Places of Mind, Occupied Lands: Edward Said and Philology

Abstract

In Beginnings (1975a) Edward Said set out to revamp Comparative Literature—not in the spirit of creating a new theory but in homage to a literary past. Specifically, 19th- and early 20th-century European philologists like Edward Lane, Ernest Renan, and Raymond Schwab—the stars of Orientalism (1978)—demonstrated the literary methods and styles that allowed critics to play a decisive public and political role. Prevalent arguments over Said's Palestinian identity miss the more crucial aspect of his work, which insistently elaborated how to write and speak as a public person: a prolonged inquiry into the mechanics of being so. Falling neatly between two generations of European emigres to the United States (one philological, the other deconstructive), Said rejected 1980s critical trends, finding in deconstruction an obscure and gullible system. Theory represented an unwitting echo of the worst aspects of 19th-century philology (Renan's textual science). By contrast, it was the humanism of writers like Schw...