Empire and global public intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an international relations theorist

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 117-133

  Biswas, Shampa ^a  

^a WHITMAN COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 39049089948     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298070360010801     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. Following conventional usage, when I use the phrase 'International Relations' (with capitalised first initials) or the acronym IR, I am referring to the discipline that studies international relations.
2. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), 295.
3. See Rahul Rao, 'The Empire Writes Back (to Michael Ignatieff)', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 33, No. 1 (2004): 145-66 for a discussion of the emergence of this vast literature advocating empire, with a particular focus on Ignafieff's writings.
4. Rashid Khalidi, 'Iraq and American Empire', New Political Science 28, No. 1 (March 2006): 125-34
5. and his book Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2004).
6. The scope of Orientalism's coverage goes far beyond academic scholarship, covering also literature, travel writing, art and political tracts, but the primary focus of the book is in documenting the emergence and establishment of the academic study of the Orient. Written as a sequel, Culture and Imperialism focuses primarily on the literary (and in one case musical) canon, but there is a sustained discussion on academic scholarship in that book as well.
7. I do not mean to diminish here the attempts of a number of critical IR scholars who have indeed attempted such projects. Phillip Darby's The Fiction of Imperialism: Reading between International Relations and Postcolonialism (London: Cassell, 1998) and Philip Darby (ed.), Postcolonizing the International: Working to Change the Way We Are (Honolulu: University of Hawa'i Press, 2006)
8. Geeta Chowdhry and Sheila Nair (eds), Power, Postcolonialism, and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender, and Class (New York: Routldege, 2002)
9. and Naeem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference (New York: Routledge, 2004) have all attempted, in different ways, to theorise how the colonial/imperial becomes transmuted into the international. The point I am making is that there simply has not been the kind of collective stock-taking and intellectual revamping of the discipline as has happened elsewhere. I also do not mean to suggest that the disciplines mentioned approvingly above have been completely or even adequately reconfigured in a progressive direction.
10. Stanley Hoffman, 'An American Social Science: International Relations', Daedalus 106, No. 3 (1977).
11. My focus in this article is largely on the US academy, but many of the points raised apply to the study of global politics in other national contexts as well. It may be worth pointing out here that the larger argument that I am trying to make has to do with denationalising the study of global politics.
12. Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York: First Vintage Books, 1996).
13. This began in the immediate aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001 with the Lynn Cheney-Joe Lieberman committee and continued with the influential efforts of David Horowitz and his Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the Academic Bill of Rights campaign, and the appointment by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings of a Commission on Higher Education, which discussed a proposal for eliminating the current system of accreditation by independent, regional bodies and instituting a National Accreditation Foundation created by Congress and the President. (See Alan Jones, http//insidehighered.com/view/2006/06/16/ jones.)
14. For example, Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institute, publishing house Encounter Books, etc.
15. In a recent article in the New York Times on the ascending pay packages of University Presidents, Roger Bowen, General Secretary of the University Association of American Professors, critiqued the trend of academic institutions increasingly resembling corporations. In his words, 'Presidents now are C.E.O.'s ... [y]ou no longer have treasurers, you have chief financial officers; you no longer have deans, you have chief academic officers. Faculty play the role of labor, students play the role of customers' leading to a 'shift in emphasis from educational achievement to financial management' (Jonathan D. Glater, 'Pay Packages for Presidents Rise at Public Colleges', The New York Times, 20 November 2006).
16. Herbert Reid, 'Democratic Theory and the Public Sphere Project', New Political Science 23, No. 4, 2001.
17. Part of this project involves the recuperation of the word 'intellectual', as against the more commonly used terms 'expert', 'academic', 'professional', 'critic', a word that has fallen into considerable disrepute, especially in the US context. ('American Intellectuals and Middle East Politics', in Power, Politics, and Culture, ed. Gauri Viswanathan (New York: First Vintage books, 2001), 332-3).
18. Rashid Khalidi argues that Said's own major contribution as a public intellectual has been to the Palestinian cause speaking both to US and Arab audiences (Rashid I. Khalidi, 'Edward W. Said and the American Public Sphere: Speaking Truth to Power', in Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power, ed. Paul A. Bové (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).
19. Edward W. Said, 'The Return to Philology', in Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 71.
20. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: First Vintage Books, 1994), 303.
21. Edward Said, 'Professionals and Amateurs', in Representations of the Intellectual, 82, 73-82.
22. This, he claims, is especially a problem in the US where 'policy experts' hold complete sway in the public domain ('The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals', in Humanism and Democratic Criticism, 124-5). In the chapter 'The Return to Philology', he mounts a serious criticism of the 'specialized jargon' (in the humanities) as antidemocratic and anti-intellectual and which he claims simply substitute another pre-packaged idiom for the sound-bite analysis of contemporary print and visual media (see 71-4). See also the chapter 'Challenging Orthodoxy and Authority', in Culture and Imperialism (especially 320-2) for a critique of academic sub-specialisations and their tendency to depoliticise theory.
23. In the "Changing Bases of Humanistic Study and Practice" in Humanism and Democratic Criticism, he discusses in particular the influence of Cold War imperatives (often via the CIA) on the Humanities in the US.
24. These include in the first period scholars such Samuel Huntington, Seymour Lipset, Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba (modernisation theorists); and organisations such as the Center for International Studies (CENIS) at MIT (created by CIA) that involved Daniel Lerner and W.W. Rostow, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) at MIT (under the direction of the Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff), etc. In the second period, these included the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which created the International Forum for Democratic Studies and the Journal of Democracy and involved scholars such as Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, Adam Przeworski, Samuel Hungtington, Seymour Lipset; and organised conferences bringing together scholars, US foreign policy-makers and members of the 'moderate' opposition in the third world such as Violetta Chamorro and Monica Jiminez. (Christopher I. Clement, 'Organic Intellectuals and the Discourse on Democracy', New Political Science 25, No. 3 (September 2003): 351-64).
25. See in particular the last section of Culture and 'The Intellectuals and the War' in Viswanathan (ed.), Power, 357-67.
26. He includes in this critique a rather severe and long-standing indictment of postmodernists and post-structuralists for their political quietism. See Representations of the Intellectual, 17-18
27. Humanism and Democratic Criticism, 10-11, 19, 66-67, 70,
28. Culture and Imperialism, 303.
29. It needs to be pointed out here that while Said's early debts to Foucault are obvious and self-conscious (in The World, the Text, and the Critic, he even explains why he prefers Foucault to Derrida), his later writings show an increasing impatience with Foucault. (See his comments on this in 'Traveling Theory', in The Edward Said Reader, ed. Mousafa Bayoumi and Adrew Rubin (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), 212-16).
30. The distinction that Robert Cox drew between 'problem-solving' and 'critical' IR theories was also predicated on such a concern for restoring politics to the study of international relations (Robert W. Cox, 'Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory', in Neorealism and its Critics, ed. Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
31. See Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999)
32. and The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).
33. James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development,' Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
34. See also Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). In my view, Karl Polanyi's 1944 classic The Great Transformation is still the definifive statement on the depoliticisation of market economy.
35. Said, 'Professionals and Amateurs', in Representations of the Intellectual, 76, 82-3.
36. Said, 'Europe and its Others: An Arab Perspective', in Power Politics, and Culture, ed. Viswanathan, 385r.
37. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 328.
38. See especially Edward Said, Out of Place: A Memoir (New York: Knopf, 1999).
39. Without diminishing its importance as an 'actual' condition; see also Culture and Imperialism, 332-3 for his acknowledgement of the enormous misery created by much recent migration. I will attend to this point more fully in the next section.
40. Said, 'Intellectual Exile: Expatriates and Marginals', in Representations of the Intellectual; see especially 52-9.
41. Ibid., 52 and 63.
42. It is clear that Edward Said grew increasingly impatient with the 'politics of identity', especially in the later years of his life (Claire Heristchi, 'The Politics of Dispossession, Belonging and Hope: Remembering Edward W. Said,' Alternatives 30 (2005): 251-73).
43. He sees nationalisms, especially in their aggressive versions, as the most virulent expressions of identity politics (and identifies the discourse of 'terrorism' as largely a product of nationalist politics of identity, the word terrorist applied indiscriminately to those who are 'others'; Power, Politics, and Culture, 331), but also attacks the 'academic study of postmodern identifies' that have proliferated into sub-specialities and been depoliticised and tamed as they have been displaced from their empowering worldly contexts into the academy ( Humanism and Democratic Criticism 55; Culture and Imperialism, 320-1).
44. In a 1997-8 interview with Jacqueline Rose ('Returning to Ourselves', in Power, Politics, and Culture, ed. Viswanathan), he articulates his extreme impatience with 'the idea and the whole project of identity', as it was elaborated in the 1960s US and evident as well in the turn to Islam in the Arab world (430-1).
45. Said, 'Holding Nations and Traditions at Bay', in Representations of the Intellectual. In the first two chapters of Humanism and Democratic Criticism, he also debunks the notion of a unified, coherent, homogenous nation, especially in a world of widespread migration and critiques all 'insider' attempts at boundary-drawing, identifying 'nationalism' in the latter chapter as one of the three negative models of history 'whose wake is strewn with ruin, waste, and human suffering unlimited'. (50; the other two are religious enthusiasm and identarian exclusivism.)
46. Gerard Holden, 'The Politer Kingdoms of the Globe: Context and Comparison in the Intellectual History of IR', Global Society 15, No. 1 (2001): 27-51.
47. Said, Culture and Imperialism, xxiii.
48. Said, 'Holding Nations and Traditions at Bay', in Representations of the Intellectual, 29-32
49. 'Speaking Truth to Power', in Representations of the Intellectual, 92-8.
50. See also 'The Changing Bases of Humanistic Study and Practice', in Humanism and Democratic Criticism.
51. Said, 'Holding Nations and Traditions at Bay', in Representations of the Intellectual, 44; my italics.
52. See Representations of the Intellectual, 40-5.
53. He has also noted on many occasions the failures of nationalist formations in the Arab world as well as the larger postcolonial world (e.g. Culture and Imperialism, 299 and 307;
54. and interview with 'Europe and its Others: An Arab Perspective', in Power, Politics, and Culture, ed. Viswanathan, 385-93.)
55. Said, 'American Ascendancy: The Public Space at War', in Culture and Imperialism; and Humanism and Democratic Criticism, 74, 79. 135.
56. Said, 'Intellectuals and Exiles: Expatriates and Marginals', in Representations of the Intellectual, 60.
57. It also provides, he says, an experience of displacement which makes it possible to be 'liberated from the usual career, in which "doing well" and following in time-honored footsteps are the main milestones, thus giving the scholar a certain kind of 'freedom to discover' (Said, 'Intellectuals and Exiles: Expatriates and Marginals', in Representations of the Intellectual, 60-2.)
58. Said, 'Holding Nations and Traditions at Bay', in Representations of the Intellectual, 32-3.
59. See also 'Gods That Always Fail', in Representations of the Intellectual.
60. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 335.
61. Aamir Mufti, 'Auerbach in Istanbul: Edward Said, Secular Criticism, and the Question of Minority Culture', in Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power, ed. Paul A. Bové (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 231. In his wonderful book, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper & Row, 1984) Tzvetan Todorov also invokes this same quote in developing his own comparativist approach to global difference. In the next section, I will say more on Said's attention to context or a globality that is concrete and grounded.
62. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 311.
63. See in this context his comments on 'strategic essentialism' ('American Intellectuals and Middle East Politics', in Power, Politics, and Culture, ed. Viswanathan, 340-1).
64. Indeed, his falling out with the PLO had at least partly to do with the insularity of its leadership. Recognising the pitfalls of nationalist orientations, he also famously said that he would be the first critic of an independent Palestinian nation-state.
65. 'American Intellectuals and Middle East Politics', in Power, Politics, and Culture, ed. Viswanathan, 338.
66. Ibid., 338, my italics.
67. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, 48.
68. Akeel Bilgrami, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, x, emphasis in original. This seems to be the ethical direction that Judith Butler's recent work seems to have taken as well.
69. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, 7.
70. Ibid., 138 (my italics).
71. 'Criticism and the Art of Politics', in Power, Politics, and Culture, ed. Viswanathan, 132.
72. Mufti, 'Auerbach in Istanbul', 38.
73. Aamir Mufti, 'Global Comparativism', in Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation, ed. Homi Bhabha and W.J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 122, italics in original.
74. Mufti, 'Global Comparativism', 244.
75. While Orientalism has been critiqued for the Eurocentricity of its coverage, Mufti is correct to emphasise the role it played in creating the ground for a non-repressive study of other cultures (Mufti, Ibid., 118). Mufti points out that Said developed his concept of contrapuntality, which I turn to very shortly, as a response to that critique of Orientalism. In this same essay, Mufti also makes the case for instituting requirements for the study of non-Western languages and literatures in departments of Comparative Literature as a way of de-centring Eurocentrism. I believe there are important lessons here as well for undergraduate and graduate training in the discipline of IR.
76. Said, 'Representation of the Intellectual', in Representations of the Intellectual, 11.
77. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, 52-3, 76.
78. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 194.
79. Timothy Brennan makes the important point that Said devised contrapuntal criticism as an alternative to hybridity, 'conjuring images more of independently directed harmonizations and contacts than of mixture and mutual complicity' (Timothy Brennan, 'Resolution', in Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation, ed. Homi Bhabha and W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 48.) While hybridity has found a more hospitable home in critical IR, and much of Said's own analysis shows a clear sympathy with the concept, contrapuntality offers in my view a much clearer approach to understanding global interactions, exchanges, processes and, most importantly, power.
80. Mufti, 'Global Comparativism', 110-11.
81. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 32.
82. Ibid., 18.
83. Discussing the analogical significance of music for the conceptual development of contrapuntality, W. J. T. Mitchell points to Said's contrapuntal readings of Israeli and Palestinian histories that he once compared to a 'tragic symphony' (W. J. T. Mitchell. 'Secular Divination: Edward Said's Humanism', in Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation, ed. Bhabha and Mitchell, 104-5).
84. I believe that it may be possible to see Said's eventual rejection of a two-state solution for that conflict as a genuine embracing of the political implications of the principle of contrapuntality. See Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004) for a scholarly attempt to read the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars) contrapuntally.
85. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 51; italics in text.
86. To understand what it takes to cultivate such a habit of reading contrapuntally, see Said's comments on the hospitality and generosity of spirit needed to read 'philologically in a worldly and integrative, as distinct from separating or partitioning, mode and, at the same time, to offer resistance to the great reductive and vulgarizing us-versus-them thought patterns of our time' (50) in his discussions of Auerbach in 'The Return to Philology', in Humanism and Democratic Criticism.
87. See Timothy Mitchell, 'The Stage of Modernity', in Questions of Modernity, ed. Timothy Mitchell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
88. Said, Culture and Imperialism, xx.
89. See Said's comments on the superficiality of Huntingtonian formulations of culture in Humanism and Democratic Criticism (27-8, 52). See also 'The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations' (videorecording): Professor Edward Said in lecture/MEF; executive producer and director, Sut Jhally.
90. Mitchell in Edward Said, ed. Bhabha and Mitchell, 103.