] (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist.[1] As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of post-colonial studies.[2] As a cultural critic, Said is best known for his book Orientalism (1978), a foundational text which critiques the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient.[3][4][5][6] His model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle Eastern studies.[7][8][9][10]

Born in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, in 1935, Said was a United States citizen by way of his father, who had served in the United States Army during World War I. After the 1948 Palestine war, he relocated to Egypt and then to the United States, enrolling at Victoria College while in Egypt and Northfield Mount Hermon School after arriving in the United States. He graduated with a BA in English from Princeton University in 1957, and later with an MA (1960) and a PhD (1964) in English Literature from Harvard University.[1] His principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor W. Adorno.[10] In 1963, Said joined Columbia University as a member of the English and Comparative Literature faculties, where he taught and worked until 2003. He lectured at more than 200 other universities in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.[11]

As a public intellectual, Said was a member of the Palestinian National Council supporting a two-state solution that incorporated the Palestinian right of return, before resigning in 1993 due to his criticism of the Oslo Accords.[12][13] He advocated for the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure political and humanitarian equality in the Israeli-occupied territories, where Palestinians have witnessed the increased expansion of Israeli settlements. However, in 1999, he argued that sustainable peace was only possible with one Israeli–Palestinian state.[14] He defined his oppositional relation with the Israeli status quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has "to sift, to judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual" man and woman.

In 1999, Said and Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, which is based in Seville, Spain. Said was also an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), a compilation of their conversations and public discussions about music at Carnegie Hall in New York City.[15]


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  1. ^ a b "Edward Said". Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 16 February 2023. Retrieved 31 July 2023.
  2. ^ Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, New York & London: Routledge, 1990.
  3. ^ Ferial Jabouri Ghazoul, ed. (2007). Edward Saïd and Critical Decolonization. American University in Cairo Press. pp. 290–. ISBN 978-977-416-087-5. Retrieved 19 November 2011. Edward W. Saïd (1935–2003) was one of the most influential intellectuals in the twentieth century.
  4. ^ Zamir, Shamoon (2005), "Saïd, Edward W.", in Jones, Lindsay (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, vol. 12, Macmillan Reference USA, Thomas Gale, pp. 8031–32, Edward W. Saïd (1935–2003) is best known as the author of the influential and widely-read Orientalism (1978) ... His forceful defense of secular humanism and of the public role of the intellectual, as much as his trenchant critiques of Orientalism, and his unwavering advocacy of the Palestinian cause, made Saïd one of the most internationally influential cultural commentators writing out of the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
  5. ^ Gentz, Joachim (2009). "Orientalism/Occidentalism". Keywords re-oriented. interKULTUR, European-Chinese intercultural studies, Volume IV. Universitätsverlag Göttingen. pp. 41–. ISBN 978-3-940344-86-1. Retrieved 18 November 2011. Edward Saïd's influential Orientalism (1979) effectively created a discursive field in cultural studies, stimulating fresh critical analysis of Western academic work on "The Orient". Although the book, itself, has been criticized from many angles, it is still considered to be the seminal work to the field.
  6. ^ Richard T. Gray; Ruth V. Gross; Rolf J. Goebel; Clayton Koelb, eds. (2005). A Franz Kafka encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 212–. ISBN 978-0-313-30375-3. Retrieved 18 November 2011. In its current usage, Orient is a key term of cultural critique that derives from Edward W. Saïd's influential book Orientalism.
  7. ^ Stephen Howe, "Dangerous mind?", New Humanist, Vol. 123, November/December 2008.
  8. ^ "Between Worlds", Reflections on Exile, and Other Essays (2002) pp. 561, 565.
  9. ^ Sherry, Mark (2010). "Said, Edward Wadie". In John R. Shook (ed.). Said, Edward Wadie (1935–2003). The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers. Oxford: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-19-975466-3.
  10. ^ a b Ian Buchanan, ed. (2010). "Said, Edward". A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953291-9.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference dfgw was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference nyt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Andrew N. Rubin,"Edward W. Said", Arab Studies Quarterly, Fall 2004: p. 1. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  14. ^ Said, Edward (10 January 1999). "The One-State Solution". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 27 December 2023. Given the collapse of the Netanyahu Government over the Wye peace agreement, it is time to question whether the entire process begun in Oslo in 1993 is the right instrument for bringing peace between Palestinians and Israelis. It is my view that the peace process has in fact put off the real reconciliation that must occur if the hundred-year war between Zionism and the Palestinian people is to end. Oslo set the stage for separation, but real peace can come only with a binational Israeli–Palestinian state.
  15. ^ Democracy Now!, "Edward Saïd Archive", DemocracyNow.org, 2003. Retrieved 4 January 2010. Archived 8 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine.