Edward Said

An exploration of the intellectual political thought of one of the most influential thinkers of the last century Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthetes temperament, he did not experience his political awakening until the 1967 ArabIsraeli war, which transformed his thinking and led Said to forge ties with political groups and like-minded scholars. Saids subsequent writings, which cast light on the interplay between cultural representation and the exercise of Western political power, caused a seismic shift in scholarly circles and beyond. In this intimate intellectual biography, by a close friend and confidant, Nubar Hovsepian offers fascinating insight into the evolution of Saids political thought. Through analysis of Saids seminal works and the debates surrounding them, Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual traces the influence of Foucault on Said, and how Said eventually diverged from this influence to arrive at a more pronounced understanding of agency, resistance, and liberation. He consequently affiliated more closely with Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, and more contemporaneously, with his friends the late Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. Said held that it is the intellectuals responsibility to expose lies and deceptions of the holders of power. A passionate advocate for the Palestinian cause, his solidarity did not prevent him from launching a sustained critique of the Palestinian leadership. Hovsepian charts both Saids engagement with the Palestinian national movement and his exchanges with a host of intellectuals over Palestine, arguing that Saids interventions have succeeded in changing the parameters of the discourse in the humanities, and among younger Jews searching for political affiliation. Drawing on his diaries, in which he recorded his meetings with Said, as well as access to some of Saids private letters, Hovsepian illuminates, in rich detail, the trajectory of Saids political thinking and the depth and breadth of his engagement with peers and critics over issues that continue to resonate to this day.