Orientalism

For years the Eastern world has been known to the West only through interpretive literature and texts that give, for the most part, a predominantly Western perspective on a distinct and unique history and culture. The crux of Orientalism is a critiquing of the way the academic world has regarded the East and how they have only helped to legitimize and feed Western dogma to the masses. It is an intellectual history of the way history has, to this point, been interpreted. Columbia Professor Edward Said uses the Muslim Orient to prove how irresponsible chronicling has been responsible for pervaded impressions. His version is a fascinating, not to mention exciting, intellectual history.

The noted critic and a Palestinian now teaching at Columbia University,examines the way in which the West observes the Arabs.

The noted critic and a Palestinian now teaching at Columbia University, examines the way in which the West observes the Arabs.

Born in Jerusalem and educated at Victoria College in Cairo and at Princeton and Harvard universities, Edward Said has taught at Columbia University since 1963 and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University. He has had an unusual dual career as a professor of comparative literature, a recognized expert on the novelist and short story writer Joseph Conrad, (see Vol. 1) and as one of the most significant contemporary writers on the Middle East, especially the Palestinian question and the plight of Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Although he is not a trained historian, his Orientalism (1978) is one of the most stimulating critical evaluations of traditional Western writing on Middle Eastern history, societies, and literature. In the controversial Covering Islam (1981), he examined how the Western media have biased Western perspectives on the Middle East. A Palestinian by birth, Said has sought to show how Palestinian history differs from the rest of Arabic history because of the encounter with Jewish settlers and to present to Western readers a more broadly representative Palestinian position than they usually obtain from Western sources. Said is presently Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia, editor of Arab Studies Quarterly, and chair of the board of trustees of the Institute of Arab Studies. He is a member of the Palestinian National Council as well as the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.