WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.520 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are tackling 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:06.559 a figure today who, quite frankly, resists classification. 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:09.480 He really does. Usually when we pull a profile 00:00:09.480 --> 00:00:11.640 from the stack, we can slot them into a neat 00:00:11.640 --> 00:00:15.199 box. You know, politician, artist, academic. 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:18.660 But today... Hmm, not so simple. We're looking 00:00:18.660 --> 00:00:21.859 at a man whose life was essentially a series 00:00:21.859 --> 00:00:24.500 of overlapping contradictions. He's a paradox 00:00:24.500 --> 00:00:26.780 wrapped in, I don't know, a bespoke three -piece 00:00:26.780 --> 00:00:29.179 suit. That is a very specific, and I have to 00:00:29.179 --> 00:00:31.679 say, a pretty accurate image. We're talking about 00:00:31.679 --> 00:00:34.640 Edward Said, and I want to set the stakes right 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:36.799 up front for you. This isn't just a biography 00:00:36.799 --> 00:00:38.820 of a professor who wrote some interesting books. 00:00:38.880 --> 00:00:41.520 No, far from it. This is about a man whose life 00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:44.539 reads like a rejected movie script because it's 00:00:44.539 --> 00:00:47.450 just too implausible. He was a comparative literature 00:00:47.450 --> 00:00:50.710 titan, a concert level classical pianist, a member 00:00:50.710 --> 00:00:53.149 of the Palestinian parliament in exile, and a 00:00:53.149 --> 00:00:55.530 media icon who was, you know, simultaneously 00:00:55.530 --> 00:00:58.090 celebrated and reviled. All of those things at 00:00:58.090 --> 00:01:01.060 once. But beyond the resume. This is the person 00:01:01.060 --> 00:01:05.000 who fundamentally rewired how the Western world, 00:01:05.079 --> 00:01:08.219 how we look at the Middle East, at Asia, and 00:01:08.219 --> 00:01:11.420 really at the very concept of the other. I don't 00:01:11.420 --> 00:01:12.859 think it's an exaggeration to say that there 00:01:12.859 --> 00:01:16.180 is a before said and an after said in the humanities. 00:01:16.439 --> 00:01:18.799 That's a huge claim. It is, but it holds up. 00:01:18.879 --> 00:01:22.219 He is widely considered the father of post -colonial 00:01:22.219 --> 00:01:25.519 studies, but even that title feels a bit... Well, 00:01:25.519 --> 00:01:27.939 a bit sterile. He was a disruptor. A disruptor. 00:01:27.939 --> 00:01:30.659 I like that. He took the dusty, leather -bound 00:01:30.659 --> 00:01:33.739 traditions of Western academia and he shook them 00:01:33.739 --> 00:01:35.900 until the binding cracked. I mean, he forced 00:01:35.900 --> 00:01:37.980 an entire civilization to look in the mirror 00:01:37.980 --> 00:01:40.219 and ask, why do we see the rest of the world 00:01:40.219 --> 00:01:42.340 the way we do? And why does that view always 00:01:42.340 --> 00:01:45.019 seem to benefit us? And that right there, that 00:01:45.019 --> 00:01:47.579 is the mission for this deep dive. We're going 00:01:47.579 --> 00:01:50.920 to unpack how one man used literature, literally. 00:01:51.469 --> 00:01:54.170 reading novels like Jane Austen and Joseph Conrad 00:01:54.170 --> 00:01:57.549 to dismantle centuries of imperial mindset. We're 00:01:57.549 --> 00:01:59.890 working from a really detailed biographical and 00:01:59.890 --> 00:02:02.329 academic record here. It covers his life, his 00:02:02.329 --> 00:02:04.549 work, the controversies, everything. So we have 00:02:04.549 --> 00:02:06.969 a massive stack of sources here, and we're going 00:02:06.969 --> 00:02:08.689 to need to pull apart some of the dense theory 00:02:08.689 --> 00:02:11.969 and see how it applies to the real world. And 00:02:11.969 --> 00:02:14.110 we have to do all of that while navigating his 00:02:14.110 --> 00:02:16.389 personal narrative, which is defined by this 00:02:16.389 --> 00:02:19.580 constant, almost aching sense of being... Out 00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:21.800 of Place. Out of Place. That's the title of his 00:02:21.800 --> 00:02:24.180 memoir. And it's the recurring motif of his entire 00:02:24.180 --> 00:02:26.659 life, isn't it? It's the key that unlocks everything 00:02:26.659 --> 00:02:29.719 else. So let's get into the origins of this outsider 00:02:29.719 --> 00:02:32.560 status. Because usually when we talk about intellectual 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:35.080 giants, we assume they come from a place of stability, 00:02:35.240 --> 00:02:39.840 a solid foundation. Said did not have that. Far 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:41.719 from it. I mean, let's just start with the basics. 00:02:41.939 --> 00:02:45.860 Edward Waddy said, born November 1st, 1935, place 00:02:45.860 --> 00:02:48.879 of birth, Jerusalem. But this is the crucial 00:02:48.879 --> 00:02:51.659 context. At the time, this was mandatory Palestine 00:02:51.659 --> 00:02:54.680 under British rule. So not Israel, not Palestine 00:02:54.680 --> 00:02:56.800 as a state yet, a territory controlled by the 00:02:56.800 --> 00:02:59.000 British Empire. Precisely. And right away, just 00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:01.599 look at the name, Edward. Very British. It's 00:03:01.599 --> 00:03:03.599 the Prince of Wales. It's stiff upper lip. And 00:03:03.599 --> 00:03:07.539 then said Fed, unmistakably Arab. That's a clash 00:03:07.539 --> 00:03:10.000 right there in two words. He called it the name 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:13.080 paradox. He said it was a burden he felt from 00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:15.319 day one. It wasn't just a quirky coincidence. 00:03:15.479 --> 00:03:18.439 It was a map of his family's fractured identity. 00:03:18.879 --> 00:03:20.939 So let's talk about that family. Who were they? 00:03:21.060 --> 00:03:24.699 His father, Wadi, was a Jerusalem -born businessman, 00:03:25.080 --> 00:03:27.819 a Protestant Christian. But here's the twist. 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:30.979 He was also a veteran of the U .S. Army. Hold 00:03:30.979 --> 00:03:33.400 on. Let's pause on that. A Jerusalem Arab serving 00:03:33.400 --> 00:03:36.460 in the U .S. Army in World War I. How did that 00:03:36.460 --> 00:03:39.409 happen? It's an incredible story. Wadi had spent 00:03:39.409 --> 00:03:41.569 some time in the U .S. before the war, and he 00:03:41.569 --> 00:03:44.490 ended up enlisting, serving in the American Expeditionary 00:03:44.490 --> 00:03:47.389 Forces under General Pershing in France. Wow. 00:03:47.509 --> 00:03:50.090 And because of that service, he and his family 00:03:50.090 --> 00:03:53.530 were granted United States citizenship. So Edward 00:03:53.530 --> 00:03:56.349 Said, born in Jerusalem in the 1930s, was a U 00:03:56.349 --> 00:03:59.110 .S. citizen from birth. He had the blue passport. 00:03:59.430 --> 00:04:02.449 Which puts him in this incredibly bizarre, privileged, 00:04:02.569 --> 00:04:05.469 but also really precarious position. Absolutely. 00:04:05.530 --> 00:04:07.629 Think about it. He's a Palestinian Arab, but 00:04:07.629 --> 00:04:09.710 he's legally American, living under a British 00:04:09.710 --> 00:04:12.870 mandate. And his family is Christian, Protestant 00:04:12.870 --> 00:04:15.750 no less, in a predominantly Muslim region that 00:04:15.750 --> 00:04:18.740 also has a significant Jewish population. It's 00:04:18.740 --> 00:04:21.339 like he was designed in a lab to not fit in anywhere. 00:04:21.480 --> 00:04:24.100 He was an outsider in every single context he 00:04:24.100 --> 00:04:26.019 found himself in. And the geography didn't help 00:04:26.019 --> 00:04:28.240 stabilize things, from what I understand. No. 00:04:28.319 --> 00:04:31.199 The family was wealthy. His father owned a very 00:04:31.199 --> 00:04:33.459 successful stationery business, so they were 00:04:33.459 --> 00:04:36.800 part of a cosmopolitan elite. They moved pretty 00:04:36.800 --> 00:04:39.540 effortlessly between Jerusalem and Cairo. So 00:04:39.540 --> 00:04:42.480 they had a foot in both worlds. They did. But, 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:44.459 you know, history has a way of catching up with 00:04:44.459 --> 00:04:46.720 everyone, no matter how wealthy you are. And 00:04:46.720 --> 00:04:49.980 in late 1947, the situation in Palestine began 00:04:49.980 --> 00:04:52.620 to completely disintegrate. This is the lead 00:04:52.620 --> 00:04:55.519 up to the 1948 war, the war that Israelis call 00:04:55.519 --> 00:04:57.519 the War of Independence and Palestinians call 00:04:57.519 --> 00:05:01.660 the Nakba, the catastrophe. Precisely. The intercommunal 00:05:01.660 --> 00:05:03.860 violence in Jerusalem between Arabs and Jews 00:05:03.860 --> 00:05:11.410 made daily life impossible. So they had to leave. 00:05:14.189 --> 00:05:22.110 And I think it's important to clarify here. He 00:05:22.110 --> 00:05:24.649 didn't leave as a refugee in a tent camp. No, 00:05:24.649 --> 00:05:26.790 absolutely not. That's a crucial distinction 00:05:26.790 --> 00:05:29.189 he himself made throughout his life. He left 00:05:29.189 --> 00:05:32.189 in a car to another comfortable home in Cairo. 00:05:32.689 --> 00:05:35.879 But the psychological break... The loss of home 00:05:35.879 --> 00:05:39.220 was the same. He became an exile. That's it. 00:05:39.399 --> 00:05:42.100 Saad was always very aware of his privilege compared 00:05:42.100 --> 00:05:44.379 to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians 00:05:44.379 --> 00:05:46.699 who ended up in refugee camps. But, you know, 00:05:46.759 --> 00:05:49.019 privilege doesn't cure displacement. The wound 00:05:49.019 --> 00:05:51.860 is still there. And in Cairo, he was thrown into 00:05:51.860 --> 00:05:54.649 another strange environment. Another colonial 00:05:54.649 --> 00:05:57.230 incubator. He was sent to Victoria College. This 00:05:57.230 --> 00:05:59.310 was known as the Eaton of the Middle East. The 00:05:59.310 --> 00:06:00.670 Eaton of the Middle East. So this is where the 00:06:00.670 --> 00:06:03.170 elite sent their kids. Oh, absolutely. Ken Hussein 00:06:03.170 --> 00:06:05.870 of Jordan went there. The actor Omar Sharif went 00:06:05.870 --> 00:06:08.410 there. It was a school designed to create the 00:06:08.410 --> 00:06:12.629 perfect colonial elite to turn young Arabs into 00:06:12.629 --> 00:06:15.589 proper British gentlemen. And based on the records, 00:06:15.790 --> 00:06:18.009 Saad wasn't exactly buying what they were selling. 00:06:18.209 --> 00:06:22.230 He was a rebel. A brilliant one, but a rebel 00:06:22.230 --> 00:06:24.899 nonetheless. The sources paint a picture of a 00:06:24.899 --> 00:06:27.480 boy who was intellectually miles ahead of his 00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:31.480 peers, but was constantly described as behaviorally 00:06:32.600 --> 00:06:35.139 What does troublesome even mean in that context? 00:06:35.399 --> 00:06:37.620 It means he talked back. He questioned authority. 00:06:38.040 --> 00:06:40.819 He didn't fit the mold of the deferential colonial 00:06:40.819 --> 00:06:43.259 subject they were trying to create. And it all 00:06:43.259 --> 00:06:46.680 came to a head in 1951. He was expelled. Expelled. 00:06:46.939 --> 00:06:49.699 The man who would go on to hold endowed chairs 00:06:49.699 --> 00:06:52.540 at Columbia and lecture at Harvard got kicked 00:06:52.540 --> 00:06:54.779 out of high school. It just highlights this incredible 00:06:54.779 --> 00:06:57.180 restlessness in his character. He couldn't conform. 00:06:57.500 --> 00:07:00.259 And this expulsion led to a really pivotal decision 00:07:00.259 --> 00:07:02.560 by his parents. What did they do? They looked 00:07:02.560 --> 00:07:05.139 at their brilliant, difficult American citizen 00:07:05.139 --> 00:07:07.779 son, and they decided that there was simply no 00:07:07.779 --> 00:07:09.759 future for him in the Middle East. The old world 00:07:09.759 --> 00:07:11.939 was crumbling, so they sent him away. To the 00:07:11.939 --> 00:07:14.379 United States, to Massachusetts of all places. 00:07:14.459 --> 00:07:16.899 Northfield met Herman, an elite private boarding 00:07:16.899 --> 00:07:19.740 school. Imagine the whiplash. He goes from the 00:07:19.740 --> 00:07:22.660 chaotic, vibrant, colonial, but still Arab streets 00:07:22.660 --> 00:07:26.839 of Cairo to the austere, cold, puritanical quiet 00:07:26.839 --> 00:07:30.660 of rural Massachusetts in the 1950s. Talk about 00:07:30.660 --> 00:07:33.519 culture shock. It must have been brutal. It was 00:07:33.519 --> 00:07:35.899 more than shock. He described it as profound 00:07:35.899 --> 00:07:38.980 isolation. He later reflected that his parents 00:07:38.980 --> 00:07:41.180 sent him away because the prospects for what 00:07:41.180 --> 00:07:44.120 he called deracinated people, uprooted people 00:07:44.120 --> 00:07:47.040 like them, were so uncertain in the new Middle 00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:49.420 East. So they were trying to save him in a way. 00:07:49.500 --> 00:07:52.560 They were. But in doing so, they completely severed 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:55.120 his connection to his culture, to his home. He 00:07:55.120 --> 00:07:57.839 spent his teenage years as this lonely Arab boy 00:07:57.839 --> 00:08:00.360 in America, constantly trying to prove he was 00:08:00.360 --> 00:08:02.660 smart enough to belong, while everyone just looked 00:08:02.660 --> 00:08:04.819 at him as a curiosity. But isn't that the classic 00:08:04.819 --> 00:08:06.920 immigrant story in some ways? You have to work 00:08:06.920 --> 00:08:09.180 twice as hard to get half as far. It is, and 00:08:09.180 --> 00:08:12.079 he absolutely did. He channeled all that alienation, 00:08:12.120 --> 00:08:14.699 all that feeling of being an outsider into pure 00:08:14.699 --> 00:08:17.379 academic achievement. He was either valedictorian 00:08:17.379 --> 00:08:19.620 or salutorian. The records vary slightly, but 00:08:19.620 --> 00:08:21.420 he was at the very top of his class. And that 00:08:21.420 --> 00:08:23.930 academic success was his ticket. It was his ticket 00:08:23.930 --> 00:08:26.529 to the Ivy League. He went to Princeton for his 00:08:26.529 --> 00:08:30.370 B .A., graduated in 1957. Then he went on to 00:08:30.370 --> 00:08:33.269 Harvard for his master's and his Ph .D. Now, 00:08:33.309 --> 00:08:35.929 what's interesting to me is his academic focus 00:08:35.929 --> 00:08:38.779 during this time. He wasn't writing about the 00:08:38.779 --> 00:08:40.580 Middle East. He wasn't writing about Palestine. 00:08:40.620 --> 00:08:43.940 No, not at all. He was diving headfirst into 00:08:43.940 --> 00:08:46.779 the Western literary canon. His senior thesis 00:08:46.779 --> 00:08:49.639 at Princeton was on Andre Deed and Graham Greene. 00:08:49.740 --> 00:08:52.500 His Ph .D. dissertation at Harvard was on Joseph 00:08:52.500 --> 00:08:55.299 Conrad. So he's becoming an expert in European 00:08:55.299 --> 00:08:57.460 literature. That is the key to understanding 00:08:57.460 --> 00:09:00.259 his later power. This is so important. He didn't 00:09:00.259 --> 00:09:02.340 attack the West from the outside, shouting from 00:09:02.340 --> 00:09:04.679 the margins. He mastered its culture better than 00:09:04.679 --> 00:09:06.720 the Westerners did. He learned the rules of the 00:09:06.720 --> 00:09:09.379 game to change the game. Perfectly put. He knew 00:09:09.379 --> 00:09:11.220 their literature, their philosophy, their music, 00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:14.299 their languages, English, French, Arabic, fluently. 00:09:14.659 --> 00:09:16.700 By the time he joined the faculty at Columbia 00:09:16.700 --> 00:09:19.259 University in 1963, he was the quintessential 00:09:19.259 --> 00:09:21.580 Ivy League professor of English and comparative 00:09:21.580 --> 00:09:23.320 literature. He was an insider. He was wearing 00:09:23.320 --> 00:09:25.639 the tree jacket. He was teaching the great books. 00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:29.159 Yes, but he was an insider with an outsider's 00:09:29.159 --> 00:09:32.389 memory, an outsider's eye. He was reading these 00:09:32.389 --> 00:09:34.889 canonical books and noticing things, patterns, 00:09:35.110 --> 00:09:38.049 absences that his white American colleagues were 00:09:38.049 --> 00:09:40.009 completely missing. Things that were invisible 00:09:40.009 --> 00:09:42.350 to them. Because it was their water. It was the 00:09:42.350 --> 00:09:44.929 air they breathed. And that slow burning realization 00:09:44.929 --> 00:09:47.769 that he was seeing something they couldn't eventually 00:09:47.769 --> 00:09:51.149 exploded in 1978 with the publication of one 00:09:51.149 --> 00:09:53.149 of the most influential academic books of the 00:09:53.149 --> 00:09:56.389 20th century, Orientalism. Okay, Orientalism. 00:09:56.409 --> 00:09:58.070 This is the big one. This is the main event. 00:09:58.210 --> 00:10:00.000 If you only know one thing about... Edward say 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:02.960 it's probably this book. But we need to be really 00:10:02.960 --> 00:10:05.779 careful here because the word Orientalism itself 00:10:05.779 --> 00:10:09.120 is tricky. Very. Before 1978, if I said I'm an 00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:11.399 Orientalist, that was a compliment. Yeah. Right. 00:10:11.480 --> 00:10:13.659 It just meant I was a scholar of the East. Exactly. 00:10:13.700 --> 00:10:15.919 It was a perfectly respectable professional title. 00:10:16.059 --> 00:10:18.360 It meant you studied the languages, the history, 00:10:18.500 --> 00:10:21.080 the art, the culture of the Orient, which was 00:10:21.080 --> 00:10:23.759 this, you know. very vague and sprawling term 00:10:23.759 --> 00:10:27.039 for basically anywhere from north africa to japan 00:10:27.039 --> 00:10:29.740 it was seen as a neutral scientific academic 00:10:29.740 --> 00:10:33.019 pursuit yes the pursuit of knowledge for its 00:10:33.019 --> 00:10:36.620 own sake and side comes along and says neutral 00:10:36.620 --> 00:10:39.720 there is nothing neutral about this he completely 00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:42.500 redefined the term he turned it inside out for 00:10:42.500 --> 00:10:44.960 side orientalism wasn't just a field of study 00:10:45.370 --> 00:10:47.889 It was, and this is his famous definition, a 00:10:47.889 --> 00:10:50.750 style of thought based upon an ontological and 00:10:50.750 --> 00:10:53.149 epistemological distinction made between the 00:10:53.149 --> 00:10:56.710 Orient and, most of the time, the Occident. Okay, 00:10:56.789 --> 00:10:59.169 let's unpack that. That is a lot of syllables. 00:10:59.669 --> 00:11:01.809 Ontological and epistemological distinction. 00:11:02.110 --> 00:11:04.919 What does he mean by that? OK, so ontology is 00:11:04.919 --> 00:11:07.940 the study of being of what things are. Epistemology 00:11:07.940 --> 00:11:10.059 is the study of knowledge of how we know things. 00:11:10.279 --> 00:11:12.620 Right. So he's saying that the West decided there 00:11:12.620 --> 00:11:14.679 was a fundamental, unchangeable difference in 00:11:14.679 --> 00:11:17.159 the very being of an Easterner versus a Westerner. 00:11:17.259 --> 00:11:19.440 And based on that difference, they created a 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:21.899 whole system of knowledge about the East. A system 00:11:21.899 --> 00:11:24.639 of knowledge that confirmed the difference. Precisely. 00:11:24.679 --> 00:11:27.580 The West defined itself as rational, developed, 00:11:27.759 --> 00:11:30.759 humane and superior. And to make that definition 00:11:30.759 --> 00:11:33.179 stick, to have something to compare. itself to, 00:11:33.340 --> 00:11:35.700 it had to define the Orient as the opposite, 00:11:35.940 --> 00:11:39.120 irrational, backward, barbaric, and inferior. 00:11:39.500 --> 00:11:41.940 So it's a mirror. The West looks at the East 00:11:41.940 --> 00:11:44.320 and sees everything it congratulates itself for 00:11:44.320 --> 00:11:47.019 not being. Or, and this is also crucial, everything 00:11:47.019 --> 00:11:49.980 it desires but suppresses. It's a fantasy. Said 00:11:49.980 --> 00:11:52.460 argued that the Orient that Western scholars 00:11:52.460 --> 00:11:54.940 and poets and politicians talked about wasn't 00:11:54.940 --> 00:11:57.320 a real place with diverse people. It was a caricature. 00:11:57.460 --> 00:11:59.700 It was a stage, a stage where the West could 00:11:59.700 --> 00:12:02.279 project its fears and its desires. The Orient 00:12:02.279 --> 00:12:04.860 was sensual. It was mysterious. It was despotic. 00:12:04.879 --> 00:12:06.820 It was violent. It was everything the civilized 00:12:06.820 --> 00:12:09.059 West was not. He used that famous image on the 00:12:09.059 --> 00:12:11.240 cover of the book, The Snake Charmer, by Jean 00:12:11.240 --> 00:12:14.019 -Léon Jérôme. I'm looking at it now. It's a 19th 00:12:14.019 --> 00:12:17.519 century painting. Yes. It shows a naked boy handling 00:12:17.519 --> 00:12:19.940 a snake for an audience of older men sitting 00:12:19.940 --> 00:12:22.580 against this intricately tiled wall. Yeah. And 00:12:22.580 --> 00:12:24.759 it looks, I mean, it looks incredibly realistic. 00:12:24.779 --> 00:12:27.279 The detail is photographic. And that realism 00:12:27.279 --> 00:12:31.100 is the trap. That is Said's entire point. Jerome 00:12:31.100 --> 00:12:33.179 didn't paint a specific moment he witnessed. 00:12:33.500 --> 00:12:36.460 He pieced it together in his Paris studio from 00:12:36.460 --> 00:12:40.279 sketches and props. He painted a timeless, decaying 00:12:40.279 --> 00:12:42.600 fantasy. What are the giveaways? Look closer. 00:12:43.019 --> 00:12:45.740 Notice the peeling tiles on the wall. That's 00:12:45.740 --> 00:12:48.480 a classic trope. It's meant to suggest that the 00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:51.480 East is a place of ruined glory, that its best 00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:53.879 days are behind it. Okay, I see that. And notice 00:12:53.879 --> 00:12:56.899 the passivity of the audience. The men are just 00:12:56.899 --> 00:12:59.419 sitting there, mesmerized, almost lethargic. 00:12:59.480 --> 00:13:01.480 They aren't working, they aren't building, they 00:13:01.480 --> 00:13:03.159 aren't doing anything productive. They are just 00:13:03.159 --> 00:13:07.470 existing. for the Western viewer's gaze. So the 00:13:07.470 --> 00:13:10.009 subtle message of the painting is these people 00:13:10.009 --> 00:13:12.409 are lazy, they're exotic, they are stuck in the 00:13:12.409 --> 00:13:15.110 past, they're decadent. And therefore, they need 00:13:15.110 --> 00:13:18.309 us, the dynamic, modern, rational West, to come 00:13:18.309 --> 00:13:20.169 in and run things for them. It's the intellectual 00:13:20.169 --> 00:13:22.590 justification for empire. You've got it. It's 00:13:22.590 --> 00:13:24.509 the permission slip. You don't conquer people 00:13:24.509 --> 00:13:26.450 because you want their land or their oil. That 00:13:26.450 --> 00:13:28.509 sounds greedy. You conquer them because they 00:13:28.509 --> 00:13:31.009 are incapable of governing themselves. You're 00:13:31.009 --> 00:13:33.500 doing it for their own good. It's the white man's 00:13:33.500 --> 00:13:36.279 burden. It is the very definition of the white 00:13:36.279 --> 00:13:38.519 man's burden. And Setti traced this way of thinking 00:13:38.519 --> 00:13:41.720 back way further than 19th century French painters. 00:13:41.940 --> 00:13:44.419 He went all the way back to ancient Greece. To 00:13:44.419 --> 00:13:47.419 Aeschylus. To Aeschylus and his play The Persians 00:13:47.419 --> 00:13:51.740 from 472 BCE. Wow. Okay, so that's one of the 00:13:51.740 --> 00:13:54.399 oldest plays we have. It's about the Greco -Persian 00:13:54.399 --> 00:13:56.659 Wars. Right. And in that play, which is written 00:13:56.659 --> 00:14:00.080 for a Greek audience, how are the Persians depicted? 00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:02.830 They're emotional. they're despotic, they're 00:14:02.830 --> 00:14:05.850 grieving, they're doomed. And the Greeks, they're 00:14:05.850 --> 00:14:07.570 rational, they're democratic, they're victorious. 00:14:07.950 --> 00:14:10.330 The heroes and the villains. The binary is established 00:14:10.330 --> 00:14:13.049 right there at the dawn of Western literature. 00:14:13.720 --> 00:14:16.919 us versus them. And Sade argues that this binary 00:14:16.919 --> 00:14:19.580 is part of the deep DNA of Western culture. But 00:14:19.580 --> 00:14:21.320 hold on a second. Isn't that just how cultures 00:14:21.320 --> 00:14:23.419 work? I mean, the Greeks thought everyone who 00:14:23.419 --> 00:14:25.299 wasn't Greek was a barbarian. The Romans did, 00:14:25.340 --> 00:14:27.000 too. The Chinese thought they were the Middle 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:29.279 Kingdom and everyone else was peripheral. Why 00:14:29.279 --> 00:14:31.820 is Orientalism different from just, you know, 00:14:31.879 --> 00:14:35.360 standard issue xenophobia? That is a very sharp 00:14:35.360 --> 00:14:37.379 and important question, and it's one that Sade 00:14:37.379 --> 00:14:41.059 anticipated. The difference, he argues, is power. 00:14:41.559 --> 00:14:44.360 Power. Modern Orientalism isn't just prejudice. 00:14:44.620 --> 00:14:47.159 It's prejudice backed by the most powerful military 00:14:47.159 --> 00:14:50.480 and economic machine in human history. It's the 00:14:50.480 --> 00:14:53.139 intimate relationship between knowledge and power, 00:14:53.299 --> 00:14:55.799 a concept he borrowed heavily from the French 00:14:55.799 --> 00:14:58.480 philosopher Michel Foucault. OK, so unpack that 00:14:58.480 --> 00:15:00.919 for me. Knowledge and power. It means that the 00:15:00.919 --> 00:15:02.799 people with the guns and the ships get to write 00:15:02.799 --> 00:15:05.259 the textbooks. The British didn't just conquer 00:15:05.259 --> 00:15:07.779 India with soldiers. They conquered it with cartographers, 00:15:07.980 --> 00:15:10.600 with linguists, with archaeologists, with administrators. 00:15:10.860 --> 00:15:13.620 who studied and classified and categorized every 00:15:13.620 --> 00:15:16.580 aspect of Indian life. They created a version 00:15:16.580 --> 00:15:18.960 of India that served their own interests. Exactly. 00:15:19.059 --> 00:15:21.559 Because the West had the power, their version 00:15:21.559 --> 00:15:23.659 of the story became the Truth with a capital 00:15:23.659 --> 00:15:27.100 T. The Orientalist, the scholar or the colonial 00:15:27.100 --> 00:15:29.940 officer or the novelist claimed to know the Orient 00:15:29.940 --> 00:15:32.279 better than the Orientals knew themselves. There 00:15:32.279 --> 00:15:34.799 is a famous quote from Karl Marx that Said uses 00:15:34.799 --> 00:15:37.659 to illustrate this. Marx, talking about French 00:15:37.659 --> 00:15:40.500 peasants, wrote, They cannot represent themselves. 00:15:40.679 --> 00:15:44.120 They must be represented. Wow. Said took that 00:15:44.120 --> 00:15:47.080 and applied it to the colonial world. The West 00:15:47.080 --> 00:15:49.960 appointed itself the voice, the mind, and the 00:15:49.960 --> 00:15:53.399 will of the East. The colonial subaltern, as 00:15:53.399 --> 00:15:56.019 later theorists would call them, was viewed as 00:15:56.019 --> 00:15:58.799 incapable of speaking for themselves. This must 00:15:58.799 --> 00:16:00.700 have gone over like a lead balloon with the actual 00:16:00.700 --> 00:16:03.519 Orientalists. Put it mildly. I mean, you can 00:16:03.519 --> 00:16:05.700 just imagine you spent your entire life studying 00:16:05.700 --> 00:16:09.159 Arabic grammar at Oxford. And this young, charismatic 00:16:09.159 --> 00:16:11.740 guy from Colombia tells you that your entire 00:16:11.740 --> 00:16:14.500 career is just a footnote to racist imperialism. 00:16:14.600 --> 00:16:17.309 The backlash was nuclear. This wasn't a polite 00:16:17.309 --> 00:16:19.470 academic disagreement over Sherry. This was a 00:16:19.470 --> 00:16:22.190 street brawl. And who was the main opponent in 00:16:22.190 --> 00:16:24.950 the other corner? The main opponent, the undisputed 00:16:24.950 --> 00:16:27.409 heavyweight champion of traditional Orientalism, 00:16:27.409 --> 00:16:30.610 was Bernard Lewis. Bernard Lewis, the Princeton 00:16:30.610 --> 00:16:33.289 professor, the doyen of Middle Eastern studies 00:16:33.289 --> 00:16:36.289 for decades. He was the expert whom governments 00:16:36.289 --> 00:16:38.629 in Washington and London called when they wanted 00:16:38.629 --> 00:16:41.730 to understand why Muslims are angry. He represented 00:16:41.730 --> 00:16:44.269 everything said was attacking. So what was Lewis's 00:16:44.269 --> 00:16:46.529 defense? How did he push back? Lewis's primary 00:16:46.529 --> 00:16:49.230 argument was that Said was politicizing scholarship. 00:16:49.690 --> 00:16:53.129 He accused Said of ignoring the genuine, often 00:16:53.129 --> 00:16:55.610 painstaking contributions of Western scholars 00:16:55.610 --> 00:16:58.230 who had deciphered ancient languages, preserved 00:16:58.230 --> 00:17:01.070 historical texts, and, in his view, objectively 00:17:01.070 --> 00:17:04.349 studied Eastern cultures. So Lewis is saying, 00:17:04.349 --> 00:17:07.410 I deal in facts, you deal in ideology. That was 00:17:07.410 --> 00:17:09.890 the line. He accused Said of a kind of intellectual 00:17:09.890 --> 00:17:12.930 vandalism, of ignoring the specific findings 00:17:12.930 --> 00:17:15.829 of Orientalists in favor of a sweeping, politically 00:17:15.829 --> 00:17:18.930 motivated condemnation of the entire field. He 00:17:18.930 --> 00:17:21.609 even accused Said of pollution of the mind. Pollution 00:17:21.609 --> 00:17:24.269 of the mind. That is not academic language. That's 00:17:24.269 --> 00:17:26.710 personal. It was deeply personal. Lewis also 00:17:26.710 --> 00:17:28.630 argued that Said was creating what he called 00:17:28.630 --> 00:17:30.789 a culture of complaint, where people in the Middle 00:17:30.789 --> 00:17:33.140 East could just blame all their problems. dictatorship, 00:17:33.519 --> 00:17:36.339 economic stagnation, you name it, on the West 00:17:36.339 --> 00:17:39.099 and on colonialism instead of taking responsibility 00:17:39.099 --> 00:17:41.619 for their own societies. And what was Sade's 00:17:41.619 --> 00:17:43.720 report to that? Sade didn't pull any punches 00:17:43.720 --> 00:17:46.619 either. He argued that Lewis's so -called facts 00:17:46.619 --> 00:17:50.440 were always selected and framed by his pro -Western, 00:17:50.440 --> 00:17:53.460 pro -imperial assumptions. So the bias was baked 00:17:53.460 --> 00:17:56.730 in from the start. Yes. He called Lewis a perfect 00:17:56.730 --> 00:17:59.470 exemplification of the establishment Orientalist 00:17:59.470 --> 00:18:03.150 whose work was, in the end, propaganda disguised 00:18:03.150 --> 00:18:06.029 as scholarship. Sedd pointed out that Lewis's 00:18:06.029 --> 00:18:08.349 advice to Western governments usually seemed 00:18:08.349 --> 00:18:10.190 to align perfectly with their foreign policy 00:18:10.190 --> 00:18:12.869 goals, often involving military intervention. 00:18:13.289 --> 00:18:16.730 So Sedd saw him not as a neutral scholar, but 00:18:16.730 --> 00:18:19.319 as a servant of power. A servant of American 00:18:19.319 --> 00:18:22.359 and specifically Zionist power. That's how Said 00:18:22.359 --> 00:18:24.480 framed it. It was a clash of titans and it got 00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:26.799 very ugly. It sounds like they were just talking 00:18:26.799 --> 00:18:28.660 past each other. Lewis is saying, look at the 00:18:28.660 --> 00:18:30.279 data, look at the history I've uncovered. And 00:18:30.279 --> 00:18:32.039 Said's saying, but I know why you're telling 00:18:32.039 --> 00:18:34.400 the history that particular way. That is the 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:36.900 absolute crux of the disagreement. And frankly, 00:18:37.059 --> 00:18:40.339 in the long run, Said won the war. How do you 00:18:40.339 --> 00:18:42.680 figure? Not necessarily because every historian 00:18:42.680 --> 00:18:45.000 or literary critic agrees with every single one 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:47.740 of his points. Many don't. But he won because 00:18:47.740 --> 00:18:50.299 he completely changed the terms of the engagement. 00:18:50.539 --> 00:18:53.339 He changed the questions people had to ask. Exactly. 00:18:53.359 --> 00:18:55.980 You simply cannot write a history book about 00:18:55.980 --> 00:18:59.359 the Middle East today or curate a museum exhibit 00:18:59.359 --> 00:19:02.059 of 19th century art without addressing Saeed's 00:19:02.059 --> 00:19:04.500 critique. If you ignore him, you just look naive 00:19:04.500 --> 00:19:07.200 or, frankly, ignorant. He made the invisible 00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:10.589 framework visible. Yes. And it spawned... entire 00:19:10.589 --> 00:19:13.710 fields of study. Post -colonial studies as a 00:19:13.710 --> 00:19:16.470 discipline in universities basically exists because 00:19:16.470 --> 00:19:19.049 of this book. And it wasn't just limited to the 00:19:19.049 --> 00:19:21.950 Middle East, right? The outline mentions nesting 00:19:21.950 --> 00:19:24.809 Orientalisms. What is that? That's a fascinating 00:19:24.809 --> 00:19:27.450 extension of his theory. It's the idea that this 00:19:27.450 --> 00:19:29.829 hierarchy of othering doesn't just happen between 00:19:29.829 --> 00:19:32.549 West and East. It happens internally, too. Like 00:19:32.549 --> 00:19:35.009 Russian dolls of prejudice. A perfect metaphor. 00:19:35.470 --> 00:19:39.230 Scholars like Milika Bakic Hayden and Maria Todorova 00:19:39.230 --> 00:19:42.089 applied it to the Balkans. They argued that Western 00:19:42.089 --> 00:19:44.930 Europe looks down on Eastern Europe as its Orient. 00:19:45.559 --> 00:19:48.680 Then, within Eastern Europe, the more westernized 00:19:48.680 --> 00:19:50.519 countries look down on the Balkans. And within 00:19:50.519 --> 00:19:52.480 the Balkans. The northern Balkans might look 00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:54.839 down on the southern Balkans. Everyone needs 00:19:54.839 --> 00:19:57.200 someone to be their orient so they can feel a 00:19:57.200 --> 00:19:59.359 little more western, a little more civilized. 00:19:59.539 --> 00:20:01.799 It's the classic high school cafeteria hierarchy, 00:20:02.079 --> 00:20:05.599 but applied to geopolitics. It's cruel, but it's 00:20:05.599 --> 00:20:08.990 an incredibly powerful analytical tool. But said 00:20:08.990 --> 00:20:11.710 wasn't done disrupting things. Fifteen years 00:20:11.710 --> 00:20:15.049 after Orientalism in 1993, he dropped another 00:20:15.049 --> 00:20:17.730 intellectual brick on the accelerator, culture 00:20:17.730 --> 00:20:20.630 and imperialism. This one feels more literary 00:20:20.630 --> 00:20:23.210 to me just from the title. Orientalism was about 00:20:23.210 --> 00:20:25.750 historians, politicians and area studies experts. 00:20:26.170 --> 00:20:28.089 Culture and imperialism goes right after the 00:20:28.089 --> 00:20:30.289 novelists. It does. And this is where said introduces 00:20:30.289 --> 00:20:32.470 one of his most important and I think elegant 00:20:32.470 --> 00:20:36.210 analytical tools. Contrapuntal reading. Contrapuntal. 00:20:36.210 --> 00:20:38.009 That's a musical term, isn't it, from Counterpoint? 00:20:38.150 --> 00:20:40.009 It is. And we'll definitely get to the musical 00:20:40.009 --> 00:20:41.890 later because it's central to who he was. But 00:20:41.890 --> 00:20:45.109 yes, in music, Counterpoint is when you have 00:20:45.109 --> 00:20:48.230 two or more independent melodies playing at the 00:20:48.230 --> 00:20:51.569 same time. They interact. They harmonize. They 00:20:51.569 --> 00:20:53.970 might create tension, but they remain distinct. 00:20:54.410 --> 00:20:57.230 So how do you apply that to a novel? Sidere argued 00:20:57.230 --> 00:20:59.869 we should read novels the same way. We need to 00:20:59.869 --> 00:21:02.470 read the main story, the romance in the drawing 00:21:02.470 --> 00:21:05.750 room, the coming of age story. But we also need 00:21:05.750 --> 00:21:08.410 to listen for the quiet background melody that 00:21:08.410 --> 00:21:11.130 makes the whole story possible. And that background 00:21:11.130 --> 00:21:13.609 melody is the empire. OK, give me an example. 00:21:13.710 --> 00:21:16.829 How do you read, say, Jane Austen, Contra Buntley? 00:21:17.449 --> 00:21:20.170 Mansfield Park is his great example. On the surface, 00:21:20.369 --> 00:21:23.309 it's a classic story of a country estate of manners, 00:21:23.450 --> 00:21:25.690 morals, and marriage plots. Right. The patriarch 00:21:25.690 --> 00:21:28.309 of the family, Sir Thomas Bertram, is a pillar 00:21:28.309 --> 00:21:30.950 of society. At one point in the novel, he leaves 00:21:30.950 --> 00:21:33.769 the estate to go to Antigua. Okay. And why does 00:21:33.769 --> 00:21:36.480 he go? to check on his plantations and for 150 00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:39.279 years most literary critics just saw that as 00:21:39.279 --> 00:21:41.460 a plot device it gets the strict father figure 00:21:41.460 --> 00:21:43.279 out of the house so the young people can get 00:21:43.279 --> 00:21:45.380 into trouble standard narrative stuff but said 00:21:45.380 --> 00:21:48.039 stops and asks the question that no one else 00:21:48.039 --> 00:21:52.359 was asking wait a minute Why does he have a plantation 00:21:52.359 --> 00:21:55.279 in Antigua who is working there? Slaves. Slaves. 00:21:55.279 --> 00:21:58.019 Sedd points out with devastating clarity that 00:21:58.019 --> 00:22:00.559 the beautiful, orderly, moral life of Mansfield 00:22:00.559 --> 00:22:03.319 Park is entirely funded by the brutal, immoral, 00:22:03.319 --> 00:22:05.660 and chaotic system of slave labor in the Caribbean. 00:22:05.819 --> 00:22:07.680 You can't have one without the other. They are 00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:10.660 inextricably linked. You cannot have the polite 00:22:10.660 --> 00:22:13.420 English Tea Party without the brutal Caribbean 00:22:13.420 --> 00:22:16.599 plantation. So he's not saying Jane Austen is 00:22:16.599 --> 00:22:19.339 a bad person who supported slavery. He's saying 00:22:19.339 --> 00:22:21.500 that Jane Austen and her readers took for granted 00:22:21.500 --> 00:22:25.099 an imperial system that was so vast and so profitable 00:22:25.099 --> 00:22:27.839 that it became invisible. It was just the background 00:22:27.839 --> 00:22:30.819 noise of life. The empire is the invisible foundation 00:22:30.819 --> 00:22:32.839 of the novel. That's the contrapuntal reading. 00:22:33.059 --> 00:22:35.619 And then, of course, there is his lifelong obsession 00:22:35.619 --> 00:22:38.000 with Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness. The 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:40.859 ultimate novel of empire. His Ph .D. was on Conrad. 00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:43.220 Set had a very complicated relationship with 00:22:43.220 --> 00:22:45.900 Conrad. He deeply admired the artistry of the 00:22:45.900 --> 00:22:48.559 writing, but he was absolutely ruthless in his 00:22:48.559 --> 00:22:51.960 analysis of its politics. Because Conrad is critical 00:22:51.960 --> 00:22:54.619 of imperialism, isn't he? The book is about the 00:22:54.619 --> 00:22:56.859 horror of what the Belgians were doing in the 00:22:56.859 --> 00:22:59.720 Congo. It absolutely is. Conrad shows the greed, 00:22:59.819 --> 00:23:02.420 the brutality, the hypocrisy. He exposes the 00:23:02.420 --> 00:23:05.640 horror. But, and this cites a crucial point, 00:23:05.920 --> 00:23:08.779 Conrad still doesn't give the Africans a voice. 00:23:09.119 --> 00:23:10.940 There's just scenery. I remember from the book 00:23:10.940 --> 00:23:14.930 they're described as limbs, eyes. Shadows. They 00:23:14.930 --> 00:23:17.410 don't really speak. They are props for the white 00:23:17.410 --> 00:23:20.269 man's psychological drama. Kurtz goes crazy. 00:23:20.450 --> 00:23:22.930 And the narrator, Marlow, learns a profound lesson 00:23:22.930 --> 00:23:25.490 about the darkness in the human soul. But the 00:23:25.490 --> 00:23:28.089 Africans themselves are just the backdrop for 00:23:28.089 --> 00:23:30.609 this European existential crisis. They have no 00:23:30.609 --> 00:23:32.890 interior life. They are denied language. They 00:23:32.890 --> 00:23:35.049 are denied psychology. They are denied humanity. 00:23:35.470 --> 00:23:38.109 So Seed argues that the novel's very structure, 00:23:38.230 --> 00:23:41.910 its very form, denies them agency. Even in a 00:23:41.910 --> 00:23:44.710 book that is actively criticizing empire, the 00:23:44.710 --> 00:23:47.289 imperial mindset dictates who gets to be a fully 00:23:47.289 --> 00:23:50.529 realized human character. Wow. That is such a 00:23:50.529 --> 00:23:52.829 powerful idea. That you could be a critic of 00:23:52.829 --> 00:23:54.710 the system and still be completely trapped inside 00:23:54.710 --> 00:23:57.390 its logic. Which is exactly what Said tried to 00:23:57.390 --> 00:23:59.670 avoid in his own life. He didn't just want to 00:23:59.670 --> 00:24:02.130 be an academic in an ivory tower pointing out 00:24:02.130 --> 00:24:04.490 flaws in old books. He wanted to be a public 00:24:04.490 --> 00:24:07.640 intellectual. And he had a very specific, very 00:24:07.640 --> 00:24:09.819 demanding definition of that role, didn't he? 00:24:09.900 --> 00:24:13.019 He laid it out in his BBC Reef lectures. He did. 00:24:13.119 --> 00:24:16.740 He said the intellectual's job is to sift, to 00:24:16.740 --> 00:24:20.059 judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice 00:24:20.059 --> 00:24:22.900 and agency return to the individual. He didn't 00:24:22.900 --> 00:24:24.819 see the intellectual as a servant of the government. 00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:26.880 Quite the opposite. He believed the intellectual 00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:29.460 has to be an amateur in the original sense of 00:24:29.460 --> 00:24:31.720 the word, amateur, one who does it for the love 00:24:31.720 --> 00:24:34.660 of it, not for a paycheck or to please a government 00:24:34.660 --> 00:24:38.480 or a corporation. Their job, their duty is to 00:24:38.480 --> 00:24:40.799 speak truth to power, even when it's uncomfortable, 00:24:41.160 --> 00:24:43.640 especially when it's uncomfortable. And for him, 00:24:43.660 --> 00:24:47.619 speaking truth to power meant. above all, talking 00:24:47.619 --> 00:24:50.019 about Palestine. It was the defining cause of 00:24:50.019 --> 00:24:53.220 his public life. He said the 1967 Six -Day War 00:24:53.220 --> 00:24:55.519 was a moment that politicized him. He was in 00:24:55.519 --> 00:24:58.000 the U .S., and he felt the American media was 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:00.259 presenting a completely one -sided, distorted 00:25:00.259 --> 00:25:02.279 narrative. What was the narrative he was seeing? 00:25:02.559 --> 00:25:04.839 That the Arabs were irrational aggressors, they 00:25:04.839 --> 00:25:06.940 were terrorists, or they were just, you know, 00:25:06.940 --> 00:25:09.299 non -entities who got in the way of Israeli progress. 00:25:09.500 --> 00:25:11.799 He wrote a piece called The Arab Portrayed in 00:25:11.799 --> 00:25:14.859 1968 to begin to counter that. But this is where 00:25:14.859 --> 00:25:17.000 people often get confused about Said's position. 00:25:17.700 --> 00:25:20.460 Because he was such a fierce and eloquent advocate 00:25:20.460 --> 00:25:23.180 for the Palestinian cause, people assume he was 00:25:23.180 --> 00:25:25.920 anti -Jewish or that he wanted to destroy Israel. 00:25:26.099 --> 00:25:28.720 But his actual writings are much, much more nuanced 00:25:28.720 --> 00:25:31.369 than that. So much more. He wrote a seminal essay 00:25:31.369 --> 00:25:34.410 called Zionism from the standpoint of its victims. 00:25:34.470 --> 00:25:37.250 Now, just note the title. He is centering the 00:25:37.250 --> 00:25:40.210 Palestinian experience of Zionism. Right. But 00:25:40.210 --> 00:25:42.410 he isn't denying the history of Jewish suffering 00:25:42.410 --> 00:25:45.569 that led to Zionism. In fact, he explicitly acknowledged 00:25:45.569 --> 00:25:48.789 the unique horror of the Holocaust and the historical 00:25:48.789 --> 00:25:51.829 Jewish need for a safe haven. He never disputed 00:25:51.829 --> 00:25:55.009 that. He even said in a 2003 lecture. very late 00:25:55.009 --> 00:25:58.269 in his life, that by any standard, Israeli Jews 00:25:58.269 --> 00:26:00.809 have a valid claim to the land based on their 00:26:00.809 --> 00:26:04.190 long history. He did. He was one of the few Palestinian 00:26:04.190 --> 00:26:06.609 intellectuals of his generation willing to say 00:26:06.609 --> 00:26:09.609 that publicly. He recognized that two peoples 00:26:09.609 --> 00:26:11.990 have deep, legitimate historical connections 00:26:11.990 --> 00:26:15.170 to the same small piece of territory. So his 00:26:15.170 --> 00:26:18.819 argument wasn't that Jews should leave. No. His 00:26:18.819 --> 00:26:20.759 argument was that a Jewish claim to the land, 00:26:20.839 --> 00:26:23.579 however valid, cannot be used to cancel out or 00:26:23.579 --> 00:26:26.480 erase the Palestinian claim. He rejected what 00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:29.240 he called religious Zionism or any fundamentalism 00:26:29.240 --> 00:26:31.960 that said, God gave this land only to us, so 00:26:31.960 --> 00:26:34.369 you have to leave. He famously called it a conflict 00:26:34.369 --> 00:26:37.250 between two communities of suffering. Yes. And 00:26:37.250 --> 00:26:39.789 because he held this incredibly complex and, 00:26:39.869 --> 00:26:42.869 frankly, difficult view, passionately supporting 00:26:42.869 --> 00:26:45.210 Palestinian rights but also acknowledging Jewish 00:26:45.210 --> 00:26:48.349 history and trauma, he managed to anger hardliners 00:26:48.349 --> 00:26:50.369 on both sides of the conflict. But his biggest 00:26:50.369 --> 00:26:52.309 political breakup was not with his opponents. 00:26:52.589 --> 00:26:54.849 It was with his own people's leadership. It was, 00:26:54.970 --> 00:26:57.569 specifically with Yasser Arafat and the PLO. 00:26:57.650 --> 00:26:59.710 And said he was a major figure in that world 00:26:59.710 --> 00:27:02.500 for a long time. A huge figure. He was a member 00:27:02.500 --> 00:27:05.119 of the Palestinian National Council, their parliament 00:27:05.119 --> 00:27:09.579 in exile from 1977 to 1991. He helped draft the 00:27:09.579 --> 00:27:12.160 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence. 00:27:12.539 --> 00:27:16.420 He was a major player. But then came 1993. The 00:27:16.420 --> 00:27:18.680 Oslo Accord. The Oslo Accord. I remember the 00:27:18.680 --> 00:27:20.859 photos. Bill Clinton on the White House lawn 00:27:20.859 --> 00:27:23.420 with Yasser Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister 00:27:23.420 --> 00:27:26.160 Yitzhak Rabin. They shook hands. The world thought, 00:27:26.299 --> 00:27:29.200 finally, this is it. Peace. The world popped 00:27:29.200 --> 00:27:32.349 the champagne. leaders got Nobel Peace Prizes, 00:27:32.349 --> 00:27:36.880 and Edward Said resigned from the PNC. Why? Why 00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:39.119 walk away at what seemed like the moment of victory? 00:27:39.380 --> 00:27:41.299 Because he didn't see it as a victory. He saw 00:27:41.299 --> 00:27:43.359 it as a capitulation. While everyone else was 00:27:43.359 --> 00:27:45.420 watching the ceremony, he was doing what he always 00:27:45.420 --> 00:27:47.819 did. He was doing a close reading of the text. 00:27:48.019 --> 00:27:49.700 He read the actual document. He read the fine 00:27:49.700 --> 00:27:51.799 print. And he saw the details that everyone else 00:27:51.799 --> 00:27:54.279 missed. He argued that Arafat was getting a few 00:27:54.279 --> 00:27:56.400 ceremonial titles and control over, you know, 00:27:56.400 --> 00:27:59.319 garbage collection in the West Bank, while Israel 00:27:59.319 --> 00:28:01.579 retained total control of the borders, the water, 00:28:01.640 --> 00:28:04.259 the airspace, and crucially, security. He called 00:28:04.259 --> 00:28:06.869 it a Palestinian Versailles. A surrender treaty. 00:28:07.130 --> 00:28:10.789 Yes. He was particularly furious about the issue 00:28:10.789 --> 00:28:12.970 of the right of return. The right of Palestinian 00:28:12.970 --> 00:28:16.069 refugees from the 1948 war to return to their 00:28:16.069 --> 00:28:18.150 homes. Homes like his own families in Jerusalem. 00:28:18.690 --> 00:28:21.190 He felt that Arafat had completely abandoned 00:28:21.190 --> 00:28:24.250 the refugees in the diaspora in exchange for 00:28:24.250 --> 00:28:26.589 a limited form of self -rule for those in the 00:28:26.589 --> 00:28:29.869 territories. He predicted, with what turned out 00:28:29.869 --> 00:28:32.650 to be chilling accuracy, that the accords would 00:28:32.650 --> 00:28:35.559 not lead to a sovereign state. but to a permanent 00:28:35.559 --> 00:28:38.940 occupation disguised as autonomy. And Arafat 00:28:38.940 --> 00:28:41.000 and the new Palestinian Authority did not take 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:44.119 that criticism well. Not at all. In 1995, the 00:28:44.119 --> 00:28:46.279 Palestinian Authority officially banned Edward 00:28:46.279 --> 00:28:48.920 Said's books in the West Bank and Gaza. That 00:28:48.920 --> 00:28:51.559 is the ultimate bitter irony. The man who did 00:28:51.559 --> 00:28:53.799 more than almost anyone to put Palestine on the 00:28:53.799 --> 00:28:56.609 global intellectual map. get censored by the 00:28:56.609 --> 00:28:58.730 very government he fought for. It proves his 00:28:58.730 --> 00:29:00.369 point about the intellectual's role, doesn't 00:29:00.369 --> 00:29:02.369 it? You can't serve the government and the truth 00:29:02.369 --> 00:29:04.769 at the same time. Eventually, you have to choose. 00:29:04.970 --> 00:29:07.289 Did they ever lift the ban? They did, interestingly, 00:29:07.569 --> 00:29:11.170 in 2000, after Arafat rejected the terms offered 00:29:11.170 --> 00:29:13.650 at the Camp David summit. Said praised him for 00:29:13.650 --> 00:29:16.250 it, and his books were unbanned. But the fundamental 00:29:16.250 --> 00:29:18.869 rift remained, and his own political thinking 00:29:18.869 --> 00:29:21.529 continued to shift. How so? By the late 90s, 00:29:21.529 --> 00:29:23.369 he had completely given up on the two -state 00:29:23.369 --> 00:29:25.690 solution. Really? But that's still the standard 00:29:25.690 --> 00:29:27.990 diplomatic line for almost everyone today. He 00:29:27.990 --> 00:29:30.410 felt it was geographically and politically impossible 00:29:30.410 --> 00:29:32.970 because of the sheer number of Israeli settlements 00:29:32.970 --> 00:29:35.150 built on land that was supposed to be part of 00:29:35.150 --> 00:29:38.089 a Palestinian state. So he began arguing for 00:29:38.089 --> 00:29:41.910 a binational one state solution. One state for 00:29:41.910 --> 00:29:44.569 two people. One secular democratic state for 00:29:44.569 --> 00:29:47.269 two peoples. Equal rights, one vote per person. 00:29:47.430 --> 00:29:50.799 No Jewish state, no Islamic state. a state for 00:29:50.799 --> 00:29:53.160 all of its citizens. Which sounds idealistic 00:29:53.160 --> 00:29:55.059 and wonderful, but given the level of hatred 00:29:55.059 --> 00:29:57.500 and violence on both sides, it seems incredibly 00:29:57.500 --> 00:29:59.819 difficult to implement. Sedd would argue that 00:29:59.819 --> 00:30:01.920 partition had already been tried and had failed 00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:04.240 miserably, so trying to find a way to live together 00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:06.700 was the only moral and practical option remaining. 00:30:07.480 --> 00:30:09.940 But as activism wasn't always just writing essays, 00:30:10.119 --> 00:30:13.420 sometimes it got physical, or at least photographic. 00:30:13.480 --> 00:30:15.960 We have to talk about the stone. Oh, boy. The 00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:18.000 photo that was heard around the world. So this 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:20.980 set the scene for us. It's July of 2000. Sed 00:30:20.980 --> 00:30:23.940 is visiting southern Lebanon. The Israeli army 00:30:23.940 --> 00:30:26.140 had just withdrawn from the area, ending an 18 00:30:26.140 --> 00:30:28.700 -year occupation. There was a celebratory mood. 00:30:29.019 --> 00:30:31.880 Sed goes to the border, the so -called blue line 00:30:31.880 --> 00:30:35.019 that separates Lebanon and Israel. And he's photographed. 00:30:35.119 --> 00:30:37.119 He's winding up like a baseball pitcher, and 00:30:37.119 --> 00:30:39.440 he throws a stone across the border toward the 00:30:39.440 --> 00:30:42.480 Israeli side. And the media went berserk. Utterly 00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:45.000 berserk. Commentary magazine ran a piece with 00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:47.970 the... headline, The Professor of Terror, the 00:30:47.970 --> 00:30:50.809 Freud Society in Austria canceled a lecture he 00:30:50.809 --> 00:30:53.490 was booked to give. It was presented as definitive 00:30:53.490 --> 00:30:55.890 proof that underneath the tweed jacket and the 00:30:55.890 --> 00:30:58.950 intellectual jargon, he was just a violent extremist. 00:30:59.029 --> 00:31:01.789 But what was Sed's explanation for it? He called 00:31:01.789 --> 00:31:04.599 it a symbolic gesture. He said he was with his 00:31:04.599 --> 00:31:06.819 family, it was a moment of joy, and he threw 00:31:06.819 --> 00:31:09.059 a pebble in the direction of an empty guardhouse 00:31:09.059 --> 00:31:11.940 to celebrate the end of the occupation. He compared 00:31:11.940 --> 00:31:14.960 it to a contest of skill with his son to see 00:31:14.960 --> 00:31:17.720 who could throw farther. A contest of skill sounds 00:31:17.720 --> 00:31:20.099 a little bit, well, it sounds a bit like spin. 00:31:20.380 --> 00:31:22.299 It does sound a little manufactured, I agree. 00:31:22.539 --> 00:31:25.339 But independent witnesses, including journalists 00:31:25.339 --> 00:31:27.839 who were there, confirmed there was no one on 00:31:27.839 --> 00:31:30.240 the other side. He wasn't aiming at a soldier, 00:31:30.359 --> 00:31:33.400 it was an act of protest, of symbolism. Still, 00:31:33.559 --> 00:31:35.819 Columbia University had to step in. What does 00:31:35.819 --> 00:31:38.660 his employer say? They investigated and ultimately 00:31:38.660 --> 00:31:40.839 issued a statement saying that while his actions 00:31:40.839 --> 00:31:43.539 were incautious, they were protected as a form 00:31:43.539 --> 00:31:46.039 of free expression. They defended his academic 00:31:46.039 --> 00:31:48.420 freedom. It's amazing to think that a professor 00:31:48.420 --> 00:31:50.559 of literature could generate that much political 00:31:50.559 --> 00:31:53.910 heat. But then again, the FBI clearly thought 00:31:53.910 --> 00:31:56.029 he was a person of interest. This is one of the 00:31:56.029 --> 00:31:58.529 most fascinating details to emerge after his 00:31:58.529 --> 00:32:01.269 death. The FBI had a file on him and it started 00:32:01.269 --> 00:32:04.130 all the way back in 1971. They tracked him for 00:32:04.130 --> 00:32:06.089 decades. What were they looking for? Were they 00:32:06.089 --> 00:32:08.630 looking for bomb plots or secret meetings? This 00:32:08.630 --> 00:32:10.720 is the incredible part. They were looking at 00:32:10.720 --> 00:32:13.400 his reading lists. The declassified files show 00:32:13.400 --> 00:32:16.299 that FBI agents were actually reading his books 00:32:16.299 --> 00:32:18.880 and articles, reading Orientalism and writing 00:32:18.880 --> 00:32:21.859 reports, trying to decipher if his theories on 00:32:21.859 --> 00:32:24.559 narrative and imperialism constituted a threat 00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:26.940 to U .S. national security. That is absolutely 00:32:26.940 --> 00:32:31.539 wild. You have G -men in Hoover's FBI trying 00:32:31.539 --> 00:32:34.680 to parse post -structuralist theory to find the 00:32:34.680 --> 00:32:37.609 treason. It sounds absurd, but in a strange way, 00:32:37.690 --> 00:32:40.450 it completely validates Said's whole thesis. 00:32:40.789 --> 00:32:43.049 The government understood that ideas are power. 00:32:43.309 --> 00:32:45.170 They understood that challenging the fundamental 00:32:45.170 --> 00:32:47.329 narrative of Western innocence and superiority 00:32:47.329 --> 00:32:50.250 is a threat to the establishment. They were right 00:32:50.250 --> 00:32:52.369 to be worried, in a way. He was undermining their 00:32:52.369 --> 00:32:54.869 moral authority with every book he wrote. So 00:32:54.869 --> 00:32:56.789 we have the scholar, the activist, the political 00:32:56.789 --> 00:32:59.740 dissident, the target of surveillance. But we 00:32:59.740 --> 00:33:02.200 are missing a huge piece of the puzzle, the piece 00:33:02.200 --> 00:33:04.599 that in some ways ties it all together, the thing 00:33:04.599 --> 00:33:07.880 that kept him sane. Music. The music. Yes. And 00:33:07.880 --> 00:33:10.079 this isn't just a side hobby. You cannot understand 00:33:10.079 --> 00:33:12.480 Edward's side without understanding that he was 00:33:12.480 --> 00:33:15.400 a concert pianist level musician. He practiced 00:33:15.400 --> 00:33:18.000 for hours every single day of his adult life. 00:33:18.200 --> 00:33:21.339 He wrote brilliant music criticism for The Nation 00:33:21.339 --> 00:33:24.640 magazine. He wrote four books on music. And this 00:33:24.640 --> 00:33:26.240 connects all the way back to that word we used 00:33:26.240 --> 00:33:28.519 earlier when we talked about his literary criticism. 00:33:29.100 --> 00:33:32.200 counterpoint. Exactly. In Western classical music, 00:33:32.359 --> 00:33:35.039 think of a Bach fugue or a Beethoven symphony 00:33:35.039 --> 00:33:37.700 counterpoint is the art of combining different 00:33:37.700 --> 00:33:40.500 independent melodic lines. They each have their 00:33:40.500 --> 00:33:42.799 own integrity. They might even be dissonant for 00:33:42.799 --> 00:33:45.279 a moment, but they weave together to create a 00:33:45.279 --> 00:33:48.240 complex, unified and beautiful whole. They don't 00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:50.799 erase or destroy each other. And he applied this 00:33:50.799 --> 00:33:53.400 musical idea to politics and culture. He did 00:33:53.400 --> 00:33:56.000 profoundly. He believed that culture shouldn't 00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:59.109 be. silos clashing with each other in a zero 00:33:59.109 --> 00:34:01.910 -sum game. They should be contrapuntal. The Israeli 00:34:01.910 --> 00:34:04.089 narrative and the Palestinian narrative are two 00:34:04.089 --> 00:34:06.630 distinct melodies. They should exist in the same 00:34:06.630 --> 00:34:09.710 space, interacting, challenging each other, but 00:34:09.710 --> 00:34:11.670 ultimately sharing the land, creating a more 00:34:11.670 --> 00:34:14.110 complex harmony. He didn't want one voice to 00:34:14.110 --> 00:34:16.530 drown out the other. He wanted a polyphony. A 00:34:16.530 --> 00:34:19.269 polyphony. That's the perfect word. And he didn't 00:34:19.269 --> 00:34:21.849 just write about this idea. He built it. He made 00:34:21.849 --> 00:34:24.840 it real. The West Eastern Divan Orchestra. one 00:34:24.840 --> 00:34:27.300 of the most beautiful and hopeful cultural projects 00:34:27.300 --> 00:34:30.219 of the late 20th century. He co -founded it in 00:34:30.219 --> 00:34:33.730 1999 with his best friend, Daniel Barenboim. 00:34:33.849 --> 00:34:35.869 Barenboim, the celebrated Israeli conductor and 00:34:35.869 --> 00:34:38.929 pianist. Yes. An Israeli Jew and a Palestinian 00:34:38.929 --> 00:34:41.789 Arab, two giants in their fields, best friends. 00:34:42.190 --> 00:34:44.949 They decided to create an orchestra made up of 00:34:44.949 --> 00:34:47.909 young musicians from Israel, Palestine, Syria, 00:34:48.210 --> 00:34:51.250 Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. Kids who were literally 00:34:51.250 --> 00:34:53.889 raised from birth to hate and fear each other. 00:34:54.030 --> 00:34:55.630 And they put them in a room together in Seville, 00:34:55.730 --> 00:34:57.989 Spain. They gave them stands and sheet music. 00:34:58.150 --> 00:35:00.949 Made them play Beethoven. And Wagner. And Brahms. 00:35:00.989 --> 00:35:02.710 And it wasn't about holding hands and singing 00:35:02.710 --> 00:35:05.570 Kumbaya. It was about intense professional discipline. 00:35:05.809 --> 00:35:07.630 What do you mean? In an orchestra, you have to 00:35:07.630 --> 00:35:09.670 listen to the other player to make the music 00:35:09.670 --> 00:35:13.150 work. It's a non -negotiable requirement. If 00:35:13.150 --> 00:35:15.550 the Israeli O -Boys doesn't listen to the Syrian 00:35:15.550 --> 00:35:18.300 flutist. The chord is out of tune. The symphony 00:35:18.300 --> 00:35:21.539 falls apart. It was a practical, grueling workshop 00:35:21.539 --> 00:35:24.360 in coexistence. A model for the world he wanted 00:35:24.360 --> 00:35:27.019 to see. It's his most tangible living legacy, 00:35:27.239 --> 00:35:29.119 especially because he was doing all of this, 00:35:29.139 --> 00:35:32.679 his most intense work, while he was dying. That's 00:35:32.679 --> 00:35:35.179 the tragic backdrop to his most productive years, 00:35:35.320 --> 00:35:38.579 isn't it? It is. In 1991, he was diagnosed with 00:35:38.579 --> 00:35:41.599 chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He lived with it, 00:35:41.619 --> 00:35:44.059 fighting it, for 12 years. And he didn't slow 00:35:44.059 --> 00:35:47.300 down. He sped up. He felt the deadline. He wrote 00:35:47.300 --> 00:35:50.320 his beautiful haunting memoir out of place while 00:35:50.320 --> 00:35:52.739 he was undergoing chemotherapy treatments. He 00:35:52.739 --> 00:35:55.019 was writing scathing critiques of the U .S. invasion 00:35:55.019 --> 00:35:58.780 of Iraq in 2003 from his hospital bed. Just months 00:35:58.780 --> 00:36:00.639 before the end, he published an essay called 00:36:00.639 --> 00:36:03.380 Resources of Hope. He passed away on September 00:36:03.380 --> 00:36:06.880 24, 2003, in New York. And he was buried in a 00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:10.059 Protestant cemetery in Lebanon. Not in Jerusalem, 00:36:10.300 --> 00:36:12.199 which he could never return to, but in the region. 00:36:12.730 --> 00:36:15.769 a final return to the East, even if he remained 00:36:15.769 --> 00:36:18.989 in some ways an outsider to the very end. So 00:36:18.989 --> 00:36:21.389 looking back at this massive, complicated life, 00:36:21.630 --> 00:36:25.090 what is the final verdict? Did he win? I mean, 00:36:25.110 --> 00:36:27.570 the Middle East is still in chaos. The othering 00:36:27.570 --> 00:36:29.769 of different groups seems worse than ever in 00:36:29.769 --> 00:36:31.550 some ways. In terms of day -to -day politics, 00:36:31.809 --> 00:36:34.989 he died a frustrated and often disappointed man. 00:36:35.409 --> 00:36:37.650 The situation in Palestine got worse after his 00:36:37.650 --> 00:36:39.869 death, not better. But in the world of ideas, 00:36:40.170 --> 00:36:43.260 he won. He absolutely won. You cannot uncork 00:36:43.260 --> 00:36:45.159 the bottle he opened. The ideas are out there. 00:36:45.219 --> 00:36:47.519 They're everywhere. The term Orientalism is now 00:36:47.519 --> 00:36:50.179 a standard concept in our language. We are, as 00:36:50.179 --> 00:36:52.960 a culture, so much more aware of how media and 00:36:52.960 --> 00:36:55.340 scholarship can shape our view of foreign cultures. 00:36:55.619 --> 00:36:57.739 But there is a danger in his legacy, too, isn't 00:36:57.739 --> 00:36:59.739 there? The culture of complaint that Bernard 00:36:59.739 --> 00:37:01.940 Lewis warned about. There is, and it's a real 00:37:01.940 --> 00:37:05.679 one. Sometimes people misuse Saeed's ideas as 00:37:05.679 --> 00:37:08.900 a blunt instrument to shut down any and all legitimate 00:37:08.900 --> 00:37:12.840 criticism. They scream, Orientalism. Any time 00:37:12.840 --> 00:37:15.360 a Westerner criticizes a non -Western government 00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:17.300 or culture, which Saeed's himself would have 00:37:17.300 --> 00:37:20.159 hated, he would have despised it. He was a fierce 00:37:20.159 --> 00:37:22.559 critic of everyone, especially Arab dictators 00:37:22.559 --> 00:37:25.059 and corrupt regimes. He didn't want immunity 00:37:25.059 --> 00:37:27.480 from criticism for the East. He wanted equality. 00:37:27.710 --> 00:37:30.670 equality of analysis. He wanted the same critical 00:37:30.670 --> 00:37:32.849 standards applied to everyone. So after this 00:37:32.849 --> 00:37:35.449 whole deep dive, what does this leave us, you 00:37:35.449 --> 00:37:38.480 and me and everyone listening? with today? I 00:37:38.480 --> 00:37:40.039 think it leaves us with a profound challenge. 00:37:40.340 --> 00:37:42.139 There's a concept developed by the historian 00:37:42.139 --> 00:37:44.440 Lorenzo Camel, which builds directly on Seed's 00:37:44.440 --> 00:37:47.019 work. It's called biblical Orientalism. Biblical 00:37:47.019 --> 00:37:49.400 Orientalism. What's that? It's the idea that 00:37:49.400 --> 00:37:52.159 we continue this tradition by simplifying complex 00:37:52.159 --> 00:37:54.800 peoples and political situations into ancient 00:37:54.800 --> 00:37:57.019 religious caricatures to make them easier to 00:37:57.019 --> 00:37:59.719 digest. We turn modern political actors into 00:37:59.719 --> 00:38:02.099 biblical figures. We see this every single time 00:38:02.099 --> 00:38:05.409 we turn on the news. Every single day. And Said's 00:38:05.409 --> 00:38:08.449 final enduring lesson is to resist that simplification 00:38:08.449 --> 00:38:11.710 at all costs. He asks us to look at the other, 00:38:11.809 --> 00:38:14.949 whether that's a Palestinian, an Israeli, a rural 00:38:14.949 --> 00:38:17.849 American voter, a Chinese factory worker, whoever 00:38:17.849 --> 00:38:21.230 it is for you, and refuse to see them as a symbol. 00:38:21.849 --> 00:38:24.030 Refuse to see them as a problem to be solved 00:38:24.030 --> 00:38:27.050 or a type to be categorized. See them contrapuntally, 00:38:27.110 --> 00:38:30.210 as another equally valid melody in the song. 00:38:30.409 --> 00:38:33.690 Precisely. And so if we accept Said's fundamental 00:38:33.690 --> 00:38:36.909 premise that we construct the other through stories 00:38:36.909 --> 00:38:39.329 and art to make ourselves feel superior or safer, 00:38:39.550 --> 00:38:41.289 the question we have to ask ourselves tonight 00:38:41.289 --> 00:38:43.869 is a deeply uncomfortable one. What is that question? 00:38:44.110 --> 00:38:46.269 Who is your Orient today? Who is the group of 00:38:46.269 --> 00:38:48.969 people that you have decided is irrational, backward, 00:38:49.190 --> 00:38:51.269 and dangerous so that you can feel rational, 00:38:51.409 --> 00:38:53.829 modern, and safe? Because whoever they are, you're 00:38:53.829 --> 00:38:55.769 probably wrong about them. That is a question 00:38:55.769 --> 00:38:57.889 that requires a lot more than an hour to answer, 00:38:57.989 --> 00:39:00.210 but it's exactly the right one to end on. Indeed 00:39:00.210 --> 00:39:02.889 it is. Thank you for listening to The Deep Dive. 00:39:02.989 --> 00:39:05.969 Keep reading and keep questioning. And keep listening 00:39:05.969 --> 00:39:06.769 for The Counterpoint.