Palestine Center Book Review No. 12 (27 January 2011)
Each month, we conduct a review of a recent book that deals with issues relating to Palestine and/or the Israel/Palestine conflict. Books that are chosen for review can be academic or non-academic, historical or fictional. Next month we will be reviewing Atlas of the Conflict: Israel-Palestine by Malkit Shoshan. If you would like to suggest a book for review, please contact the Palestine Center.
Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation
edited by Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom
Paperback: 568 pages, University of California Press; 1 edition (30 August 2010)
Click the video player below to watch a lecture by editor Adel Iskandar at the Palestine Center.
“Collection of Essays on Said Offers ‘Buffet’ of Perspectives”
By guest reviewers Pam Bailey and Keren Batiyov
The tribute to Edward Said compiled by Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom can best be described as a “buffet” – a bounteous offering of information on and perspectives about this Renaissance man who died of cancer in 2003 at the height of his career. In that “buffet”quality lies both the strength and the weakness of this collection of essays about Said – intellectual, musician, social/literary critic and eloquent advocate for Palestinian rights. Some of the 29 essays can be compared to hearty “ethnic food” – accessible, incisive commentaries that any person who is reasonably well-informed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will find both illuminating and inspiring. Readers who have not yet read Said’s famous trilogy – Orientalism, The Question of Palestine and Covering Islam – will find this a useful summary and analysis; those who already have studied these works will enjoy the commentary by such well-known peers as Ghada Karmi, Marc Ellis and Ilan Pappe (although the latter’s contribution was disappointingly lacking in new substance and flavor, compared to his other writings).
Other chapters, however, are like rare caviar for which one must have an acquired taste – lyrical in the way the words fall off the tongue, but so dense with “insider” language and names well known only to -– specific academic circles that they would put off even the most determined reader. Such abstract and esoteric musings are hardly in keeping with Said’s own convictions; in his essay on “The Motif of Exile in Said,” Robert Spencer — a lecturer on postcolonial literature and culture at the University of Manchester – recounts that Said “was convinced that the academy can give rise to an introverted guild mentality…He denounced the adherents of high theory for a fixation…so extreme that they desert their duty to appraise wider society… ” Unfortunately, several of the essayists in this collection are guilty of just that. Thus, the best advice is to get a copy of “Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation,” but to choose among the chapters. (Tip: Of the book’s three parts, the second – “Palestine, Israel and Zionism” – is the most relevant and accessible to the average reader.)One of the dominant themes throughout the book is Said’s self-imposed role as “exile” — never being truly “at home,” and thus loyal to, any one place or country. Spencer explains in his essay that for Said, “Exile involves a willingness to step outside the province of ideological preconceptions (and) sectarian loyalties…” As teacher, critic and writer Jim Merod once wrote, Said’s was a mind that “rejects and ultimately refutes the seductive persuasions of certainties that impede its own meandering path.” This is perhaps one of the reader’s most important takeaway messages. Despite his harsh criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, Said was true to the responsibilities of “moral exile” and did not hesitate to hold his own community to account as well. “Edward achieved moral authority in the world primarily due to two factors: his knowledge, and just as importantly, his ability and courage to say whatever he thought to any audience,” recalls Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim in an interview with co-editor Hakem Rustom. “He didn’t mince words with the Israelis, but he also didn’t mince words with the Palestinians or the rest of the Arab world.” Thus, Said was fearless in castigating Yasser Arafat for signing the Oslo Accords, despite his position as a member of the PLO and the privileges that bestowed. “I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the very midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism…” wrote Said in The Word, The Text and the Critic. He was later proven correct, with many commentators now agreeing with Ghada Karmi that “the Oslo Accords must be viewed as the most successful venture to divide the Palestinians to date.”
This is a lesson that all those concerned about the region should take to heart. Said was committed to justice over identity and “never solidarity before criticism,” editors Iskandar and Rustom observe in the introduction to the book. In a “Jewish Commentary in Memory of Said,” Marc Ellis quotes him telling an interviewer that, “I suppose part of my critique of Zionism is that it attaches too much importance to home. Saying, we need a home. And we’ll do anything to get a home, even if it means making others homeless.” Likewise, in an earlier, 1993 lecture, Said denounced the cultural chauvinism that leads people to “pontificate about abuses in someone else’s society and to excuse exactly the same practices in one’s own.” It is easy to focus attention on the grave injustices of the Israelis, Egyptians and the enabling U.S. government; however, Said reminds us to turn a critical light on ourselves as well, and to remain open to dialogue with the other side.
The issue of dialogue with one’s opponents has attracted much controversy, and seemed to inspire mixed feelings in Said. Robert Spencer describes reconciliation as the “life work” of Said, including the creation of the Divan, an Arab-Israeli orchestra, with Daniel Barenboim. In his last years, notes Jacqueline Rose in “The Question of Zionism: Continuing the Dialogue,” he became an associate of many prominent, like-minded Israelis, gave interviews to Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper and became well known to Israeli intellectuals. One wonders, then, if Said would have supported the boycott campaign now launched against performers, academics, etc. planning to perform or work in Israel. “I am for dialogue between cultures and coexistence between people: everything I have written about and struggled for has pointed to that as the goal,” Said wrote in Peace and its Discontents. However, he added an important caveat: “… I think real principle and real justice have to be implemented before there can be true dialogue. Real dialogue is a dialogue between equals, not between subordinate and dominant partners.”
What did Said predict for the future, as his life – prematurely ended – wound down? Pre-Oslo, Said was a two-state advocate. But he later returned to his original stance, that one state with equal rights for everyone is the only solution left. Ghada Karmi, in an essay on the “Palestinian Diaspora,” agrees: “When one surveys Palestine’s last remnants today, the stunning power of Israel’s hold on the US, the terminal decline of the Arab world and the immoral complicity of the international community in this situation, can anyone still believe in the two-state solution? Can we not now see, as some of us have seen since 1948, that an Israeli state built on overwhelming power and oppression of others has no stable future? And is not the only possible and humane way out of this nightmare the creation of a common state, where those who know it as their homeland can share it in equality and amity?”
Said spent his life trying to give voice to the Palestinian voiceless and to restore the “memory” that the West has tried so hard to erase. Israeli Daniel Barenboim, for one, is convinced that he has done more than most other individuals to keep it alive. “Whether or not Said’s considerable work in this field will yield the fruits it merits is unknown,” he comments. “What is known however is the scope and seriousness of the challenge he put to us all: that women and men of conscience must continue to speak truth to power so that power’s victims might have their stories told, their histories acknowledged and their rights to liberty, justice and freedom realized.”
Perhaps the best sign that Said’s legacy will live on is a blog, seen recently on the Web, written by a Gazan youth. Among the 12 books listed on his “favorites” list, five were written by Edward Said. Even in death, this Renaissance man continues to inspire young intellectuals, shaping the next generation of leaders.
The views in this review are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.
This video may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker’s views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.
