Power, Politics, and Culture: Edited and with an introduction by Gauri Viswanathan - Hardcover

Said, Edward W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375421076 ISBN 13: 9780375421075

Publisher: Pantheon, 2001

Synopsis

This important and compelling collection of interviews conducted with Edward Said over the last three decades reveals the eloquent and unique voice of a fascinating figure, who is not only an outstanding cultural and political critic but also, as Nadine Gordimer has written, “among the truly important intellects of our century.”

In these twenty-eight interviews gathered by Gauri Viswanathan, Professor of English at Columbia University, from publications both here and abroad—Europe, India, Pakistan, the Arab world, and Israel—Said addresses an extraordinary range of subjects, political, artistic, and personal. The passion he feels for literature, music, history, and politics is powerfully conveyed in these interviews, which include Said’s views on the role of the critic in society, the origins of Orientalism, musical performance, the importance of teaching, Glenn Gould, Giambattista Vico, Joseph Conrad, Theodor Adorno, the Gulf War, Israel, the Oslo peace accords, the future of Palestine, political correctness and censorship, Saddam Hussein, and the idea of national identity. The scope of the subjects covered confirms what The Washington Post Book World has
stated, that Said “challenges and stimulates our thinking in every area.”

Said speaks with his usual incisiveness and candor, and these interviews show the evolution of his ideas and serve as a complement to his prolific life’s work.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"The flexible movement from one subject to another that is a feature of these collected interviews is a unique way to appreciate the concerns and accomplishments of Edward Said, arguably the most consequential literary, cultural, and geo-political critic of our time. However broad his range, Said is always attentive to the individual human, and not simply institutional investments that go into the creation of any work of historical or cultural achievement, the needs exhibited, the hopes engendered and deferred, the human price always to be paid."
--Richard Poirier

"These fascinating and revealing interviews reinforce Edward Said's standing as one of our foremost public intellectuals. His is a democratic and cosmopolitan humanism unafraid to criticize familiar academic and political dogmas emanating from all parts of the political spectrum in order to enlarge our understanding of the world and of ourselves."
-- Eric Foner

About the Author:

Edward w. Said is University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Orientalism (which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award), Covering Islam, Peace and Its Discontents, The Politics of Dispossession, Culture and Imperialism, Representations of the Intellectual, The Question of Palestine, Out of Place, The Edward Said Reader, and The End of the Peace Process.

GAURI VISWANATHAN is Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. She is the author of Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India and Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0375421076
• ISBN 13: 9780375421075
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512