{"id":11987,"date":"2018-09-27T06:27:23","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T13:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=11987"},"modified":"2018-09-27T06:27:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T13:27:23","slug":"visions-of-transience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=11987","title":{"rendered":"Visions of Transience"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Humanism is the only – I would go as far as saying the final – resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigured human history.<\/em><\/p>\n

Separation between peoples is not a solution for any of \u00a0the problems that divide peoples. And certainly ignorance of the other provides no help whatever. Cooperation and co-existence of the kind that music lived as we have lived, performed, shared and loved it together, might be.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

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Words by Edward Said, University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, who died this week 15 years ago. A scholar, an activist, a true intellectual, he had lived with leukemia for over a decade, longer than anyone thought possible, until he succumbed at age 68. People either adored him or despised him for his political views, his literary analyses and creation of the field of post-colonial studies. All agree, though, that he was a fighter. Against the disease, but more importantly, for the right of Palestinian self-determination and against human rights abuses in the Middle East and everywhere else.<\/p>\n

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His best known book is\u00a0Orientalism,\u00a0<\/em>published 40 years ago in 1978, a groundbreaking study of figurative and narrative representations of the East. It looked at the relation between knowledge and power, or more precisely the motivated relationship between interested knowledge and the power it serves. Who benefitted from false descriptions of the peoples under colonial rule? \u00a0I have attached below an obituary from 2003 that offers a better introduction of Said and his work than I ever could. I am also linking to an interview with Said (within an Amherst lecture) that allows us to appreciate the depth of his thinking and his political passion. Longish, but so worth it.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/newleftreview.org\/II\/24\/tariq-ali-remembering-edward-said<\/a><\/p>\n

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