<< Front page News February 20, 2004

Panel discusses life of Said

“I still talk about Edward [Said] in the present tense, as if he were still with us.” Professor of English Anuradha Needham, panelist at Saturday’s discussion of Said, said.

Edward Said may be best known on Oberlin’s campus for his 1978 work of literary criticism, Orientalism. In this book, Said linked the academic study of the Orient to the structuring of power outside of the university. He analyzed European scholarly and literary depictions of the Orient in order to examine how these imaginings have defined both the East and the West.

While Said taught literature at Columbia, his critical perspective on the biases, strategies and ideologies latent in Western writings of the colonized Middle East, Asia and Africa altered the trajectories of many fields of studies and made Orientalism a foundational text of postcolonial studies.

“When Chicanos were described as coming from a timeless cultureI recognized [the trope] Orientalism gave me the tools to methodologically read Anglo texts on New Mexico,” Mitchell said.

Said came to Oberlin twice, the first visit at the request of administrators who invited him as part of the Distinguished Lecturer series in 1990 and the second time at the request of activists from the group Students for a Free Palestine, who hosted him as the alternative commencement speaker in 1995. Of the five professors on the panel, Needham was the only one to meet him during his visit and her reflections on the dapper, fierce and much beloved scholar were peppered with images of him in Finney, The Java Zone and at her own dining room table.

“He came over for dinner and I made what I thought were Indian dishes. After each dish he said, ‘this is Palestinian.’” Needham said. After a few platters however, Said laughed and pointed out that there is no authentic Palestinian cuisine. “I still say those dishes are Palestinian, by order of Edward Said,” Needham said.

In 1979, The New York Times Book Company published The Question of Palestine, a critical look at Zionism, its links to European colonialism and the fate of Palestinian refugees since 1948. At that point, new fame and notoriety came to the well-respected literary critic as he publicly articulated his support of Palestinian self -determination, and his critiques of Zionism.

This dual personality, both academic and activist, impressed several of the professors who spoke Saturday, Medani citing Said’s particular marriage of activism and academics as one of his most important contributions.

Hasso opened her remarks on Said with a story of her own undergraduate days at UCLA, recalling him as the lone suit in a Chevy Barretta of blue jean clad student activists. Along with Hasso and six other student organizers, Said had agreed to drive to Bel Air, where a Saudi oil minister was hosting a dinner party in his honor.

“Things turned after dinner, when Said sat in a large glass enclosed patio with the Saudis,” Hasso said. “A long argument began, in Arabic and English, when one of the Saudis said something about Yassar Arafat and George Habash being crazy.” The night ended with Said lecturing by the side of the swimming pool; “‘Arabism had failed and Palestinians could rely on no one but themselves.’”

Said spoke on Palestine when he came to Oberlin in 1995. Said had been traveling the global academic circuit and Needham was skeptical when students told her that they had faxed him a three page letter on behalf of SFP, requesting that he fly to Ohio as their guest. The next day her phone rang. “He called me and said ‘These Oberlin students are something else, what should I do?’” she said.

Said stayed one day, speaking to a packed Finney Chapel and then marched downtown to the Java Zone. “He hunted down the Palestinian establishments, demanded that they feed him and made sure that he did not have to pay,” Needham said. “Then we took him to the airport. He ate a hot dog and said ‘you can’t be in the airport and not eat a hot dog.’ And he left.”


 
 
   

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