Roll no: 34
Subject: The
post-colonial literature
Topic: On
Palestinian identity: A conversation with Edward said
Email id:
nupurvyas1995@gmail.com
SEM– 3 M.A,
part- 2
Submitted to
S.B. Gardy Department of English, MKBU (Bhavnagar)
Introduction:
-Edward Said (1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a
Palestinian professor of literature at Columbia University, a public
intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. Born
in Palestine, Said was an American citizen from birth by way of his father
Wadir Said, a U.S. Army veteran of the First World War (1914–18).
Educated in the Western canon, at British and American
schools, Said applied his education and bi-cultural perspective to illuminating
the gaps of cultural and political understanding between the Western world and
the Eastern world, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the
Middle East. His main influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé
Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno.
As a cultural critic, Said is known for the book Orientalism
(1978), a critique of the cultural representations that are the bases of
Orientalism—how the Western world perceives The Orient. Said’s model of textual
analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory,
literary criticism, and Middle Eastern studies—how academics examine, describe,
and define the cultures being studied. As a seminal work, Orientalism
has been a subject of scholarly controversy.
As a public intellectual, Said was a controversial member
of the Palestinian National Council, because he publicly criticized Israel and
the Arab countries, especially the political and cultural policies of Muslim
régimes who acted against the national interests of their peoples.Said
advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure equal political
and human rights for the Palestinians in Israel, including the right of
returnto the homeland. He defined his oppositional relation with the status
quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has “to sift, to judge, to
criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual” man
and woman.
Israeli-Palestinian issue:-
The Israeli–Palestinian conflictis the ongoing struggle
between Israelis and Palestinians that began in the mid-20th century. The
conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is sometimes also used in reference to
the earlier sectarian conflict in Mandatory Palestine, between the Jewish yishuv
and the Arab population under British rule. It has been referred to as the
world's "most intractable conflict", with the ongoing Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip reaching 49 years.
Despite a long-term peace process and the general
reconciliation of Israel with Egypt and Jordan, Israelis and Palestinians have
failed to reach a final peace agreement. The key issues are: mutual
recognition, borders, security, water rights, control of Jerusalem, Israeli
settlements, Palestinian freedom of movement, and Palestinian right of return.
The violence of the conflict, in a region rich in sites of historic, cultural
and religious interest worldwide, has been the object of numerous international
conferences dealing with historic rights, security issues and human rights, and
has been a factor hampering tourism in and general access to areas that are
hotly contested.
Many attempts have been made to broker a two-state
solution, involving the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside
the State of Israel (after Israel's establishment in 1948). In 2007, the
majority of both Israelis and Palestinians, according to a number of polls,
preferred the two-state solution over any other solution as a means of
resolving the conflict Moreover, a majority of Jews see the Palestinians'
demand for an independent state as just, and thinks Israel can agree to the
establishment of such a state. The majority of Palestinians and Israelis in the
West Bank and Gaza Striphave expressed a preference for a two-state solution.
Mutual distrust and significant disagreements are deep over basic issues, as is
the reciprocal skepticism about the other side's commitment to upholding
obligations in an eventual agreement.
Within Israeli and Palestinian society, the conflict
generates a wide variety of views and opinions. This highlights the deep
divisions which exist not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also
within each society. A hallmark of the conflict has been the level of violence
witnessed for virtually its entire duration. Fighting has been conducted by
regular armies, paramilitary groups, terror cells, and individuals. Casualties
have not been restricted to the military, with a large number of fatalities in
civilian population on both sides. There are prominent international actors
involved in the conflict.
The two parties engaged in direct negotiation are the
Israeli government, currently led by Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO), currently headed by Mahmoud Abbas. The official
negotiations are mediated by an international contingent known as the Quartet
on the Middle East (the Quartet) represented by a special envoy that
consists of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United
Nations. The Arab League is another important actor, which has proposed an
alternative peace plan. Egypt, a founding member of the Arab League, has
historically been a key participant.
Since 2006, the Palestinian side has been fractured by
conflict between the two major factions: Fatah, the traditionally dominant
party, and its later electoral challenger, Hamas. After Hamas's electoral
victory in 2006, the Quartetconditioned future foreign assistance to the
Palestinian National Authority (PA) on the future government's commitment to
non-violence, recognition of the State of Israel, and acceptance of previous
agreements. Hamas rejected these demands,which resulted in the Quartet's suspension
of its foreign assistance program, and the imposition of economic sanctions by
the Israelis. A year later, following Hamas's seizure of power in the Gaza
Strip in June 2007, the territory officially recognized as the PA was split
between Fatah in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The division of
governance between the parties had effectively resulted in the collapse of
bipartisan governance of the PA. However, in 2014, a Palestinian Unity
Government, composed of both Fatah and Hamas, was formed. The latest round of
peace negotiations began in July 2013 and was suspended in 2014.
On Palestinian identity: A conversation with Edward
said:-
Salman Rushdie: For those of us who see the struggle
between eastern and western descriptions of the world as both an internal and an
external struggle, Edward said has for many years been an especially important
voice. Professor of English and Comparative literature at Columbia and author
of literary criticism on, among others, Joseph Conrad, Edward has always had
the distinguishing feature that he reads books. We need only think of the major
trilogy which precedes his new book, after the last sky. In the first volume,
Orientalism, he analyzed‘the affiliation of knowledge with power’, discussing
how the scholars of the period of empire helped to create an image of the East
which provided the justification for the supremacist ideology of imperialism.
This was followed by the ‘The Question of Palestine’, which described the
struggle between a world primarily shaped by western ideas- that of Zionism and
later of Israel- and the largely ‘oriental’ realities of Arab Palestine. Then
came covering Islam, subtitled ‘How the media and the experts determine ‘How We
see the rest of the world,’ in which the west’s invention of the east is , so
to speak, brought up to date through a discussion of responses to the Islamic
revival.
Said claims all manner of things,
including, in chpter1, to have met creatures from outer space: ‘in the
so-called age of ignorance before Islam, our ancestors used to form their gods
from dates and eat them when in need. A
crucial idea in ‘After the last sky ‘concerns the meaning of the Palestinian
experience for the form of works of art made by Palestinians. In Edward’s view
the broken or discontinuous nature of Palestinian experience entails that
classic rules about form or structure cannot be true to that experience;
rather, it is necessary to work through a kind of chaos or unstable form that
will accurately express its essential instability. Edward then proceeds to
introduce the theme-which is developed later in the book-that the history of Palestine
has turned the insider (thePalestinianArab) into the outsider.
In part two, ‘interiors’, which greatly develops the theme of the
insider and the outsider, Edward refers to a change in the status of the Palestinians
who are inside Palestine. Until recently, among the Palestinian communityin
general, there was a slight discounting of those who remained inside, as if
they were somehow contaminated by the proximity of the Jews. Now, however, the
situation has been inverted: those who go on living there, mainting a Palestinian
culture and obliging the world to recognize their existence have acquired a
greater status in the eyes of other Palestinians.
The
third part, ‘Emergence’ and the fourth part, ‘past and future’ turn to a
discussion of what it actually is or might be to be a Palestinian. There is
also account of the power to which Palestinian are subject, of the way in which
even their names have been altered through the superimposition of Hebrew
transliteration.
The text goes on to talk about Zionism, which he
addressed in his earlier book The Question of Palestine. We should note the difficulty
in making any kind of critique of Zionism without being instantly charged with anti-Semitism.
Zionism as historical process, as existing in a context and having certain
historical functional. In the west, everyone has come to think of exile as a
primarily literary and bourgeois state. Exiles appear to have chosen a
middle-class situation in which great thoughts can be thought. In the case of Palestinians,
however, exile is a mass phenomenon: it is the mass that is exiled and not just
the bourgeoisie.
Edward
said says that most people in who feel strongly aboutPalestine and Palestinian
have had no direct experience at all. They think of them essentially in terms
of what they have seen on television: bomb scares, murders and what the secretary
of state and others call terrorism. This produces a kind of groundless passion,
so that when he introduced to someone who may had heard of him, they react in a
very strange way that suggests ‘maybe you’re not as bad as you seem’. The fact
that I speak English, and do it reasonably well, adds to the complications, and
most people eventually concentrate on my work as an English professor for the
rest of the conversation. Most of the
time you can feel that you are leading a normal life,but every so often you are
brought up against a threat or an allusion to something which is deeply
unpleasant. You always feel outside in some way.
Further, SalmanRushdie
asks that has there been any change in your ability to publish or talk about
the Palestinianissue. Edward said answers that to some extent. This is one
issue on which, as you know, there is a left-right break in America, and there
are still a few groups, a few people-like Chomsky or Alexander Cockburn- who
are willing to raise it publicly. But most people tend to think it is better
leftto the crazies. There are fewer hospitable places, and you end up
publishing for smaller audience. Ironically, you also become tokenized, so that
whenever there is a hijacking or some such incident, he get phone-calls from
the media asking him to come along and comment. It’s a very strange feeling to
be seen as a kind of representative of terrorism. You’re treated like a
diplomat of terrorism,with a place at table. Further Salman Rushdie asks a Palestinian
chooses to do something it becomes the Palestinian thing to do? Edward said
answers that that’s absolutely right. But even among Palestinians there are
certain code words that define which camp or group the speakercomes from;
whether from the popular front, which believes in the complete liberation of Palestine,
or from the Fatah, which believes in a negotiated settlement. They will choose
a different set of words when they talk about national liberation.
Then there are the regional accents. It is very strange indeed to meet a Palestinian
kid in Lebanon who wasborn in some refugee camp and has never been to Palestine
but who carries the inflections of Haifa, orJaffa, in his LebaneseArabic.
Further Rushdie asks in the context of literature rather than history, you
argue that the inadequacy of the narrative is due to the discontinuity of Palestinian
existence. Is this connected with the problem of writing a history? Said
answers that yes, there are many different kinds of Palestinian experience,
which cannot all be assembled into one. One would therefore have to write parallel
histories of the communities in Lebanon, the occupied territories, and so on.
That is central problem. It is almost impossible to imagine a single narrative:
it would have to be the kind of crazy history that comes out in midnight’s
children, with all those little strands coming and going in and out. Further Rushdie
asks the picture on the cover is really quite extraordinary- a man with a kind
of starburst on the right lens of his glasses. As you say, he has been blinded
by a bullet in one eye, but has learned to live with it. He is still wearing
the spectacles….and still smiling. Said answers that jean told me that he took
the photo as the man was en route to visit his son, who had been sentenced to
life imprisonment.
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