Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual
Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual
Author: Nubar Hovsepian
Forward: Rashid Khalidi
American University in Cairo Press: 2025
Hardcover: New
9781649031761
Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete's temperament, he did not experience his political awakening until the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which transformed his thinking and led him to forge ties with political groups and like-minded scholars.
In this intimate intellectual biography, by a close friend and confidant, Nubar Hovsepian offers fascinating insight into the evolution of Said's political thought. Through analysis of Said's seminal works and the debates surrounding them, he traces the influence of Foucault on Said, and how Said eventually diverged from this influence to arrive at a more pronounced understanding of agency, resistance, and liberation.
Hovsepian charts both Said's engagement with the Palestinian national movement and his exchanges with a host of intellectuals over Palestine, arguing that Said's interventions have succeeded in changing the parameters of the discourse in the humanities, and among younger Jews searching for political affiliation.
Table of Contents:
Preface: My Special Relationship with Edward Said--Why that matters
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Edward Said as Oppositional Intellectual
Chapter 2. Orientalism and its Afterlives
Chapter 3. Imperialism, Culture, and the Colonial Present
Chapter 4. Palestine: Inclusion Without Domination
Chapter 5. Arafat's Man Turns Oppositional (1998-2003)
Chapter 6. "The Last Jewish Intellectual"
List of Abbreviations
Selected Reference List
Biographical Note:
Nubar Hovsepian (Author) is associate professor emeritus of political science at Chapman University in Orange, California. He is the author of Palestinian State Formation: Education and the Construction of National Identity, and he edited and contributed to The War on Lebanon. Hovsepian has devoted enormous time to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and served, from 1982 to 1984, as political affairs officer for the United Nations Conference on the Question of Palestine.
Rashid Khalidi (Foreword by) is Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of eight books, including The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 (2020).
A Palestinian and Arab Studies Program, UC Berkeley selection.