Edward Said
Edward Said
Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy
Full name
Edward Saïd
School/
tradition
Postcolonialism,
Postmodernism
Notable ideas
Orientalism
"The Other"
Influenced by
Derrida, Vico, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Gramsci,
Adorno, Conrad, Blackmur, Williams, Foucault,
Chomsky.
Influenced
Hamid Dabashi, Homi K. Bhabha, John
Esposito, Gayatri Spivak, Robert Fisk,
Mahmood Mamdani, Rashid Khalidi, Joseph
Massad, Nigel Gibson.
Edward Wadie Saïd MRSL (Arabic:
إدوارد
وديع سعيد
, Idwārd Wadīʿ Saʿīd; 1 Novem-
ber 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a
Palestinian American literary theorist, cultur-
al critic and political activist, particularly as
an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights.
He was University Professor of English and
Comparative
Literature
at
Columbia
University and a founding figure in postcolo-
nialism.[1] During his lifetime he was re-
ferred to as Palestine’s "most powerful polit-
ical voice".[2]
Life
Said was born in Jerusalem[3] (then in the
British Mandate of Palestine) on November 1,
1935. His father was a US citizen with Prot-
estant Palestinian origins who had moved to
Cairo in the decade before Edward’s birth.
His father was a businessman and had served
under General Pershing in World War I, while
his mother was born in Nazareth, also of
Protestant[4] Christian Palestinian descent.[5]
His sister was the historian and writer Rose-
marie Said Zahlan.
Said once referred to himself as a
"Christian wrapped in a Muslim culture":
With an unexceptionally Arab family
name like Said connected to an
Edward Said and sister in Palestine 1940
improbably British first name (my
mother much admired the Prince of
Wales in 1935, the year of my birth),
I was an uncomfortably anomalous
student all through my early years: a
Palestinian going to school in Egypt,
with an English first name, an Amer-
ican passport and no certain identity
at all.[6]
According to his autobiographical memoir,
Out of Place,[6] Said lived "between worlds"
in both Cairo and Jerusalem until age 12. He
has stated that he attended the A