Orientalism: Edward Said

I deliberately only (initially) read the three sections below which fascinatingly, and sometimes encouragingly, sometimes depressingly,  chart the progress and responses to the original work of 1997.

Introduction (1977)

A beautifully clear and elegant ‘setting out of the stall’. It’s sometimes tricky, reading it in 2024,  to understand how very radical these ideas and this approach was. So much of what he wrote was remarkably prescient

Afterword (1995)

This is an overview of the variety of responses received by the original book.  Said certainly ruffled many feathers in the academic chicken house by challenging accepted orthodoxies and being (willfully?) and radically misunderstood by many. And reading it in 2024, it remains depressing how little has changed in many areas and attitudes.

Preface (2003)

This last section is a wonderfully powerful and moving plea for humanism in its richest and widest sense so that there can be ‘a longer sequence of thought and analysis to replace the short bursts of polemical thought-stopping fury’ and ‘critical thinking’. Education, thought, knowledge and discussion are argued to be the way forward – humanism in its richest and widest sense.