The Legacy of Edward W. Said

by Spanos, William V.

• ISBN13: 9780252075728
• ISBN10: 0252075722
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-12
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

With the untimely death of Edward W. Said in 2003, various academic and public intellectuals worldwide have begun to reassess the writings of this powerful oppositional intellectual. Figures on the neoconservative right have already begun to discredit Said's work as that of a subversive intent on slandering America's benign global image and undermining its global authority. On the left, a significant number of oppositional intellectuals are eager to counter this neoconservative vilification, proffering a Said who, in marked opposition to the "anti-humanism" of the great poststructuralist thinkers who were his contemporaries - Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault--reaffirms humanism and thus rejects poststructuralist theory.In this provocative assessment of Edward Said's lifework, William V. Spanos argues that Said's lifelong anti-imperialist project is actually a fulfilment of the revolutionary possibilities of poststructuralist theory. Spanos examines Said, his legacy, and the various texts he wrote - includingOrientalism, Culture and Imperialism, andHumanism and Democratic Criticism- that are now being considered for their lasting political impact.

Author Biography

William V. Spanos is a Distinguished Professor of English and comparative literature at Binghamton University. A founding editor of the critical journal boundary 2, he is the author of several books, including America’s Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire.