Mapping Edward Said: Geography, Identity, and the Politics of Location

Abstract

The recent postmodern turn and concomitant reconceptualization of space in social theory have encouraged numerous investigators, cultural theorists especially, to augment, even to replace, material with metaphorical space; one whereby ‘geographical imaginations’ play constitutive roles in space-society relationships. A leading contributor has been Edward Said, who aims at refashioning spatial sensibilities not only in traditional ‘geographic’ terms but in a broader epistemological sense. Committed to transgressing established borders, Said invites us to imagine new topographies, in which units heretofore deemed separate—cultures, professions, realms of experience—become inescapably hybrid and interpenetrating. At the same time, Said's geography can be as opaque as it is suggestive—betraying an eclectic form often left unstituatrd vis-à-vis material practices. I invoke Aijaz Ahmad's work to situate Said's, tracing its affiliations to his trajectories as diasporan intellectual, Palestinian activist, and disciple of European High Philology. Ahmad thereby renders a portrait which is both enabling and self-cancelling, in which Said's generosity, complexity—and untenability—inhere from an unwillingness to vacate any spaces he has occupied; seeking instead to span often irreconcilable positions. Ahmad's stringency, however, fails to acknowledge possibilities inherent in Said's eclecticism; particularly the commitment to build bridges, oppose orthodox rigidities, and gain enrichment from that which one opposes. In this light, I invoke David Harvey's work as emblematic of a growing oeuvre that does not deny postmodernism its radical potential, but instead situates it within a revamped materialism designed to reconnect the Left. Harvey's work represents a serious—though not unproblematic—attempt to rework modernity, viewed here as an unfinished project capable of galvanizing new and varied energies.