Edward Said - Influence

Influence

Edward Saïd was a personally charismatic public intellectual who was (perhaps) hyperbolically praised as an “intellectual superstar”, because his range of enquiry comprehended literary theory and comparative literature, history and political commentary, cultural criticism and music criticism, and other fields. Since its publication in the late 20th century, Orientalism (1978) proved to be an intellectual document central to the field of post-colonial studies, because its thesis remains historically factual, true, and accurate for the pertinent periods studied, and especially regarding the cultural representations of “Orientals” and “The Orient” presented in the mass communications media of the West. Nonetheless, the supporters of Saïd’s scholarship said that, concerning the scholarship of German orientalists, the scope of Orientalism is limited; yet, in the magazine article “Orientalism Reconsidered” (1985), Saïd said that no-one opponent provided a substantive rationale for claiming that the dearth of discussion about German Orientalism necessarily limits the scholarly value of the book’s thesis. Moreover, in the Afterword to the 1995 edition of Orientalism, Saïd presented follow-up refutations of the criticisms that Bernard Lewis registered against the first edition of the book.}}

The critics and the supporters of Edward Saïd acknowledge the transformative influence of Orientalism upon scholarship in the humanities — the former say that is an intellectually limiting influence upon scholars, whilst the latter say that it is an intellectually liberating influence upon scholars. Post-colonial studies, of which Saïd was a founder, and a scholarly reference, is a fertile and thriving field of intellectual enquiry that helps explain the post-colonial world and its peoples. Hence the continued investigational validity and analytical efficacy of the critical propositions presented in Orientalism (1978), especially in the field of Middle Eastern studies.

Saïd’s scholarship remains critically pertinent to and intellectually relevant in the fields of literary criticism and cultural studies, notably upon scholars studying India, such as Gyan Prakash (“Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography”, 1990), Nicholas Dirks (Castes of Mind, 2001), and Ronald Inden (Imagining India, 1990); and upon scholars studying Cambodia, such as Simon Springer (“Culture of Violence or Violent Orientalism? Neoliberalisation and Imagining the ‘Savage Other’ in Post-transitional Cambodia”, 2009); and upon literary theorists such as Homi K. Bhabha (Nation and Narration, 1990), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, 1987), and Hamid Dabashi.

Elswewhere, in and about Eastern Europe, Milica Baki –Hayden developed the concept of Nesting Orientalisms (1992) based upon the ideas of the historian Larry Wollf (Inventing Eastern Europe) and upon the ideas presented in "Orientalism". In turn, the Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova (Imagining the Balkans, 1997) presented her ethnologic concept of "Nesting Balkanisms" (1997), which is conceptually related to and derived from Milica Baki –Hayden’s "Nesting Orientalisms".