Said’s Palestinian partisanship earned him assassination threats and real physical risk
Evidence
For Edward Said is not only a cultural critic, he is also a Palestinian. Much that is splendid in his work is connected with the fact that he has tried to do honour to that origin; and he has done so against all odds, to the full extent of his capacity, by stepping outside the boundaries of his academic discipline and original intellectual formation, under no compulsion of profession or fame, in no pursuit of personal gain – in fact, at frightening risk to himself. I shall come later to what all this has meant for his published work, but it is worth remarking that his eloquent and irrepressible partisanship with his national cause has earned him assassination threats, from quarters which are known to have assassinated a great many other patriotic Palestinians. Said has decided to live with such risks, and much honour – a very rare kind of honour – attaches to that decision. How, then, does one register one’s many disagreements from within this solidarity? For some years I have thought that one simply could not do so, that dissenting speech would probably be a betrayal of that solidarity. More recently, though, I have come to believe that such a position of willed neutrality is politically wrong, morally indefensible. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 279
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to general literature on intellectuals under state and terrorist threat, and to the politics of solidarity in academic critique. — connects to: Said’s cultural criticism is inseparable from his Palestinian identity and its risks