Edward Said and the Dialectic of the “Imperialized” Intellectual

Abstract

This essay responds to Timothy Brennan’s recent biography of Edward Said by delving into Said’s relation to Frantz Fanon, who became an important influence in the second half of his career. Particularly, it considers whether Said’s readings and misreadings of Fanon signal a wider break with the latter’s notion of the “colonized intellectual.” Said, it emerges is more an “imperialized” intellectual, whose post-nationalist anti-imperialism is an attempt to sustain the Marxist anticolonial legacy in an era of neo-imperial consolidation. The article also considers how Said’s anti-imperialism is shaped by the idiosyncrasies and unique challenges of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle.