DOCSLIB.ORG

Edward W. Said: Resistance, Knowledge, Criticism

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Edward W. Said: Resistance, Knowledge, Criticism CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Loughborough University Institutional Repository Edward W. Said: Resistance, Knowledge, Criticism by Mark Anthony Taylor A Doctoral Thesis Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University 17th October 2016 © Mark Taylor 2016 Abstract The prodigious output of the controversial Palestinian-American public intellectual, academic, and political activist, Edward W. Said (1935-2003), continues to polarize the academic, intellectual, and political worlds, not least because of the inflammatory nature of his relationship to the vexed issue of Israel/Palestine. It is a contention of this thesis that this polarization has resulted in what are often less than critical examinations of Said’s work. In short, because Said and his work remain relevant and influential, a new method of reading is required, one which not only takes account of Said’s resolutely secular, ‘worldly’ approach to the issue of knowledge and its production, but applies the same rigour and method to the Palestinian’s work in all its literary-critical, political, and personal varieties. This thesis attempts to meet that aim by testing Said’s oeuvre within the rubric of his stated ambition to create a critical location from which the production of ‘non-coercive knowledge’ was attainable. In the context of his opposition to political Zionism and wider Western imperialism, whether Said produced, or even intended to produce, knowledge that was ‘non-coercive’ is an extremely important question, and one that will be answered in this thesis. Formed by an introduction and three main chapters, the scope of the thesis is broad. Following an exposition of the biographical ‘facts’ of Said’s life, Chapter One engages his late work, Out of Place. Ostensibly a memoir, Out of Place is subjected to the discipline of Said’s own critical concept of ‘worldliness’ and placed within the much broader political context of the author’s oeuvre. From this location it is possible to see Out of Place as one of a number of narratives competing in the political sphere. Chapter Two deals with the issue of Said’s relationship to some of the key thinkers and schools of thought that seemed to inform his work, questioning whether Said resisted inculcation in powerful concepts like humanism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and Marxism or, in fact, permitted these influences to disrupt his desired critical location of homelessness. The final part of the thesis engages with Said’s secular, provisional approach to knowledge. First, weaving through the tautly balanced concepts of beginnings and origins in Beginnings: Intention and Method, much of the chapter addresses Said’s attack on Western knowledge production in Orientalism, where i perversely he produces his own counter-monument to Western colonialism. The chapter ends with a Saidian reading of Said’s three principal modes of criticism: secular, contrapuntal, and democratic. The conclusion that emerges from a Saidian, ‘worldly’ reading of Said is perhaps both surprising and, yet, exactly as one might expect. Said was a human being, and human beings are flawed. Two lines emerge. The first intellectual line out of Said creates a restless critical and philosophical framework with the potential to undermine the second intellectual line out of Said, the political pragmatist always ready to produce coercive knowledge. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements Page v Introduction Page 1 Definition of Terms Page 6 Materials Page 10 Structure and Method Page 12 Who is Edward Said? Page 13 Two Contexts: One Viewpoint Page 17 Chapter One Stories are not Just Stories Page 30 How out of Place is Out of Place? Page 30 Competing Narratives: A Hostile Site of Knowledge Production Page 31 No Place like Home Page 43 Feeling at Home in Being out of Place Page 50 Exile is what makes Me an Intellectual Page 56 Chapter Two The Anxiety of Influence Page 61 Dodging the Bullets Page 61 Said – Vico – Humanism: A Port in a Storm Page 63 Said, Saussure, and the Beginnings of Structuralism Page 72 Foucault, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism: Radical Beginnings and Intellectual Disappointment Page 83 Said: A Marxist Project? Page 94 Genealogy of Marxism: Teaching and Writing Page 101 Chapter Three Knowledge, in all its Provisionality Page 118 Beginnings: Intention and Method Page 118 Beginnings are not Perfect Page 129 Beginnings or Origins Page 132 Orientalism: A Monument of Counter-Knowledge Page 138 Orientalism: The Colonial Subject Writing Back to the Empire Page 140 Orientalism as Monolithic Counter-Structure Page 154 Said’s Paradigm: Platform or Prison? Page 161 As Intended, Three Flawed Modes of Criticism Page 166 Secular Criticism Page 167 Humanism and Democratic Criticism? Page 176 Contrapuntal Analysis: Binaries or Nuance? Page 183 iii Conclusion Page 188 Bibliography Page 193 iv Acknowledgements According to the aphorism, it takes an entire village to raise a child. A similar sentiment might be attached to the making of a doctoral thesis. Certainly, the terrific support of two distinct communities – family and friends, and academia – has been essential in bringing this project to maturity. I am extremely grateful to all those friends and family who have endured, and more often than not encouraged, my obsession with writing this thesis about a Palestinian intellectual. Almost all had not heard of Said. They have now. In particular, two people are owed a special mention. David Smith, a good friend, provided a restless critical eye and boundless enthusiasm. Above all, though, I am deeply indebted to my wife, Lorraine, who has sacrificed so much to keep me going to the end whilst receiving very little in return. Without Lorraine’s commitment to the cause this thesis would not exist. Thank you, for everything. I am also indebted to the academic ‘village’ at Loughborough University and beyond. From the start of our relationship to the bitter end, I have been extremely fortunate to profit from the erudition, care and patience of my superb supervisor, Dr Brian Jarvis. Brian not only helped me to think critically about the subject, but to think that I, this part-time researcher, could add something unique to the crowded field of research that has grown up around Edward Said. I must record the huge efforts of Prof. John Schad and Dr Andrew Dix, who, in their meticulous examination of the thesis, pushed me to a greater understanding of it. v Introduction For in the main – and here I shall be explicit – criticism must think of itself as life- enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination and abuse; its social goals are non-coercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom.1 These words, taken from the 1983 work, The World, the Text, and the Critic, crystalize a key aspiration held by the influential Palestinian-American academic, intellectual, and political activist, Edward Said (1935-2003). The goal is laudable and characteristically ambitious. Said’s other principal ambition was to witness a resolution to the Israel/Palestine conflict, one in which the Palestinian nation once again had a state they could call ‘home’, which was something they have not been able to do since the inception of the state of Israel in what was the British Mandate of Palestine on May 14th, 1948. Needless to say, the two ambitions mentioned here are not unconnected. Said did not live to see a reconstituted Palestinian state; whether he achieved his other ambition is one of the subjects of this thesis. It is easy and perhaps even fashionable to be cynical about phrases such as ‘life- enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination and abuse’, and concepts like ‘non-coercive knowledge’, particularly when they are associated with academics and intellectuals. It is safe to speculate, perhaps, that in Britain neither academics nor intellectuals are generally thought of as valiant defenders of personal or political freedoms. In the higher echelons of academia there is little sign of interaction between the ‘gatekeepers’ of knowledge and the wider public outside the institutions in which they work; at least, perhaps, until they are required by those in political power to bring their knowledge to bear in support of one policy or another. The situation is scarcely better in the United States. Said argued that, the literary academic has no worldly political status to speak of. I would say that a literary professional whose main base of operation is the university must realize that he or she exists in a condition of institutionalized marginality, so far as the system of political power is concerned.2 1 Edward W. Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge; Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 29. 2 Edward W. Said, Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, ed. by Gauri Viswanathan (London: Bloomsbury, 2005), p. 19. 1 In Edward Said’s view, cultural and literary criticism – the core of his professional work - hardly troubled those outside the academy. Commenting on the thoughts of the American sociologist, Alvin Gouldner, Said argued that ‘intellectuals were no longer people who addressed a wide public; instead they had become what he called a culture of critical discourse’.3 Once neatly contained, and perhaps muzzled if not completely silenced, inside the Academy, resistance to things like domination or tyranny seem unlikely propositions. Resistance to what Antonio Gramsci defined as ‘traditional intellectuals, those who seem to be unconnected with social change and who occupy positions in society designed to conserve the traditional processes by which ideas are produced – teachers, writers, artists, priests, and the like’, is one of the qualities Said recognized in his archetypal intellectual, the Irish writer and pamphleteer, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).4 One of the threads running through Said’s work is the idea that it is the duty of the intellectual – and he included all academics in this category - to resist this sort of institutionalized repression of intellectual activity.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Edward Said a Critical Introduction
    Edward Said Edward Said A Critical Introduction Valerie Kennedy Polity Press Copyright © Valerie Kennedy 2000 The right of Valerie Kennedy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2000 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd Editorial office: Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Marketing and production: Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 1JF, UK Published in the USA by Blackwell Publishers Inc. Commerce Place 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBN 0-7456-2018-3 ISBN 0-7456-2019-1 (pbk) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and has been applied for from the Library of Congress. Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Palatino by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper.
    [Show full text]
  • Dialectical Orientalism in Borges
    Imaginative Geography: Dialectical Orientalism in Borges ______________________________________________________ SHLOMY MUALEM BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY Abstract The following essay investigates Borges’ cultural-ideological stance as an Argentinean writer opposed to national literature and ideological rhetoric. This position will be elucidated via a comparison with Edward Said’s Orientialism which, following Foucault, argues that literature is subservient to the ideological paradigms of the period. The discussion demonstrates how Borges presents a dialectical orientalism in his work: a philosophical-universal position deviating from the delimited framework of national ideology, hereby establishing an uni-ideological philosophical and transcultural view of the interrelationship between “East” and “West.” In line with Said, the essay examines the literary representation of Islam in Western literature, focusing on the image of Mahomet in Dante's Divine Comedy. “These are the lenses through which the Orient is experienced, and they shape the language, perception, and form of the encounter between East and West” (Said, 1994, 58). Herein, Edward Said trenchantly argues that Western Orientalism is demonic in its power. In his seminal Orientalism (1978), he details the scope, internal consistency, and strata of this vast web of representations the West spreads over the Orient in an attempt to control and master it, believing it to constitute a “creeping danger.” It resembles the labyrinth Daedalus constructed in order to capture the Minotaur. The image of the labyrinth is inaccurate, however, Said in effect believing that the web is so fine and well-made that even Westerners can no longer extract themselves from it. I believe that Said would regard Jorge Luis Borges as an Orientalist par excellence.
    [Show full text]
  • Orientalism Once More (2003)
    Orientalism Once More (2003) Dr Edward Said Professor of Comparative Literature Columbia University Honorary Fellow Instiute of Social Studies Lecture delivered on the occasion of the awarding of the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa at the Academic Ceremony on the 50th Anniversary of the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, 21 May, 2003 Orientalism Once More (2003)* Nine years ago, in the spring of 1994, I wrote an afterword for Orientalism which, in trying to clarify what I believed I had and had not said, I stressed not only the many discussions that had opened up since my book appeared in 1978, but the ways in which a work about representations of “the Orient” lent themselves to increasing misrepresentation and misinterpretation. That I find myself feeling more ironic than irritated about that very same thing today is a sign of how much my age has crept up on me, along with the necessary diminutions in expectations and pedagogic zeal which usually frame the road to seniority. The recent death of my two main intellectual, political and personal mentors, Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (who is one of this work’s dedicatees), has brought sadness and loss, as well as resignation and a certain stubborn will to go on. It isn’t at all a matter of being optimistic, but rather of continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment that, in my opinion, frames and gives direction to the intellectual vocation. Nevertheless it is still a source of amazement to me that Orientalism continues to be discussed and translated all over the world, in thirty-six languages.
    [Show full text]
  • Micah Hughes on No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre
    Yoav Di-Capua. No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. xv + 355 pp. $35.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-226-50350-9. Reviewed by Micah Hughes Published on H-Ideas (August, 2019) Commissioned by Aidan Beatty (University of Pittsburgh) Edward Said once remarked after meeting the would drastically reorient Arab intellectuals’ in‐ famed French philosopher that although he was vestment in Sartre and existentialism as a philo‐ “once the most celebrated intellectual, Jean-Paul sophical and political practice of freedom in the Sartre had, until quite recently, almost faded from aftermath of colonialism. Prior to these two mo‐ view.”[1] Said’s unfavorable account of his meet‐ ments, especially the Six-Day War in 1967, Sartre ing with Sartre and his withered prominence in had shown sustained interest in the politics of de‐ Europe and beyond was published in 2000 but re‐ colonization in the Middle East and the plight of counted a meeting between the two that occurred the Palestinians. However, his dedication to decol‐ more than twenty years prior, in 1979. His obser‐ onization in the region was marked by ambiva‐ vation comes as no surprise to those familiar with lence towards Palestinian claims to territorial the postwar French intellectual context in which sovereignty in the face of European guilt for the existentialism had given way to criticisms of hu‐ Holocaust. In the words of Peter Makhlouf, Said’s manism, frst articulated in the linguistic and account of Sartre “attempt[ed] to
    [Show full text]
  • Selected Bibliography of Work About and of Edward Said's Texts
    CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 5 (2003) Issue 4 Article 7 Selected Bibliography of Work about and of Edward Said's Texts Clare Callaghan University of Maryland Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Callaghan, Clare. "Selected Bibliography of Work about and of Edward Said's Texts." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.4 (2003): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1203> The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 13859 times as of 11/07/19.
    [Show full text]
  • Howard Zinn BIBLIOGRAPHY
    Howard Zinn BIBLIOGRAPHY Voices of a People's History of the United States with Anthony Arnove, Seven Stories Press, (October 2004) The People Speak : American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known from Columbus to the Present (editor) Perennial Press (2004) Terrorism and War (Open Media Pamphlet Series) by Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove (Editor). Harperperennial Library (2003) Artists In Times of War and Other Essays, Seven Stories Press; (2003) Passionate Declarations : Essays on War and Justice, Perennial Press; (2003) The Twentieth Century : A People's History Harperperennial Library; (2003) Back the Attack! Remixed War Propaganda by Micah Ian Wright, Howard Zinn (Commentary), Kurt Vonnegut (Introduction), Center for Constitutional Rights (Commentary). Seven Stories Press; (2003) The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace, Beacon Press (2002) Silencing Political Dissent: How Post-September 11 Anti-Terrorism Measures Threaten Our Civil Liberties, with Nancy Chang, Seven Stories Press (2002) Emma, South End Press (2002) Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century with Kelley Robin D. G., Dana Frank, Beacon Press (2002) Howard Zinn on War and Other Means and Ends, Seven Stories Press (2001) The Future of History: Interviews With David Barsamian by Howard Zinn, David Barasamian. Common Courage Press (1999) Marx in SoHo: A Play on History, South End Press (1999) The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy Seven Stories Press (1997) Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence, Open Media (1995) You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times Beacon Press; (1994) Failure to Quit; Reflections of an Optimistic Historian.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Mimesis' in Colonial Writings As an Assertion of Power: Positioning Plato As a Postcolonial Thinker
    NOVATEUR PUBLICATIONS JournalNX- A Multidisciplinary Peer Reviewed Journal ISSN No: 2581 - 4230 VOLUME 7, ISSUE 5, May. -2021 ‘MIMESIS’ IN COLONIAL WRITINGS AS AN ASSERTION OF POWER: POSITIONING PLATO AS A POSTCOLONIAL THINKER Muhammed Jabir MP English and Comparative Literature Central University of Jammu, Jammu & Kashmir, India [email protected], Mob: 9496040895 ABSTRACT: Mimesis and his findings of how it corrupts the Plato is one of the most influential minds find an interesting parallel in thinkers since the Classical time of Greece. postcolonial critiques of canonical narratives. Most of the literary criticisms came after Plato’s Writings are mostly in the form of him were trying to reply Plato to defend the dialogues. With perhaps only a major exception moral authority of poetry. This paper is an being the work titled “Apology”. In Platonic attempt to intertwine the two seemingly dialogues, we usually see the figure of Socrates unparalleled stream of thoughts club into a occupying the centre stage. In ‘The Republic’ for common politico-critical space. Plato, the instance, we do not directly hear the voice of Athenian philosopher, who lived Plato himself. What we hear primarily is the somewhere around 428/427 or 424/423 – voice of Socrates. The problem that he 348/347 BC might be a strange figure in the identifies at the heart of poetry is its imitative socio-political context of the second half of nature. And the Greek word that refers to twentieth century. But his critical thoughts, imitation is ‘Mimesis’. This will be a key word especially his literary criticism, find an to understand Platonic view in the postcolonial interesting parallel in Postcolonial stream reading as well.
    [Show full text]
  • Redefining Orientalism in the Modern World: an Analysis of Classical Examples Of
    Redefining Orientalism in the Modern World: An Analysis of Classical Examples of Orientalism in Greek Antiquity and its Evolution in the Modern-day period. Honors Research Thesis Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with honors research distinction in Classics in the Undergraduate colleges of The Ohio State University By Eashwar Swamy The Ohio State University April 2013 Project Advisor Professor Anna McCullough, Department of Classics The basis of the paper surrounds Said's definition of orientalism, which essentially draws the distinction between East and West by defining one in terms of the other. “The Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience” (Said, Orientalism, 2). Said goes on to say “the orient is not just adjacent to Europe....it’s one of its deepest and most recurring images of the other” (Orientalism, 1). Various Greek authors in the classical era helped in forming the framework of orientalism, which later was implemented in Edward Said to define the relationship between East and West. Classical orientalism thus, as it pertains to this paper, is the orientalism which was practiced by classical Greek authors. The first section of the paper will discuss major literary, historical, and dramatic passages from classical antiquity which give examples of what orientalism was framed as in the classical era. This section will also emphasize the clear evolution of the concept of orientalism. In classical antiquity, orientalism was defined within the scope of East vs. West, with distinctions being based on climate, climate's relationship with governance and politics, and political geography.
    [Show full text]
  • “We Believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ” Proclaiming Christ’S Lordship in the Midst of Empire
    1 “We Believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ” Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship in the Midst of Empire The study of empire has become somewhat in vogue of late. In the area of New Testament, particularly Pauline studies, much fruitful work has been done in exposing the manner in which the apostle Paul conveys a Jesus who points us to a kingdom posited in radical opposition to Rome. Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the particular imperial context in which Paul encounters and proclaims Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, as one who offers political liberation from the oppressive political order that is Rome.1 In this reading, Paul pro- claims Jesus as one who has broken the hold of the powers and principalities and who will bring all worldly power under his dominion (Rom. 8:38-39; 1 Cor. 15:24; Col. 1:16; Eph. 1:20-21; 6:12). Such a rereading not only corrects the long and tragic tendency of Christians to de-Judaize Paul, but also offers an insight into the precisely political struggles of the apostle and his community within an often hostile imperial regime. This critique of the system of Roman political power is simultaneously—either implicitly or explicitly—a critique of the prevailing imperial ideologies of our time and, in this, theologians and biblical scholars keep company with a much broader assembly of critics of the new global order that structures contemporary life. The New Testament writers were by no means singular in their chafing against Roman imperial power; this they share with the postapostolic witness of the early church.
    [Show full text]
  • Defending the West: a Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism
    Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism by Ibn Warraq, Prometheus Books, 2007, 500 pp. David Zarnett Also under review: Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid, Daniel Martin Varisco, University of Washington Press, 2008, 501 pp. When the Courtauld Institute in London announced that they would be holding a conference in April 2008 entitled ‘Framing the Other: 30 Years After Orientalism,’ we were once again reminded of the central role Edward Said plays in Western public discourse. The Courtauld’s decision to use Orientalism as their point of departure in studying Western perceptions of the ‘Other’ comes at an interesting time as a number of scholars are developing a new body of literature that is highly critical of Said’s landmark work. The most recent additions to this literature are Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism and Daniel Martin Varisco’s Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid. As Warraq’s title indicates, his book rests on the premise that Orientalism, and the intellectual legacy and tendencies it has bolstered, represents an attack on the West and contributes to its inability to defend its values and history. Defending the West sets out to provide a corrective to Orientalism’s depiction of Western intellectual history and its arguments about Western attitudes towards other peoples of the world. Varisco’s focus in Reading Orientalism is to take stock of the debates that Orientalism has spurred and to provide a critique of Said’s work with the intention of providing closure to these debates.
    [Show full text]
  • No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization'
    H-Ideas Hughes on Di-Capua, 'No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization' Review published on Monday, August 19, 2019 Yoav Di-Capua. No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. xv + 355 pp. $35.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-226-50350-9. Reviewed by Micah Hughes (UNC Chapel Hill)Published on H-Ideas (August, 2019) Commissioned by Aidan Beatty (University of Pittsburgh) Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54392 Edward Said once remarked after meeting the famed French philosopher that although he was “once the most celebrated intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre had, until quite recently, almost faded from view.”[1] Said’s unfavorable account of his meeting with Sartre and his withered prominence in Europe and beyond was published in 2000 but recounted a meeting between the two that occurred more than twenty years prior, in 1979. His observation comes as no surprise to those familiar with the postwar French intellectual context in which existentialism had given way to criticisms of humanism, first articulated in the linguistic and philosophical anthropology of structuralism and then, later, in the various currents of thought often bound together by the vague designation “poststructuralism.” But as Said knew well, Sartre’s fame and accompanying dismissal was not unique to continental Europe, but extended transnationally and was intimately connected to global political events in Algeria (Sartre’s support for the Algerian resistance and his foreword to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth [1961] are well known) as well as in Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq.
    [Show full text]
  • Pacifica Radio Syndicated Program Directory
    PACIFICA RADIO SYNDICATED PROGRAM DIRECTORY The following programs are distributed through the Pacifica network. Some are produced by Pacifica stations or the network itself; others are independent productions that use Pacifica distribution channels. To suggest additions or changes to this guide for future editions, write to Pacifica Network Affiliates Coordinator Ursula Ruedenberg, [email protected]. WEEKLY PROGRAMS (30-60 min) Alternative Radio New Dimensions Are We Alone? Off The Hook Behind the News Poetswest Between the Lines Sea Change Radio Bookwaves Sierra Club Radio Brain Labor Report Sojourner Truth Radio Building Bridges Song of the Soul Century of Lies Spirit in Action Corporate Watchdog Radio Spoiler Alert Radio Counterspin Sprouts Cultural Baggage Taking Aim Earthbeat Talk Nation Radio Electromatic Radio The 300-350 Show (Climate Radio) Encounters The Global Report Exploration This Way Out Flashpoints (Best of) Time of Useful Consciousness From the Vault Uprising GRIT Radio Urban Herbalist Indigenous Politics We News Law and Disorder What's At Stake Madness Radio WINGS Making Contact Writer's Voice Midweek Politics Yin Radio MyNDTALK Your Own Health And Fitness DAILY PROGRAMS (30-60 min) Against the Grain (3 days/week) Free Speech Radio News Brain Labor Report Hard Knock Radio Democracy Now! Informativo Pacifica Flashpoints MODULES WEEKLY PROGRAM MODULES (<10 min) Black Agenda Report Peak Oil Check-In Media Minutes Weekly Radio Spin DAILY PROGRAM MODULES (<10 min) 4:20 Drug War News Workers Independent News Jim Hightower’s Commentaries AGAINST THE GRAIN Program logo courtesy of KPFA C.S. Soong PROGRAM DESCRIPTION Against the Grain features intelligent, in-depth interviews with progressive and radical scholars and activists.
    [Show full text]