Edward Said - Work Quotes

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We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies.

Edward Said

Reading and writing texts are never neutral activities: there are interests, powers, pleasures entailed no matter how aesthetic or entertaining the work. Media, political economy, mass institutions – in fine, the tracings of secular power and the influence of the state – are part of what we call literature.

Edward Said

The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing th orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist's work.

Edward Said