The intellectual vocation is sustained by faith in unending emancipation rather than optimism

Evidence

It isn’t at all a matter of being optimistic, but rather of continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment that, in my opinion, frames and gives direction to the intellectual vocation. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 26

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs with the book’s stated reading purpose on emancipation/enlightenment as the horizon of critical-theory work; connects to how Said frames Orientalism as a project of liberation, which later Islamophobia readings carry forward. — connects to: Absent visible organizations, optimism means stoic endurance rather than action — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 960; Teaching as freedom requires a sense of vocation as sacred
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 26