Edward Said and the Writing of History

Edward Said's work has contributed substantially to contemporary debates on Orientalism, discourse analysis, dissident politics and postcolonialism. Having spent most of his life in exile from his homeland Palestine, he is acutely aware of the role that dominant ideologies play in cultural imperialism. Said argued that the study of the Orient became a recognised discipline at the very peak of nineteenth-century colonial expansion, creating a body of knowledge that imperialists could use as a means to gain power. 'Edward Said and the Writing of History' examines the aim of Said's polemical writing in destabilising unilateral historical accounts. It shows how his identification of the urgent need for 'subaltern' histories to be written and for the prevailing ones to be scrutinised for colonialist bias now offers intellectual support to decolonisation struggles throughout the world. Shelley Walia considers the influence of individual cultural theorists on Said's thought - in particular, the impact of Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci on Said's elaboration of the concepts of power, knowledge and hegemony.