Edward Said
From Geography
Biography
Identity- who we are, where we come from, what we are- is difficult to maintain in exile...we are the 'other', an opposite, a flaw in the geometry of resettlement, an exodus. Silence and discretion veil the hurt, slow the body searches, soothe the sting of loss (Said, E., 1986 in Ashcroft & Ahluwalia, 2001, p.3)
This quotation illustrates the life of Edward Said [1] (1 November 1935- 25 September 2003), which was a very well known and often recited Palestinian-American critic, political commentator and literary and cultural theorist, which could be placed within postcolonialism (Said is considered as the founding father of postcolonialism). He was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, Palestine. By that time, Palestine was under British administration. After the second World War, Edward Said and his family went to Cairo. Said didn't really feel comfortable living in Cairo, and after he was expelled from highschool in 1951, his parents sent him to the United States. In America, it wasn't that easy either, but Said was very clever: he graduated at Princeton University, went to Harvard for his Ph.D and became an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York. Untill than, he maintained two identities: as a Palestinian and as an American. But "the 1967 [Arab-Israeli] war and its reception in America confronted Said with the paradox of his own position; he could no longer maintain two identities, and the experience began to be reflected everywhere in his work (...) he began to construct himself as a Palestinian" (Ashcroft & Ahluwalia, 2001, p.3). This quotation shows Said's struggle with his identity and his politicisation after the Arab-Israeli war, which have had a major influence on his important works Orientalism (1978), The Question of Palestine (1979) and Covering Islam (1981). Orientalism could be seen as his most influental and most recited work, which will be discussed here as well. The most important thing that can be concluded from Said's biography, is that his own life has been very crucial to the direction of his theory. As Ashcrof and Ahluwalia (2001) say: "The condition of his own life, the text of his identity, are constantly woven into and form the defining context for all his writing. His struggles with his dislocation, his recognition of the empowering potential of exile, his constant engagement with the link between textuality and the world, underlie the major directions ofo his theory and help to explain his uncertain relationship with contemporary theory" (p.5)
Postcolonialism
As said above, Said can be placed within the postcolonial tradition. Postcolonialism is a very broad school of thought with strong ties to marxists and post-structuralism. The term is not meant in a chronological way and does not refer (only) to the period after decolonisation, rather it refers to the continuation of colonisation and moreover the hope to overcome it (Blunt & Wills, 2000, p.169). Post-colonialism marks that "[a]lthough the formal structures of colonial rule might have been overturned, the legacies of colonial rule remain intact in many spheres of life both in metropolitan centres and in ex-colonies. The political, administrative, legal, educational and religious systems in many ex-colonies continue to reflect past European colonial influence"(p. 178). Postcolonialism is a contested concept given diverse aims and content by different scholars. In general, postcolonial perspectives are anti-colonial and united in their critique on the impact of colonialism in the past and in the present. It states that colonialism did not end with the formal end of (European) states ruling over others and that contemporary global power relations are a product of colonialism. Postcolonial theory is very well explained by Ashcroft and Ahluwalia (2001): The theory is focussed on investigating "the cultural and political impact of European conquest upon colonised societies, and the nature of those societies' responses" (p. 15). Postcolonialism deals with colonial forms of power and knowledge, colonial representations of the world and resistance against colonialism. These led to theoretical projects such as decolonizing of the mind, giving back voice and agency to the colonised (subaltern) and the deconstruction of texts (Blunt & Wills, 2000, p.167-193). Postcolonialism is greatly concerned with representation in texts and knowledge and has been criticized for being too textual and theoretical (Barnett, 2006). Part of the postcolonial theory is 'colonial discourse analysis', which critically studies colonial discourses, "the apparatus of power that legitimates colonial rule over people and places at distance" (Gregory, in Blunt and Wills, 2000, p. 181). Said's work Colonialism, which will be discussed in the next section, can be seen as a very important work in which colonial discourse analyses has a central role.
Colonial Identity.
An important assumption in post-colonialism is that colonialism did not only cover economical exploitation and political subordination, it concerned cultural power over subordinated relations as well. Meaning that culture was used as an instrument of domination by the coloniser. This also implies that colonial forms of power and ideas about subordination live on after the formal end of colonisation, embedded in cultural systems of identity and representation (Barnett, 2006). Through this reasoning it is believed that gaining control over collective self-definition is an important emancipating strategy. This is were the term Decolonization of the mind comes in. This project is concerned with deconstructing perceptions and attitudes of power, oppression and superiority that were adopted during the time of colonialism (Glück, 2007) and are still institutionalised in society and minds. This results in ideas of superiority in the context of race, gender, religion, culture, class, territoriality, development and so on. The aim of decolonization of the mind is to deconstruct these ideas of power, oppression and superiority (Blunt en Wills, 2000).
Geography and postcolonialism Postcolonialism is an approach that has had and still has great influence in different disciplines such as literary studies, cultural studies, anthropology, history and geography (Blunt & Wills, 2000). Geography has something to make up for, concerning colonialism: the discipline was very influential and important in the rise and sustaining of colonialism. In the words of Livingston: “It can be argued that ‘geography was the science of imperialism par excellence’ because ‘exploration, topographic and social survey, cartographic representation, and regional inventory … were entirely suited to the colonial project’” (Blunt & Wills 2000, p. 193-194). But, unlike in other disciplines it is only recently that geographers have been critical about the history of the discipline and its imperial complicity instead of “celebrating exploration, ‘discovery’, and heroic explorers and geographers” (Blunt & Wills, 2000, p.192). It is clear that colonialism and its impact have great (social) geographical implications which makes postcolonialism an important way of doing geography.
Other important authors.
- Franz Fanon: Connecting anti-colonial writing to postcolonial theory. Against anti-colonial nationalism. How the exploitation of the south enriched the west and arguing against historicism (Barnett, 2006, p148-149).
- Homi Bhabba: On the place of colonised (humanised) people in colonial discourses, the relationships between coloniser and colonised and the location of culture as in-between (Blunt & Wills, 2000, p187-189).
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Can the subaltern speak?: Is it possible to reconstruct the voices of the suppressed by writing history from a different angle as tried by the Subaltern Studies collective? Spivak sais it’s not possible. She argues that no “unified subaltern identity can be recovered that is autonomous from colonial and nativist discourses” (Blunt & Wills, 2000, p192).
Key ideas
Several key ideas can be distinguished throughout Said's work. This key ideas will be discussed on this page. Very important are Orientalism and the idea of contrapuntal reading.
Orientalism
Orientalism in general is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West. "Orientalism" refers to the Orient or East, in contrast to the Occident or West. Edward Said published in 1978 his influential and controversial book ‘Orientalism’, in which Said elaborated his theories, ways of thinking and interpretation on this matter.
Imaginative geography
The term or the idea of an imaginative geography was first mentioned by Edward Said in 1975 in his critique of orientalism. In his view the imaginative geography consits of a triangulation of power, knowledge and geography. He deploys the term imaginative geography to capture the connective imperative between geography and discourse within the unequal framework of empire: the ‘dramatisation’ of difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and ‘here’ and ‘there’, with texts ‘creat(ing) not only knowledge but also the very reality they appear to describe’ (Dictionary of Human Geography, 2009). By this he meant that the meaning or the perception of a specific place is created by the dominance of the most powerful authority. He refered to the colonial power of the Northern society which created and shaped a particular stereotyp of foreign countries. He describes landscapes and cultures as beeing drawn into abstract grids of colonial and imperial power, literally displaced and replaced, and illuminates the ways in which these constellations become sites of appropriation, domination and contestation (Gregory, 2000). This means that in contrast to other behavioural geographies where the cognition plays a main role, imaginative geography, because it is a cultural construct, is also influenced by imagination, desire and the unwitting, automatic idea of a place or thing. Through the creation of images of different places and the representation of places through images and tales, the places are enriched with a particular value. As a result the feeling of `otherness´ and `us´ and `them´ arises. So what Said wanted to say is that through the circulation of images, texts and narrartives a certain world is created and through the continious use and circulation of this images a certain sence of authority is created.
As a good example the `war on terror´ could be mentioned. There is also a form of imaginative geography to be recognized. By talking and downgrading the Afghan society as enemies who are attacking the northern civilization a specific image is created and brought around the world until many people take it as a fact.
Culture as imperialism: contrapuntal reading
Said says that you can't look at imperialism without looking at culture. Ashcroft and Ahluwalia (2001) say about this: "the role of culture in keeping imperialism intact cannot be overestimated, because it is through culture that the assumption of the 'divine right' of imperial powers to rule is vigorously and authoritatively supported" (p. 85).
Contrapuntal reading
By reading contrapuntally you take in to account intertwined histories and perspectives. No one account is privileged, and Said used this to analyse and interpret colonial texts as he considered both the view of the colonized and the colonizer. Said is interpreting in a contrapuntal manner, interpreted the different perspectives simultaneously and tried to see how they related. It is reading with "awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts" (Said, 1994). The concept of contrapuntality was first used by Said in the essay Reflections on Exile and was further developed in Culture and Imperialism.
Said was influenced to read contrapuntally through his love of western music, especially piano, which he played. Contrapuntal music combines two different parts of music that will result in a nice sound. Thus reading contrapuntally will take two different perspectives together and come up with an idea of a relationship between the two. So: "Contrapuntal reading takes both (or all) dimensions of this polyphony into account, rather than the dominant one, in order to discover what a univocal reading might conceal about the political worldliness of the canonical text" (Ashcroft & Ahluwalia, 2001, p. 93).
The concepts of contrapuntality and fugue, which Said borrows from Western classical music, weave through his arguments and are central to his unique articulation(Chowdhry, 2007, p. 102) . The aim is to create a landscape where the notes each have a part to play. Said feels like we can also think about space this way, we no longer think of the differences but about the overlap and the similarities between separate spaces.
‘The concept of contrapuntality was first used by Edward Said in the essay ‘Reflections on Exile’ and then developed in more detail in Culture and Imperialism. It was essentially his response to critics of Orientalism who felt that Said seemed to focus exclusively on European culture and ignored the resistance and agency of the colonised’(Chowdhry, 2007, p.104). The influence that former colonies have on the so called European high culture is not to be underestimated. This new method he developed, helped him to read back and show how the presence of empire is crucial in canonical texts. When we look back we are aware of the dominant discourse at that time, but also of the ones who where suppressed back then(Gregory, 2000).
In practical terms, ‘contrapuntal reading’ means reading a text with an understanding of what is involved when an author shows, for instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is seen as important to the process of maintaining a particular style of life in England. The point is that contrapuntal reading must take account of both processes, that of imperialism and that of resistance to it, which can be done by extending our reading of the texts to include what was once forcibly excluded(Chowdhry, 2007). By taking all different forces into account, the ‘wholeness’ of the story can be shown. This means that some of our biggest historical experiences that have been documented, could be seen into a bigger perspective. Chowdhry says on this subject ‘A contrapuntal reading, I suggest, will engender the articulation of exiled voices into international relations and help us interrogate the histories and assumptions which ‘uphold elite privilege in international relations pedagogies’. The same goes for current events and misunderstandings between the so called ‘western countries’ and the ‘non- western counties’.
Everybody takes part in this composition, but they all have different voices and they are each distinct.’ Instead of a partial analysis offered by mainstream international relations, these readings provide the ‘contrapuntal lines of a global analysis in which the world and texts are seen working together’ providing ‘an atonal ensemble’ of dominant, in-between, and submerged voices in International relations’(Chowdhry, 2007).
Edward Said and Michel Foucault: important parallels
It can be said that the works of Edward Said en Michel Foucault are in some way very intimately linked to eachother. Several parallels and distinctions can be distinguished. In Derek Gregory´s chapter Edward Said´s imaginative geographies (2000), several interesting parallels are discussed. An important parallel is that both Foucault and Said have a ´spatial view of things' (p. 312). From this notion spatiality, a parallel can be drawn between Foucault´s carceral system and Said´s Orientalism. This parallel can be described "by plotting three points on their maps of power, knowledge and geograpy" (p. 314). First, both Said and Foucault talk about differentiating binary relations. Foucault says "that societies are discursively constituted through a series of normalizing judgements that are put into effect by systems of division, exclusion and oppositions" (p. 314). Said applies the binary thinking to the relation between the 'Orient' and the 'Occident'. "Said wires these divisions to a grid of power that is both universalizing and differentiating, and in doing so extends Foucault's original thesis" (p. 315). Next to this, both Foucault and Said see 'a history of detail' and the hereof depending 'spaces of constructed visibility' were important notions (p. 315-317). Related to this is Bentham's notion of the Panopticon. Also Foucault and Said both describe a discursive construction of exclusionary geography's. Foucault's society is here constituted by the normative judgements reflected in divisions, exclusions and oppositions. (p. 314)(think about the mental hospitals and prisons) Said is in this respect discussing the constitution of identity by establishing opposites that takes place as a contest. (p.313)
In addition a notion by Said, who followed Foucault's work, in were he argues that power and knowledge are closely connected and one can't go without the other. The ‘West’s’ (occident) claim to knowledge of the East (orient) gave the ‘West’ the power to name, and the power to control (Sharp, 2008). In understanding colonialism and recognizing Postcolonialism this concept plays an important role.
Areas of overlap with the Action-Theoretical tradition
Several overlaps can be seen between Edward Said's work and writers of the Action-Theoretical tradition. First, Said can be compared with Niklas Luhmann, although it could also be discussed of Luhmann could be placed within the Action-Theoretical or Poststructural tradition of thought and although the 'overlap' could be seen as very marginal. It could be said that both Said and Luhmann are against a totalistic view of society. This could be derived from the following citations. In his book Culture and imperialism Said (1994) says: "Now I am temperamentally and philosphically opposed to vast system-building or totalistic theories of human history" (p.4) and Arnoldi (, in his introductory article about Niklas Luhmann, makes clear "one of Luhmann's basic hypotheses, namely that there's no point within society from which society can be observed in its totality" (p.2).
Said is, as a post-structuralist, principally interested in mapping and tracing. What he calls imaginative geographies of the Orient. And here he argues that the identity and national culture of what we know of as the west (specifically France and Britain) is constructed over time, through the colonial encounter in a relationship between ‘us and them’. Once again, influenced by Foucault, working around a set of binaries; ‘the west and the rest’. While making this distinction Said is mapping these binaries and is thus creating borders. So we sense here a kind of a cultural mapping. This could be classified as the mapping of language areas were language is treated as a cultural artefact to make sense of a situation (Withers, 2010). According to Zierhover (2002), in explaining the mechanisms of interaction in the action theoretical approach, making sense of a situation can be established by the speech act within the language pragmatic theory, as a form of language. Meaning that language, in the practice of the speech act, is used to make sense of a situation. Both Said and Zierhofer try to make sense of a situation using (cultural) language, but through another approach and with other tools.
Area of divergence with the Action-Theoretical tradition
In a very general way, it can be said that Said, just like many other thinkers which are placed within the poststructuralist tradition, takes space as a startingpoint for his theoretical considerations. In contrast, it could be very generally said that action theoretical thinkers take action as starting point for their considerations. So, very generally, Said thinks in a space --> action way and action theorists think in a action --> space way.
Critique
Although Edward said is widely praised for his book Orientalism and although his ideas are still very actual and frequently refered, there are also many points of critique on his ideas. These critiques can be found in the wiki-page of Orientalism under headline 4, 'Criticism'.
Example
The work of Said is in many ways relevant to the field of geography. One of them is described as following: Robbins (in Ashcroft & Ahluwalia, 2001) says that "Said's own sense of the contrapuntal process is that it is a way of 'rethinking geography'" (p. 94). Ashcroft and Ahluwalia (2001) note that "[r]ather than just another way of reading the text, contrapuntal reading uncovers the geographical reality of imperialism and its profound material effects upon a large proportion of the globe"(p. 94). So, its about the struggle over geography. Said (1994) says about the struggle over geography that "[j]ust as none of us is outside or beyond geography, non of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting, because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings"(p.6).
References
- Arnoldi, J. (2001). Niklas Luhmann. An Introduction. In: Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 18, No. 1, pp 1-13.
- Ashcroft, B. and Ahluwalia, P. (2001). Edward Said. New York, London: Routledge.
- Barnett, C. (2006). Postcolonialism: Space, Textuality and Power. In S. Aitken & G. Valentine (Eds.), Approaches to human geography (pp. 147-160). London: SAGE publications Ltd.
- Blunt, A. & Wills, J. (2000). Dissident geographies, An introduction to radical ideas and practice. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
- Chowdhry, G. (2007). Edward Said and Contrapuntal Reading: Implications for Critical Interventions in International Relations. Millennium - Journal of International Studies 2007. Published by SAGE.
- Glück, N. O. (2007) Post-Colonialism: Definition, Development and Examples from India Vinddatum 4 oktober op http://www.nilsole.net/referate/post-colonialism-definition-development-and-examples-from-india/
- Gregory, D. (2000). Edward Said’s imaginative geographies. In Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift (eds.) Thinking space. Routledge, London, pp.302-348.
- Gregory, D. (2000). Decolonising Geography: Postcolonial Perspectives. Chapter 5 in: Blunt, A. & Wills, J. (eds.) Dissident Geographies: an introduction to radical Ideas and Practice. Prentice Hall, London.
- Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M. J., Whatmore, S., (2009). Dictonary of Human Geography 5th edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Said, E.W., (1978). Orientalism. London: Penguin.
- Said, E. W. (1994). Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage.
- Sharp, J. (2008). Geographies of Postcolonialism, chapter 1, On Orientalism. SAGE Publications.
- Withers, C. (2010). Language, in The Dictionary of Human Geography (5th edition), 2010. p 411.
- Zierhofer, W. (2002). Speech acts and space(s): language pragmatics and the discursive constitution of the social. Environment and Planning, 2002, 34, p 1356.
Contributors
- Biography created by --JikkeVanTHof 12:06, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
- Imaginative geography enhanced by --FabianBusch 12:07, 04 October 2011 (UTC)
- Contrapuntal reading enhanced by --SamanthaHazlett 14:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
- Images inserted and page enhanced by --JikkeVanTHof 16:26, 13 October 2011 (CEST)
- Contrapuntal reading enhanced, postcolonialism edited and new titles inserted by --JikkeVanTHof 10:58, 14 October 2011 (CEST)
- Contrapuntal reading enhanced by --LucBouman 11:54, 18 Oktober 2011 (UTC)
- Page edited in 'Orientalism' by adding the introduction and the link to Orientalism. Enhanced by Stan Crienen s4166817. --StanCrienen 12:43, 24 October 2011 (CEST)
- 'postcolonialism' edited by Marron Borroka 17:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
- Areas of overlap edited by --JikkeVanTHof 20:59, 22 October 2011 (CEST)
- Page enhanced in 'Edward Said and Michel Foucault: important parallels'. Enhanced by Stan Crienen.--StanCrienen 12:43, 24 October 2011 (CEST)
- Page enhanced in 'Areas of overlap with the Action-Theoretical tradition'. Enhanced by Stan Crienen. --StanCrienen 16:01, 24 October 2011 (CEST)
- Page enhanced by Michiel van Rijn --MichielVanRijn 12:59, 26 October 2012 (CEST)
