Edward Said: A Critical Reader

Edward Said's intellectual journeys have taken him around the globe and across many disciplinary borders. Author of Orientalism and The Word, The Text, and The Critic, Said has been widely influential in shaping contemporary debates in the humanities and social sciences, from literature and history to anthropology and area studies. Most famously, perhaps, he has also been for two decades the most visible spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the United States (and, increasingly, in Britain), a familiar figure on American television and a member of the Palestinian parliament-in-exile from 1977 to 1991. This volume is the first book-length examination of Said's remarkable career, providing a critical survey of his writings and an interim assessment of his achievements in both the cultural and political spheres. This collection includes essays on the Arab-Islamic context of Said's work, his reception among Israeli and American Jews, the institutional contexts of his cultural criticism, and his interventions in Middle Eastern politics. The book concludes with a lengthy interview in which Edward Said comments on his youth in Cairo, on the current state of political and cultural criticism in the United States, and on the increasing integration of his own political and cultural writings in recent years.