
Edward Said was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and the author of more than twenty books. A leading literary critic, public intellectual, and passionate advocate for the Palestinian cause, he was born in Jerusalem in 1935 and died in New York in 2003.
There can be no true humanism whose scope is limited to extolling patriotically the virtues of our culture, our language, our monuments. Humanism is the exertion of one's faculties in language in order to understand, reinterpret, and grapple with the products of language in history, other languages and other histories. In my understanding of its relevance today, humanism is not a way of consolidating and affirming what 'we' have always known and felt, but rather a means of questioning, upsetting, and reformulating so much of what is presented to us as commodified, packaged, uncontroversial, and uncritically codified certainties. (28)
The existence of individuals or groups seeking social justice and economic equality, who understand that freedom must include the right to a whole range of choices affording cultural, political, intellectual, and economic development, ipso facto will lead one to a desire for articulation as opposed to silence. This is the functional idiom of the intellectual vocation. The intellectual therefore stands in a position to make possible and further the formulation of these expectations and wishes. (234-5)
Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Resources
- Edward Said Archival Collection
- Edward Said Lectures
- Edward Said Memorial Lecture
- Sixth Annual Lecture, Ahdaf Soueif, March 8, 2011
- Fifth Annual Lecture: Noam Chomsky, Dec. 3, 2009
- Fourth Annual Lecture
- Edward Said Lectures at other universities
- Video recordings (CU Library catalogue)
- 'In Search of Palestine.' 1998, 2005
- 'Out of Place: Memories of Edward Said.' 2005
- Edward Said: Bibliography on Palestine (books)
- 1979. The Question of Palestine. New York: Times Books.
- 1981. Covering Islam. How Media and Experts Determine How We see the Rest of the World. New York: Pantheon.
- 1986. After the Last Sky. Palestinian Lives. With photographs by Jean Mohr. New York: Pantheon.
- 1988. Blaming the Victims. Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question.
- 1994. The Politics of Dispossession. The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994. Edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens. New York: Pantheon.
- 1996. Peace and Its Discontents. Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process. Preface by Christopher Hitchens. New York: Vintage.
- 1999. Out of Place: A Memoir. New York: Knopf.
- 2000. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After. New York: Pantheon.
- Selected writings on Edward Said by Columbia University faculty
- Abu El-Haj, Nadia. 2005. 'Edward Said and the Political Present,' American Ethnologist 32(4): 538-555.
- Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2005. 'About Politics, Palestine, and Friendship: A Letter to Edward from Egypt.' Critical Inquiry. Winter 31 (2): 381-88. Reprinted in 'Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation,' edited by Homi Bhabha and W. J. T. Mitchell. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
- Bilgrami, Akeel. 2005. 'Interpreting a Distinction,' Critical Inquiry 31:2 (Winter), 389-398.
- Dirks, Nicholas B. 2004. 'Edward Said and Anthropology,' Journal of Palestine Studies 33(3): 38-54.
- Khalidi, Rashid. 2000. 'Edward W. Said and the American Public Sphere: Speaking Truth to Power,' in Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power, 152-165. Edited by Paul Bové. Durham: Duke University Press. Earlier version in Boundary 2 25:2 (Summer 1998): 161-178.
- Khalidi, Rashid. 2008. 'Edward Said and Palestine: Balancing the Academic and the Political, the Public and the Private,' in Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward Said, 44-52. Edited by Muge Sokmen and Basak Ertur. London: Verso. [French: special number of 'Tumultes' on Edward Said, Autumn, 2010].
- Massad, Joseph. 2004. 'The Intellectual Life of Edward Said,' Journal of Palestine Studies 33(3): 7-22.
- Robbins, Bruce, 'Solidarity and Worldliness: For Edward Said', Logos 3:1 (Winter 2004)
- Viswanathan, Gauri. Ed. and Introduction. 2001. Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said. New York: Pantheon.
- Barenboim-Said Foundation
Founded by Daniel Baremboim and Edward Said, the Baremboim-Said Foundation supports musical education and joint projects like the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for young musicians in Palestine, Israel, and other parts of the Middle East.





