BRILLIANCE! SCINTILLATING BRILLIANCE! Edward Said was a gift to us. All communities and all persons on the face of this earth (no matter the size, minorities and majorities alike) must learn from this great man, lest it is perpetual folly they desire; confined and imprisoned in constructed realities, for people in every community strive to be more superior than every other - every culture, every race, every ethnicity, every tradition, every rite, every ritual (as Nehru once pointed out) Edward Said is urging you to liberate yourself, and thus liberate every human being from this perpetual illusion we often fail to see as a vicious cycle, a mental deformity, a sickness of the soul. What a beautiful man, and what a brilliant mind! My favourite thinker, intellectual, humanitarian, scholar, author, and person from the 20th century. I miss you, Edward.
Brilliant ! What he says and how he explains the massively detrimental effect of Orientalism and Western Chauvanism. However, little or never he spoke of similar inequalities and unfair practices which exist within each region of the vast Orient .. be it Iran or India or Far East etc etc.
His point in his work is that the communities were complex human societies which were overly simplified and dehumanised. With such agency removed (which was good for extracting resources and not for governance) the problems which existed grew manifold (caste system for example in India) and many others were created (like Hindu-Muslim relationships in India as an example).
Glad you enjoyed it. It was recorded at Toronto's York University (1993) to promote his newly published book, Culture & Imperialism, hailed as the long-awaited successor to Orientalism. Edward taught in Columbia's Department of English and Comparative Literature from the start of his career in 1963 until his death in 2003.
