Edward Said seems like a prophet: 20 years on, ‘there’s hunger for his narrative’

I wrote this essay about my old professor, Edward Said. As war rages in Gaza, Said’s words feel prescient. That’s because so little has changed

Twenty years after his death in 2003, Edward Said – a man variously known for his groundbreaking scholarship, dogged political advocacy, fine-tuned musical abilities, and serious sense of fashion – continues to inspire. This time around, Said’s words and presence appear to answer a specific need prompted by Israel’s assault on Gaza, a campaign so calculated and unrelenting that it has been ruled plausibly genocidal by the international court of justice. It’s not easy to know how one should respond to such evil, and many appear to be turning to Said as their guide.

Finding old clips of Edward Said on social media was never very difficult, but since the Hamas attacks of 7 October, Said’s ideas, quotes and archival clips have been widely disseminated across a range of books, journals and platforms.

After Columbia University suspended its campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace last November, the satirical website the Pigeon Post ridiculed Columbia, Said’s stomping ground for nearly 40 years, with Said’s very words. “Edward Said once wrote: ‘Our role is to widen the field of discussion, not to set limits in accord with the prevailing authority.’ Therefore, Columbia University is suspending Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace,” the website read, pigeon tongue planted firmly in pigeon cheek.

Gerrie Lim, the twentysomething creator of the Pigeon Post, followed it up with a TikTok explainer video about Said highlighting Columbia’s hypocrisy of once supporting Said’s right to free speech on Palestine but now curtailing students’ speech on the same topic.

In January, the academic journal Social Text published a lapidary text by Stephen Sheehi on the time when Said threw a stone at an empty Israeli watchtower from the Lebanese side of the border.

The Selected Works of Edward Said, 1996-2006, a book of Said’s key writings that I co-edited with Andrew Rubin, both of us former students of Edward’s, has seen an elevenfold increase in sales since 7 October.

On X, a 1986 conversation between Salman Rushdie and Edward Said at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts has resurfaced in various posts. In the clip, Said describes an encounter with Benjamin Netanyahu, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States. “I was invited to a television debate with the Israeli ambassador,” Said explains, but not only would Netanyahu “not sit in the same room with me; he wanted to be in a different building, so as not to be contaminated by my presence.” Netanyahu demanded this bizarre separation, claiming that Said, as a Palestinian, wanted to kill him. “It was,” as Said notes, “really a totally absurd situation.” (continues…)

Read the rest here.