Reading Edward Said
By Mohammed Taleb- Algerian intellectual engaged in Arab nationalist cultural work
Edward W. SAID died on September 24th, 2003, of leukemia. Born in 1936 in Jerusalem (Palestine), he was a Literature Professor at Columbia University, New York, teaching notably the subject of
Comparative Literature. His works, particularly his book on Western Orientalism, titled ORIENTALISM: The East in the Eyes of the West, reveal his deep understanding of his time and universal culture. His rejection of the theory of the clash of civilizations, proposed by
Western neoconservatives were based on political analysis but also more essentially on a high conception of humanism, of which he said… humanism is the sole act, and I would venture to say, the final act of resistance that we have to fight against the practices and the inhumane injustices that disfigure the history of Humanity.”
In his broad intellectual work, he could light the deadlock of a reductionist approach to Imperialism, which was reduced to its sole political-military and economic dimensions. Without underestimating the weight of arguments of the geopolitical mercantile type, Edward Said has underlined the importance of representations of the world, of ideologies, of cultural alienations in the domination of the North over the South. From “the universal civilizing mission” in the colonial discourse of the 19th century to “the clash of civilizations” of the present warrior rhetoric of the
Empire, we witness the same ideological resorts that identify the Western with the Universal and disqualify the very principle of cultural diversity.
Edward Said has shown that another world was possible and another perspective could be put forward: universalism based on the plurality of histories, geographies, and imaginaries.
In his book Orientalism, Professor Edward Said unveiled the basis of Western cultural domination over the Arab nation. He has notably shown that some orientalists have hardened the difference
between the Islamic period (14 centuries) and the pre-Islamic period (100 centuries). It so happens that it is here that lies the KEY FOR UNDER-STANDING the root of Berberism (as well as
“political maronitism” in Lebanon or “Coptic pharaonism” in Egypt).
The West manipulates Pre-Islam (reconstructed for its own purposes) against the Islamic period.
The role of our patriotic historians and intellectuals now is to undertake a reappropriation of OUR pre-Islamic past and even its valorization, doing this from an Arab-Islamic civilizational.
Perspective. The nationalist historian Tewfiq el Madani has already shown the way in his book on Carthage. The same happened with Fairouz, the diva of the Arab Nation, who sang Al-Qods in a quest for freedom and liberty, and Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. Despite the present crises and decadence, we have an incredibly productive history.
The Berberists have a fraudulent claim over the pre-Islamic past of Algeria. WE HAVE A CLAIM OVER THE PRE-ISLAMIC HISTORY OF ALL THE ARAB NATIONS, FROM NUMIDIA TO ASHUR, FROM YEMEN TO CARTHAGE, FROM PETRA TO SOUDAN, FROM AKKAD TO NEJD. WE CLAIM THE WHOLE ARAB NATION, WITH ALL ITS GEOGRAPHY, WITH ALL ITS HISTORY.
(translated from French to English by Okba Rahal
