Review of Edward Said’s last book
Al-Ahram Weekly Online has a review of the last book written by Edward Said before his death last year. Said was a critic of what he considered colonialism in Western Literature, including in Jane Austen’s work.
Said brilliantly showed, in his earlier works, how Albert Camus and Jane Austen — in their esteemed novels — have dismissed, marginalised, or silenced the Other, thus reinforcing French and British colonial practice of the day. He pointed, in his sophisticated analysis, to how aesthetic considerations can play a dangerous role in manipulating the lens so that the focus is on the European master and not on the non-European underdogs. Said, of course, is grounded in English and European literatures and culture, to the point where such works as L’Étranger of Camus and Mansfield Park of Austen are part of his intimate reading and professional identity. But this did not stop him from showing the glaring absences in them, the imbalance at the centre of these works between the Self and the Other. Literary criticism has for decades not paid attention to such deflections and their significant implications. Yet, despite the deep affiliation Said feels for these writers, he nevertheless can be critical of how they contribute to distortions.
