EDWARD W. SAID (1935 - 2003)

THE VOICE OF PALESTINIAN SELF-NARRATION

“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.” 

Excerpt from The World, the Text, and the Critic, 1983

Edward Said was a prolific scholar, activist, and public intellectual. Born in 1935 Jerusalem, Said left Palestine just before the Nakba and lived most of his life in the United States, eventually becoming a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. 

His experience as a Palestinian in exile informed his belief that boundaries and barriers (invariably set by oppressors) must be crossed, that intellectuals must speak truth to power in service of justice. He questioned: who narrates stories of the marginalized, and why not the marginalized themselves? Said’s ground-breaking book Orientalism (1978) and subsequent publications helped to create entirely new fields of study. These included Postcolonialism, a school of thought that critiques European colonial control and violence, disempowers theories born of this control from generating knowledge about colonized peoples, and centers impacted peoples’ voices in describing their own experiences and identities. 

A relentless advocate for equal political and human rights for Palestinians, Said never shied away from criticizing the U.S. government’s unconditional support for Israel, despite facing consequences in his personal and professional life. He condemned many U.S. endeavors in the Middle East and beyond, and indeed spent his last months vocally opposing President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq before passing away in 2003 after a twelve-year battle with leukemia. 

Ancestors of Palestinian Liberation is a collaboration of Anemoia Projects and Palestine Advocacy Project 

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Original image reference: Jeremy Pollard