Edward W. Said's Presidency

Abstract

There are times when even decision about whether to renew membership in large professional organization turns into question of conscience. With the scheduled accession of Edward W. Said to the presidency of the Modem Language Association on 1 January 1999, regret that must resign from the association as of 31 December 1998. The president of the MLA publicly and officially represents the organization. believe that such representative should have displayed regularly only distinction in critical scholarship but also dignity in the public treatment of others. Edward professional work has extensively influenced several fields of literary study. But his public assaults against individuals whose views reasonably differ from his own deeply violate fundamental values repeatedly professed by the MLA. At times such assaults have passed beyond the forms of disparagement that often compromise contemporary academic disputes. They have passed into acts of aggressive contempt and blatant dehumanization. The variety of disturbing cases includes an exchange many years ago with several members of the MLA (An Exchange on Edward Said and Difference, Critical Inquirv 15 [1989]: 611-46). In detailed article, one scholar argued that greater accuracy and breadth of information would noticeably revise claims about the Middle East (Robert J. Griffin, Ideology and Misrepresentation: A Response to Edward Said). In his reply (Response), Said tried to discredit alternately the author's sanity, his scholarship, and his humanity. His solemn idiocies, cried Said, inhabit semideranged world entirely his own. This scholar-if that is what he is, scoffed Saidis only, to the best of my knowledge, the author of two (or is it three?) below-average articles on Dr. Johnson. I surmise, Said postured, that is actually 'Griffin,' an ideological simulacrum; it could be asked he is being. Perhaps even more than the original critique, reaction exposed some of the stark deficiencies of his own claims, including his profession to speak for the cause of humane behavior. In the same exchange, when two other members of the MLA appealed for dialogue (Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, Toward Dialogue with Edward Said), Said replied with modified form of derision. When another scholar (Geoffrey Hartman) later protested effort to dehumanize the original critic, Said referred again to his doubt about whether Robert Griffin was human being. As for Hartman's perspective, Said sought to degrade it as patronizing and hypocritical self-congratulation that was tasteless and jejune but not surprising (Editorial Note, Critical Inquiry 16 [1989]: 199-200). Such assaults of course are no less offensive when applied to individuals outside the MLA, such as prominent intellectual (Michael Walzer) whom Said tried to demean as small frightened man (Walzer and Said, Exchange: 'Exodus and Revolution,' Grand Street 5 [1986]: 246-59). The attacks repeatedly flaunt the twists of mind that underlie them. Unlike the serious opponent he had made him up to be, Said sneered, the 'real' was good deal worse than the fiction created. But Said concealed the fact that he himself fabricated this supposedly 'real' Walzer. He clearly venerates nasty wave of Ayatollahs, exploded Said, who accused him of supporting several attitudes toward Israel opposed by Walzer himself. A figure of characteristic idiocy, concluded Said. It should be stressed that Edward Said does confine his insults to Jewish intellectuals with whom he disagrees. He has scorned Fouad Ajami as a mediocre scholar; Samir al-Khalil broadly seems quite incapable of argument, scholarship, or rational exchange; Afsaneh Najmabadi expresses wacky or puerile views (Najmabadi, Said's War on the Intellectuals, with reply, Middle East Report Nov.-Dec. 1991: 2+). Still, he reserves special aspersions for individuals he attempts to discredit by association with Israel. He has concocted the accusation that renowned scholar (Bernard Lewis) seems to advocate expelling Palestinian Arabs (Said and Lewis, in Orientalism: An Exchange, New York Review of Books 12 Aug. 1982: 44-48). The more reflective the critique of his views, the more enraged his reaction. When confronted with his insults (like those quoted in this letter), he cries that his own integrity is being impugned. The repugnant language of the incoming spokesman of the Modem Language Association cannot be excused by the claim that the cause for which he speaks grants him special license for abuse. Others with urgent causes of their own have persisted in seeking language of civil exchange under severely trying conditions. Nor is the need for such language merely point of etiquette; it is principle of ethics, the obligation to engage even adversaries as beings with capacity for understanding. Yet to my knowledge Edward Said has never repudiated the derogatory expressions to which have referred. Will he inform his colleagues in the MLA if he still endorses those expressions? To choose to remain in professional organization, of course, does necessarily imply agreeing with every position taken by its members or its president. In this case,