“My story was complicated, because the names were all wrong. Not everyone”
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Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said was a Palestinian and American academic, literary critic, and political activist. As a professor of literature at Columbia University, he was among the founders of post-colonial studies. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for his book Orientalism (1978), a foundational text which critiques the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world…
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culture · Palestinian-American academic (1935–2003) · writer · literary critic · journalist · philosopher · musicologist · political scientist · translator · researcher · philologist · music critic · also Edward Said, Edward Wadie Said, Said
Born 1 November 1935 · Died 25 September 2003 · Q201538
42 published statements · 0 followers
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2026· 3 entries
“but of an essentially discriminatory and powerful culture, of which, in Palestine, Zionism has been the agent.”
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“nothing less than a concise history of classic and modern Judaism, insofar as these are relevant to the understanding of modern Israel”
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2016· 1 entry
California State University, Fresno started examining applicants for a newly created Professorship in Middle East Studies named after Edward Said, but after months of examining applicants, Fresno State canceled the searc
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2003· 6 entries
Died 2003-09-25.
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“Where cruelty and injustice are concerned, hopelessness is submission, which I believe is immoral.”
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“[An elaborated culture has a] density, complexity, and historical-semantic value that is so strong as to make politics possible... Gramsci's insight is to have recognised that subordination, fracturing, diffusion, reproducing, as much as producing, creating, forcing, guiding, are necessary aspects of elaboration.”
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Said affirmed that Israeli Jews had grounds for a territorial claim to Palestine (or the Land of Israel), but maintained that it was not "the only claim or the main claim" vis-à-vis all of the other ethnic groups (includ
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Which was authorised with the Iraq Resolution (2 October 2002); and the continual support of Israel by successive U
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Haidar Abdel-Shafi, Ibrahim Dakak, Mustafa Barghouti, and Said established Al-Mubadara (the Palestinian National Initiative), headed by Barghouti, a third-party reformist, democratic party meant to be an alternative to t
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2002· 2 entries
Awarded Princess of Asturias Award for Concord (2002).
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Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan, the founder and president of the United Arab Emirates, and others endowed the Edward Said Chair at Columbia University; it was filled by Rashid Khalidi from 2003 until his retirement in
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2001· 4 entries
Awarded honorary doctorate from the University of Paris-VII (2001).
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Prince of Asturias Award for Concord in 2002 (shared with Daniel Barenboim)
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“Time to Turn to the Other Front”
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“Defiance, Dignity, and the Rule of Dogma”
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2000· 2 entries
Awarded Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (2000).
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“American Elections: System or Farce?”
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1999· 2 entries
Argued that sustainable peace was only possible with one Israeli–Palestinian state
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Said and Barenboim co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, composed of young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians
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1998· 2 entries
Awarded International Nonino Prize (1998).
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Said made In Search of Palestine (1998), a BBC documentary film about Palestine, past and present
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1996· 1 entry
Awarded American Book Awards (1996).
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1995· 1 entry
In response to Said's political criticisms, the Palestinian Authority (PA) banned the sale of Said's books; however, the PA lifted the book ban when Said publicly praised Yasir Arafat for rejecting Prime Minister Ehud Ba
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1993· 3 entries
Said quit his membership in the Palestinian National Council, to protest the internal politics that led to the signing of the Oslo Accords (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, 1993), which
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Said presented the BBC's annual Reith Lectures, a six-lecture series titled Representation of the Intellectual, wherein he examined the role of the public intellectual in contemporary society, which the BBC published in
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Due to his criticism of the Oslo Accords
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1988· 1 entry
Was a proponent of the two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and voted for the establishment of the State of Palestine at a meeting of the PNC in Algiers
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1986· 1 entry
Awarded Messenger Lectures (1986).
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1979· 1 entry
“Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims”
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1977· 1 entry
Became the Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and subsequently was the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities; and in 1979 was Visiting Professor of Humanities at
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1976· 1 entry
For Beginnings: Intention and Method (1974)
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1974· 1 entry
Was Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard; during the 1975–76 period, he was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science, at Stanford University
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1972· 1 entry
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1972).
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1967· 1 entry
Consequent to the Six-Day War, Said became a public intellectual when he acted politically to counter misrepresentations (factual, historical, cultural) with which American news media explained the Arab–Israeli conflict;
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1963· 1 entry
Said joined Columbia University as a member of the English and Comparative Literature faculties, where he taught and worked until 2003
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1957· 2 entries
And received a doctorate in English literature from Harvard University in 1964
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After completing a senior thesis titled "The Moral Vision: André Gide and Graham Greene
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1951· 1 entry
For troublesome behaviour, though his academic performance was high
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1935· 2 entries
Born 1935-11-01.
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Said was a United States citizen by way of his father, who had served in the United States Army during World War I
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1919· 1 entry
Wadie and his cousin established a stationery business in Cairo, Egypt
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