This book is dedicated to Edward Said (1935-2003), a major literary and cultural critic, who has been instrumental in promoting decolonization through his analytical and critical writing. Scholarly articles tackle various aspects of Said's writing on fiction, criticism, politics, and music, and the volume includes an extensive bibliography of Edward Said. Edward Said and Critical Decolonization strives to cover the multifaceted career of Said, with emphasis on his critical contribution to decolonization and resistance to hegemony. There are moving testimonies by friends and relatives, students and colleagues, which throw light on his personality. An article by Said himself on the idea of the university is published here for the first time. The volume also includes articles exploring in depth Said's political, critical, and aesthetic positions--including his views on intellectuals and secular criticism, on traveling theory, and humanism. And Said's thought is explored in relation to other major thinkers such as Freud and Foucault. Contributors: Fadwa Abdel Rahman, Richard Armstrong, Mostafa Bayoumi, Terry Eagleton, Rokus de Groot, Stathis Gourgouris, Hoda Guindi, Ananya Kabir, Lamis El Nakkash, Daisuke Nishihara, Rubén Chuaqui, Yasmine Ramadan, Andrew Rubin, Edward Said, Najla Said, Yumna Siddiqi, David Sweet, Michael Wood, and Youssef Yacoubi.

Working with processes of translocation enabled Edward Said to point out interdependence and complementarity across geographical borders and disciplinary boundaries while recognizing cultural difference and the distinct historical experiences of colonizer and colonized. This book brings into focus Said’s politics of reading, from his literary criticism in English to his political columns in Arabic. The international contributors—from Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Switzerland, and the United States—investigate his intellectual legacies without necessarily identifying themselves with the critical positions these involve. Instead of treating his work as a unitary theoretical system, the various arguments explored offer a critical assessment of those situations in which his writing has entered into a productive relationship with other theoretical positions and interlocutors. The collection considers location, which has always been a central category in and for Said’s writing; readings, which designates the acts by which, according to Said, the world comes to be constituted; and legacies, which pertains to the many fields across the boundaries of established academic disciplines that have taken up Said’s challenges. The critical positions visited in this book include critical and cultural theory, postcolonialism, literary studies, theatre and performance studies, and visual and music studies.

Edward W. Said is considered one of the most influential literary and postcolonial theorists in the world. Affirming Said's multifaceted and enormous critical impact, this collection features essays that highlight the significance of Said's work for contemporary spatial criticism, comparative literary studies, and the humanities in general.

One of the most famous literary critics of the twentieth century, Edward Said's work has been hugely influential far beyond academia. As a prominent advocate for the Palestinian cause and a noted music critic, Said redefined the role of the public intellectual. In his books, as scholarly as they are readable, he challenged conventional critical demarcations between disciplines. His major opus, Orientalism, is a key text in postcolonial studies that continues to influence as well as challenge scholars in the field. Conor McCarthy introduces the reader to Said's major works and examines how his work and life were intertwined. He explains recurring themes in Said's writings on literature and empire, on intellectuals and literary theory, on music and on the Israel/Palestine conflict. This concise, informative and clearly written introduction for students beginning to study Said is ideally set up to explain the complexities of his work to new audiences.

This indispensable volume, a comprehensive and wide-ranging resource on Edward Said's life and work, spans his broad legacy both within and beyond the academy. The book brings together contributions from 31 luminaries to engage Said's provocative ideas.

Combining literary, cultural, and political history, and based on extensive archival research, Archives of Authority argues that cultural politics - specifically America's often covert patronage of the arts - played a highly important role in the transfer of imperial authority from Britain to the USA during a critical period after WWII.

Revolving around the theme of “counterpoint” extensively used by Edward Said as the interplay of diverse ideas and discrepant experiences, this book aims to explore Said’s contribution to the fields of comparative literature, literary criticism, postcolonial theory, exilic and transnational studies, and socio-political thought among many others. Overshadowed by his legitimate political positions in support to the Palestinian cause and at odds with Islamophobic hostilities, Said’s intellectual achievements in the fields of humanities and philosophical thinking should equally be acknowledged and celebrated. Said articulates his notion of counterpoints through a vivid description of the composition of Western classical music. In the counterpoint of Western classical music, various themes play off one another, with only a provisional privilege being given to any particular one; yet in the resulting polyphony there is concert and order, an organized interplay that derives from the themes, not from a rigorous melodic or formal principle outside the work. This book pays tribute to Said’s contrapuntal methodology as well as to his academic and humanistic legacy.

The papers of this volume move from the abstract scheme of an intercultural humanism of the future to concrete cultural expressions of humanism within the Muslim culture of different times up to the present. They concentrate on three issues. The first is related to contemporary attempts to develop a humanist and historical hermeneutics of the Qur'an and of Islamic history. The second discusses the humanist heritage and the humanitarian trends of Muslim religious and literary culture. The third highlights the discussion on Humanism and Islam as a topic within European identity politics, covering the role of this discussion for the history of Islamic Studies in Europe and America, and the contemporary polemics around Islam in the Netherlands. Taken together, the contributions of the volume attempt to provide the groundwork for an assessment of the roots and prospects of an intercultural humanism with respect to the Muslim world.