Edward Said

Frank151: Your work as a critic—education, culture, literature, music—is widely published. What do you feel you have contributed?
Edward Said: Well, I was one of the first to try to shift the style of American criticism to take into account the developments in continental Europe, in a way which later came to be called literary theory. Second, I think that I contributed to the emergence of a new critical language which allows one to talk not just about a literary work itself in a narrowly critical style, but also about society, history, language, linguistics, anthropology, psychology. I have always tried to see the literary text through different perspectives—sometimes contradictory ones. I read, say, an English novel, like one of Jane Austen’s, and see in it not just the structure of English society, but also how other cultures were paid attention to. There were so many images of the British Empire, from which I came—not only the Middle East, but of the Mediterranean, India, the West Indies, etcetera. In reading literature, one should look at the ideological, the social, and so on. They all should be put together.

F151: Would you say that English literature has not always dealt fairly with other cultures?
ES: Yes, but “fairly” may not be the right word. There was no attempt to link European culture with what it depended upon: the culture of others. What we have instead is the notion that Europe was sort of enclosed within itself. If you studied European literature, you concentrated on Europe. What interested me was the extent to which that very same culture, with all its greatness and richness, depended upon other cultures that it absorbed and took from. I was interested in showing that partly because I was a comparatist by training, but also because I realized early on that I was not a member of European culture. I was talking about it as a guest who wanted to bring it to the insight and experience of others.


F151: Do you think morality plays a part in the works written about other cultures?
ES: That is tricky. It is not always a conscious choice that an individual writer makes. Let us take somebody like Flaubert. He goes to Egypt or North Africa and meets the courtesan. He treats her as a woman obviously, who is inferior to man, and as an exotic being. I think these three things go together, these perspectives build upon each other. I don’t think there’s any culture that doesn’t treat other people that way.

The question of morality comes up with a number of so-called “objective scholars,” particularly at the end of the 19th and certainly in the 20th century, who produce a kind of scholarship that is useful in the continuing domination of other cultures. So that when you produce a portrait of a native Egyptian that shows him to be subservient, wily, untrustworthy—congenitally—and this is presented with the authority of a famous scholar, then the question of morality comes up. Also, the relationship between knowledge and power interests me a lot.

F151: Do you have a theory of criticism?
ES: I think that is another contribution that I made to the study of literature and criticism in general—the notion of criticism as investigation, where you ask the text not only what it says, but also what it doesn’t say, what is hidden inside of it, what it assumes, what it can’t say. In the case, for example, of Camus in The Stranger, the stranger is the Arab who does not have a name. I attach a great importance to that, because Camus will not, or cannot, give the man a name. He is interested in not doing that. The main thing to me, and what I try to teach my students, is to read with a skeptical eye. It has nothing to do with telling them not to enjoy things. On the contrary, I tell them to take great pleasure in reading and admiring writers like Kipling and Camus—with whom I disagree politically—because they are great writers. I want them to be able to see that, but I also want them to be able to see the other things there.

F151: What importance do you place on theory?
ES: For me, theory is a tool. I am no longer interested in theory in itself. Insofar as it enables me to understand more, to read better, theory is important. In my books Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, there are many theoretical implications on which I elaborated. But what happened in my field was the overcapitalization of theory. You talk about theory to other theorists, who are only interested in theory. What interests me is how a literary text can be situated in the world. From that respect, theory can become a kind of impediment.


F151: Do you attach a moral responsibility to theory?
ES: I’m not happy with the word “moral.” There is an intellectual responsibility, which contains a moral core. There’s an intellectual responsibility to read carefully as much as possible, and to be rigorous in not resorting to clichés or easy formulas. In my own teachings I very rarely teach the same thing. I force myself to change my courses. That keeps me honest. What I think that the teacher should do is to try and take students into new areas, not review the same old material from the same ancient notes. I think also that there is a responsibility toward the material. I’m very sensitive to distortion. I think one has a responsibility to present a text as faithfully as possible.

F151: You are an accomplished pianist as well as a music critic. Can you tell us your beliefs about creativity and originality?
ES: Just like that? No. Well…let me say this. I think that one of the benefits of a life led among masterpieces is that it enables you to recognize originality in others. But there’s no definition of originality. It’s a feeling you have, a recognition you make, that something’s changed the way you look at things. As for creativity, my intellectual mentor, the Italian philosopher Vico, argued that the workings of the mind are themselves creative—and at the bottom, poetic—which isn’t to say that we are all equally creative, but that the possibility for creativity is there in each of us.