Edward W. Said > Quotes

“The long-run goal is, I think, the same for every human being, that politically he or she may be allowed to live free from fear, insecurity, terror, and oppression, free also from the possibility of exercising unequal or unjust domination over others.”
― Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine

“Now because Britain, France, and recently the United States are imperial powers, their political societies impart to their civil societies a sense of urgency, a direct political infusion as it were, where and whenever matters pertaining to their imperial interests abroad are concerned. I doubt that it is controversial, for example, to say that an Englishman in India or Egypt in the later nineteenth century took an interest in those countries that was never far from their status in his mind as British colonies. To say this may seem quite different from saying that all academic knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact—and that is what I am saying in this study of Orientalism. For if it is true that no production of knowledge in the human sciences can ever ignore or disclaim its author’s involvement as a human subject in his own circumstances, then it must also be true that for a European or American studying the Orient there can be no disclaiming the main circumstances of his actuality: that he comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second. And to be a European or an American in such a situation is by no means an inert fact. It meant and means being aware, however dimly, that one belongs to a power with definite interests in the Orient, and more important, that one belongs to a part of the earth with a definite history of involvement in the Orient almost since the time of Homer.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“By humanism I mean first of all attempting to dissolve Blake’s mind-forg’d manacles so as to be able to use one’s mind historically and rationally for the purposes of reflective understanding and genuine disclosure. Moreover, humanism is sustained by a sense of community with other interpreters and other societies and periods: strictly speaking, therefore, there is no such thing as an isolated humanist.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“«Occidente» y «Oriente» reagrupa, tras estas grandes etiquetas, todas las variedades posibles de la pluralidad humana, y las reduce en este proceso a una o dos abstracciones colectivas finales.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalismo

“ونحن نرى في فكرة قناة السويس النتيجة المنطقية لفكر الاستشراق بل وما هو أهم، جهود الاستشراق. كانت آسيا تمثل للغرب في يوم من الأيام الابتعاد الصامت والاغتراب، وكان الإسلام يمثل العداوة المحاربة للمسيحية الأوروبية. وكان التغلب على هذه الثوابت الجبارة يتطلب أولا معرفة الشرق، ثم غزوه وامتلاكه، ثم إعادة خلقه على أيدي الباحثين والجنود والقضاة الذين نبشوا مكامن ما سقط من الذاكرة من لغات وتاريخ وأجناس وثقافات لتقديمها - خارج إطار معرفة الشرقي الحديث - باعتبارها الشرق القديم الحقيقي الذي يمكن الاستعانة به في الحكم على الشرق الحديث وتولِّي الحكم فيه. وانقشع الظلام وحلت محله كيانات تشبه نباتات الصوبة الزراعية، وأصبحت كلمة (الشرق) هي الكلمة التي يستخدمها المستشرق ليعني بها ما أصبحت أوروبا تعنيه ببلدان المشرق التي لا تزال في عينيها غريبة.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“The interchange between the academic and the more or less imaginative meanings of Orientalism is a constant one and since the late eighteenth century there has been a considerable, quite disciplined--perhaps even regulated--traffic between the two. Here I come to the third meaning of Orientalism, which is something more historically and materially defined than either of the other two. Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed a the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient--dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”
― Edward Said

“هكذا أمسيت جانحا، أنا إدوارد مرتكب المخالفات التي تستحق العقاب من خمول وتسكع والذي يتوقع دائما أن يقبض عليه متلبسا بفعل محضور يستدعي الاحتجاز بعد الدروس أو، بعد ذلك حين كبرت صفعة قوية من المعلم. وقد منحتني إعدادية الجزيرة اختباري الأول لنظام محكم أنشأه البريطانيون كمهمة كولونيالية. كان الجو جو طاعة عمياء يؤطرها إذعان بغيض عند المعلمين والتلامذة على حد السواء. ولم تكن المدرسة مثيرة بما هي مكان للعلم لكنها زودتني بأول اتصال مديد مع السلطة الكولونيالية من خلال الانجليزية القحة لأساتذتها وللعديد من التلاميذ”
― Edward W. Said, Out of Place

“My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silences and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated, so that “our” East, “our” Orient becomes “ours” to possess and direct.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“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 interest of human freedom”
― Edward Said

“En effet, alors qu'il n'est plus possible d'écrire des dissertations savantes (ou même de la vulgarisation) soit sur l' "esprit des nègres" soit sur la "personnalité juive", il est parfaitement possible d'entreprendre des recherches sur des sujets tel que l' "esprit de l'islam" ou "le caractère arabe" (...).”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“It was not thought too unusual during the 1973 war for the army to issue a booklet (with a preface by General Yona Efrati of the central command) written by the central command’s rabbi, Abraham Avidan, containing the following key passage: When our forces encounter civilians during the war or in the course of a pursuit or a raid, the encountered civilians may, and by Halachic standards even must be killed, whenever it cannot be ascertained that they are incapable of hitting us back. Under no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he gives the impression of being civilized.32”
― Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine

“Music requires a particular type of education which is simply not given to most people. And, as a result, it’s set further apart. It has a special place. People who are familiar with painting and photography and drama and dance, and so on, cannot talk so easily about music. And yet, as Nietzsche writes in The Birth of Tragedy, music is potentially the most accessible art form because, with the Apollonian and the Dionysian coming together, it makes a”
― Edward W. Said, Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society

“the sense of Western power over the Orient is taken for granted as having the status of scientific truth.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“المثقف الذي يهم في النهاية هو ذاك المتمتع بالصفة التمثيلية - إنسان يمثّل بوضوح وجهة نظر ذات طبيعة ما ، و يعبّر بجلاء لجمهوره عن تلك الأفكار التي يمثّلها ، برغم كل أنواع العوائق .”
― Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual

“Mythic language is discourse, that is, it cannot be anything but systematic; one does not really make discourse at will, or statements in it, without first belonging—in some cases unconsciously, but at any rate involuntarily—to the ideology and the institutions that guarantee its existence. These latter are always the institutions of an advanced society dealing with a less advanced society, a strong culture encountering a weak one. The principal feature of mythic discourse is that it conceals its own origins as well as those of what it describes.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“ALL FAMILIES INVENT THEIR PARENTS AND CHILDREN, GIVE each of them a story, character, fate, and even a language.”
― Edward Said, Out of Place: A Memoir

“Witnessing a sorry state of affairs when one is not in power is by no means a monotone, monochromatic activity. It involves what Foucault once called a "relentless erudition," scouring alternative sources, exhuming buried documents, reviving forgotten (or abandoned) histories.”
― Edward Said

“Qualquer generalidade ganha foros de verdade; qualquer lista especulativa de atributos orientais acaba por se aplicar ao comportamento dos orientais no mundo real. Num lado, há ocidentais, e no outro, há árabes-orientais; os primeiros são (em nenhuma ordem particular) racionais, pacíficos, liberais, lógicos, capazes de manter valores reais, sem suspeita natural; os últimos não são nada disso. De que visão coletiva e ainda assim particularizada do Oriente provêm essas afirmações? Que habilidades especializadas, que pressões imaginativas, que instituições e tradições, que forças culturais produzem essas semelhanças nas descrições do Oriente encontradas em Cromer, Balfour e nosso estadista contemporâneo? A”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalismo

“Still another is that Israel itself, as well as its supporters, has tried to efface the Palestinian in words and actions because the Jewish state in many (but not all) ways is built on negation of Palestine and the Palestinians. Until today, it is a striking fact that merely to mention the Palestinians or Palestine in Israel, or to a convinced Zionist, is to name the unnameable, so powerfully does our bare existence serve to accuse Israel of what it did to us. Finally, I take it for granted morally that human beings individually and selectively are entitled to fundamental rights, of which self-determination is one. By this I mean that no human being should be threatened with “transfer” out of his or her home or land; no human being should be discriminated against because he or she is not of an X or a Y religion; no human being should be stripped of his or her land, national identity, or culture, no matter the cause.”
― Edward W. Said

“There are no rules by which intellectuals
can know what to say or do; nor for the true
secular intellectual are there any gods to be worshiped and looked to for unwavering guidance.”
― Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual

“Talvez a tarefa mais importante de todas seja a de empreender estudos das alternativas contemporâneas ao Orientalismo, perguntar como é possível estudar outras culturas e povos a partir de uma perspectiva libertária, ou não repressiva e não manipuladora. Mas nesse caso seria necessário repensar todo o problema complexo de conhecimento e poder. Essas são todas tarefas deixadas constrangedoramente incompletas neste estudo.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalismo

“That anti-Semitism and, as I have discussed it in its Islamic branch, Orientalism resemble each other very closely is a historical, cultural, and political truth that needs only to be mentioned to an Arab Palestinian for its irony to be perfectly understood.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“Pour tout Européen du 19è siècle, (...), l'orientalisme était un système de vérités de ce genre, des vérités au sens donné par Nietzsche à ce mot [cf : "les vérités sont des illusions dont on a oublié qu'elles le sont"]. Il est donc exact que tout Européen, dans ce qu'il pouvait dire sur l'Orient, était, pour cette raison, raciste, impérialiste et presque totalement ethnocentriste.”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalism

“Is it not true that the views of exile in literature and, moreover, in religion obscure what is truly horrendous: that exile is irremediably secular and unbearably historical; that it is produced by human beings for other human beings; and that, like death but without death’s ultimate mercy, it has torn millions of people from the nourishment of tradition, family and geography?”
― Edward W. Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays

“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.”
― Edward W. Said

“It would be wrong to pretend, however, that both feminist and what has been called ethnic criticism did not in fact since lend themselves either to formalism or to an esoteric and jargon-ridden exclusivism.”
― Edward W. Said, Reflections On Exile: And Other Literary And Cultural Essays

“A condition of marginality, which might seem irresponsible or flippant, frees you from having always to proceed with caution, afraid to overturn the applecart, anxious about upsetting fellow members of the same corporation.”
― Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual

“To assume that the ends of education are best advanced by focusing principally on our own separateness, our own ethnic identity, culture and traditions ironically places us where as subaltern, inferior, or lesser races we had been placed by nineteenth-century racial theory.”
― Edward W. Said

“يجب أن ننتبه فوراً إلى أنّ الغرب، لا المسيحية، هو دائماً في موضع التنافس والعداء ضد الإسلام. لماذا؟ يكمن السبب في افتراض أنّ "الغرب" أكبر من المسيحية، دينه الرئيسي، وقد تجاوز مرحلتها. أمّا عالم الإسلام -على ما فيه من غنى وتعدد وتنوع في تاريخه ومجتمعاته ولغاته - فيقول الافتراض إنه ما يزال غارقاً في الدين والبدائية والتخلف.”
― Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World

“O tecido de um discurso tão denso como o Orientalismo sobrevive e funciona na sociedade ocidental por causa de sua riqueza: o que fiz foi descrever partes desse tecido em certos momentos, e simplesmente sugerir a existência de uma totalidade maior, detalhada, interessante, salpicada de figuras, textos e acontecimentos fascinantes”
― Edward W. Said, Orientalismo