Edward Said on culture and imperialism

“No other cultural critic has revealed so powerfully how ‘down to earth’ theory really is, for it comes to being in some place, for a particular reason, and with a particular history. This is nowhere truer than in Edward Said’s own theory. For whether he is talking about English literature, about the complexities of texts and how they are formed, about the ways in which the West exerted power over the Oriental world, about the functions of intellectuals in society, or even about music, his own place as an exiled Palestinian intellectual is constantly inflected in his work.” --Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahluwalia

Despite his American citizenship, his academic position at Columbia University and all other accolades that came along with it Edward Said considered himself as a ‘Palestinian’. Said’s identity as a ‘Palestinian’ may be perceived or interpreted as paradoxical, but he was able to demonstrate through his own experience, how contradictory identities are, particularly those people who have up rooted themselves, and scattered throughout various geographical locations and living away from their homelands.

Said's paradox of identity is an example to understand complex identities of Global diaspora who have become powerful forces throughout the world today.

Culture and Imperialism

Said’s work into writing his other controversial book Culture and Imperialism (1993), has direct links to his Orientalism. In the introduction to Culture and Imperialism he writes:

“About five years after Orientalism was published in 1978, I began to gather together some ideas about the general relationship between culture and empire that had become clear to me while writing that book. The first result was a series of lectures that I gave at universities in the Unites States, Canada, and England in 1985 and 1986. These lectured form the core argument of the current work...

What I left out of Orientalism was that response to western dominance which culminated in the great movements of decolnization all across the Third World.

Along with armed resistance in places as diverse as nineteenth century Algeria, Ireland, and Indonesia, there also went considerable efforts in cultural resistance almost everywhere, the assertions of nationalist identities, and, in political realm, the creation of associations and parties whose common goal was self-determination and national independence. Never was it the case that imperial encounter pitted an active Western intruder against a supine or inert non-Western native; there was always some form of active resistance, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the resistance finally won out.

These two factors—a general worldwide pattern of imperial culture, and historical experience of resistance against the empire—inform this book in ways that make it not just sequel to Orientalism but an attempt to do something else.”

In my view, the broad definition of culture by Edward Said is also relevant as a good yard stick to look at immature ideas and theories put forward by our new generation of English and Sinhala writers and critics who carry half-understood ideas of Derrida, Foucault with quasi labels carrying the term post-modernism etc, in their head without looking at Sri Lanka’s ethnography, historiography, philology, sociology and literacy history as a part of an essential tool to examine novels and other literary and cinematic products.

Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism provides insights into two significant concepts towards increasing our knowledge and understanding of the association between culture and imperialism. First, is on "culture as the instrument of imperialism". Said emphasised that “we cannot understand the power of imperialism until we understand the importance of culture.”

Said’s definition and interpretation of culture is very broad: He writes:

“As I used the word ‘Culture’ means two things in particular. First of all, it means all those practices like the arts of description, communication, and representation, that have relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political realms and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aims is pleasure. Included of course, are both the popular stock of lore about distant part of the world and specialized knowledge available in such learned disciplines such ethnography, historiography, philology, sociology and literacy history.”

In this regard, Edward Said’s view of culture is somewhat different from Raymond William’s definition of culture as ‘a whole way of life’ (1958). In Said analysis culture is indeed the power which changes a colonised people's view of the world, without the coloniser needing to resort to full-grown military control.

In my view, this broad definition of culture by Edward Said is also relevant as a good yard stick to look at immature ideas and theories brought forward by our new generation of English and Sinhala writers and critics who carry half-understood ideas of Derrida, Foucault and Wittgenstein with quasi labels carrying the term post-modernism etc in their head without looking at Sri Lanka’s ethnography, historiography, philology, sociology and literacy history as a part of an essential tool to examine novels and other literary and cinematic products.

It is culture that provides the ethical power, namely, the search of civilising missions that are organised in a way, not a simple greed of loot and leave, which enabled the British to become the unquestionable ruler of India for nearly two centuries. However, Said is fixated on the view embracing "the politics of blame" approach, including condemning and rejecting the coloniser and blaming the colonised/victims, as a strategy of resistance. He believes that such a view is nothing but a backward-looking and self-defeating approach.

Said suggests that post-colonial peoples may resist by engaging the dominant culture, by engaging on "a voyage in" through a multiple of hybrid cultural works, which counters dominant culture without simply rejecting it. This includes directly studying first-hand the Occident and its culture and civilisation.

‘Postcolonial light’ in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

These new interpretation by Edward Said have been further expanded in his ''Culture and Imperialism. In this classic work, Edward Said provides critical analysis on two kinds of authors. First, those authors like Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling and who have written about the European colonisation. Second category of his analysis provides new insights into the works of established British writers as Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. (Despite Jane Austen herself had opposed to slavery), Edward Said identifies Austen’s Mansfield Park as a key text representing the reliance of the British society and wealth accumulation on imperial adventures and the legacy of the slave trade.

It is evident that Said’s new interpretations on works by Austen’s work have already begun to flow into universal acceptance. For example, in the introduction to the new Penguin Classics of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, contains quotes from Said’s explanation of the Bertram estate “as part of the structure of an expanding imperialist venture...” In addition, the blurb makes a reference to “the family’s investment in slavery and sugar” with a new “postcolonial light.”

It was in Said’s most influential book ''Orientalism'' (1978), that he highlighted a vision of history and culture of power or the ability and authority to define others. ''The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination of varying degrees of a complex hegemony,'' he wrote in ''Orientalism.''

What many people often forget to mention is that Edward Said’s thesis on Orientalism was the result of his further work on subjects such as culture and imperialism and expanding our understanding of the Occident. He himself, as a student of Western languages, and theories was an occidentalist!

The British historian J. H. Plumb criticised Said and wrote: ''It is a pity that it is so pretentiously written, so drenched in jargon, for there is much in this book that is superb as well as intellectually exciting''. Plumb and other critics have argued that Dr. Said's assumption was that the Orientalists simply invented the East to satisfy the historical need of cultural superiority and Western imperialism, and that Said ignored a large body exiting scholarship that dealt with the East on its own terms.

Bernard Lewis, writing a book review titled “The Question of Orientalism” to New York Times on 24 June 1982, accused Said by saying that he had attempted to denigrate the work of well-intentioned Orientalist. Lewis further accused Said for “poisoning” the field of “Oriental” studies.

Despite all these negative remarks on Said work The New York Times in September 1998 declared him “one of the most important literary critics alive.”

Said had established himself as a world-class cultural theorist in two areas. Firstly, his firmly-rooted place among literary theorists and many other scholars in the direction of post-colonial studies. This is a result of his work on Orientalism. Secondly, his continued perseverance on highlighting the importance of "worldliness" or material contexts in texts. A good example of the latter is Said’s interpretation of Joseph Conrad and his work.

Down to earth theory

In my opinion, no other cultural critic has revealed through continued academic work how "down to earth" theory could be developed, and above all how relevant those ideas and concept to understand the world around us.

In Routledge Critical Thinker Series, Australian academic and postcolonial theorist, Professor Bill Ashcroft writing on Said with a fellow academic Pal Ahluwalia state:

“This question of worldliness, of the writer’s own position in the world, gets to the heart of another paradox central to this consideration of Edward Said’s work—how do we read texts? For any text, Said’s included, is constructed out of many available discourses, discourses within which writers themselves may be seen as subjects ‘in process’, and which they may not have had in mind when they put pen to paper. Worldliness begins by asking one of the most contentious questions in

politically oriented theory: who addresses us in the text? And this is a question we must ask of Edward Said’s work. We may grant that the‘author’ in the text is a textual construction without therefore assuming that nobody speaks to us in the text..." (Ashcroft & Ahluwalia, 2001:16)

In my view, Edward Said has opened up many pathways to us, including a new discipline called Postcolonial studies. This new discipline provides new ways of understanding global, national and local political and cultural concerns through a variety of tools and lenses by raising critical cultural questions. In a world engulfed with ethnic conflicts, wars and riots and demonstrations to overthrow dictators, it is important that our understandings of history, sense of place, race, culture and identity be examined with an open mind as practicable as possible.

With regard to Edward Said’s work on Culture and Imperialism, whether we are with him or opposing his views with our innate biases, his ideas would lead us to examine and understand the world around us.

(To be continued)

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