The World, the Text, and the Critic | Edward W. Said

Edward W. Said, author of Beginnings and the controversial yet seminal Orientalism, is one of the most acclaimed public intellectuals of our time. In this sweeping and rigorous work of literary criticism, he pushes the field even further forward. Moving from Derrida to Foucault, from Marxism to psychoanalysis, and from Swift to Conrad, Said argues that the dogmas of the dominant culture have crippled our engagement with literature, forcing a text to meet the requirements of theory while ignoring the tethers that bind it to the living world.

Provocatively, Said advocates for freedom of consciousness and for responsiveness to history; to the exigencies of the text; to political, social, and human values; and to the heterogeneity of human experience. The World, the Text, and the Critic asks daring questions, investigates problems of urgent significance, and gives a subtle yet powerful new meaning to the enterprise of criticism in modern society.

Edward W. Said was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, raised in Jerusalem and Cairo, and educated in the United States, where he attended Princeton (B.A. 1957) and Harvard (M.A. 1960; Ph.D. 1964). In 1963, he began teaching at Columbia University, where he was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature. He died in 2003 in New York City.

He is the author of twenty-two books which have been translated into 35 languages, including Orientalism (1978); The Question of Palestine (1979); Covering Islam (1980); The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983); Culture and Imperialism (1993); Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East Peace Process (1996); and Out of Place: A Memoir (1999). Besides his academic work, he wrote a twice-monthly column for Al-Hayat and Al-Ahram; was a regular contributor to newspapers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; and was the music critic for The Nation.