We discretely think and want you to think that we are a superior racial group that is intellectually blessed and would like to help you by making you more like us”.

He defines imperialism as “thinking about, settling on, controlling land that you do not possess, that is distant, that is lived on and owned by others” ( CI, 7). No one studying the relations between the metropolitan West and the decolonizing world can ignore Mr. He argues that imperialism has played a significant role in shaping Western culture, and that many works of art and literature can be seen as reflections or products of imperialism. He is the author of twenty-two books which have been translated into 35 languages, including Orientalism (1978); The Question of Palestine (1979); Covering Islam (1980); The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983); Culture and Imperialism (1993); Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East Peace Process (1996); and Out of Place: A Memoir (1999).He defined imperialism as ‘the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory’. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U. We must also situate ourselves within the context of the world, other communities and that we have overlapping commonalities.

But for those who believe that many of the current problems in the world can be traced back to European interference and destruction through the many empires which grew like a cancer in the 19th century, this book is a must read.Labels … are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. The book is seen as a "classic study", [11] and has influenced many later authors, books and articles. Anyhow, the book (collection of essays) focuses on culture (primarily novels) and its link to empire in France, UK and the US. There are four essays that consider Said’s career and criticism, in addition to Sprinker’s brief and informative introduction.

The Age of Empire, a term coined by historian Eric Hobsbawm in his classic anthology narrating the rise of European Bourgeois society and industrial capitalism, seems long behind us. Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh’s Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian: The Four Masks of an Eastern Postmodernism is a good example of this.

Although Said focuses on the cultural aspect, a bit of what he refers to (and quite a lot of philosophers agree on) molds the view of economic and political effects of colonization/imperialism. The book covers a range of topics, from the impact of colonialism on the works of Joseph Conrad and Jane Austen, to the ways in which Western films have depicted the East. Drawing on Fanon, Said argues that nationalism might serve as a mobilizing force during the war of liberation but unless it develops a social and political vision in its evolution toward liberation, it will ossify into mere nativism.