Edward Said, the famous Palestinian American scholar and activist,
was one of the twentieth century’s most iconic public
intellectuals, whose pioneering and – to some – controversial
work on Orientalism shaped Middle Eastern and postcolonial studies
and beyond. But how exactly did he arrive at his famous maxim to
‘speak truth to power’? This dual biographical study examines
the lives of Edward Said and the eminent Lebanese philosopher and
diplomat Charles Malik, a distant relative 30 years his senior whom
Said knew from childhood as “Uncle Charles.” To Said, Malik was
no ordinary relative; in his memoir, he called Malik “the great
negative intellectual lesson of my life”, and was to describe him
as “an ideal as I was growing up” only to later claim Malik
“went through an ugly transformation that I could never come to
terms with”. M.D. Walhout charts the development of these two
remarkable figures, reconstructing in the process the way in which
American power in the Middle East came to have a defining effect on
Arab intellectuals in the twentieth century. Exploring issues of
religion and nationalism, Walhout shows how Said came to reject
much of what Malik stood for: Christian faith, hardline
anti-Communism and the benign nature of American power. He argues
that the example of Malik was instrumental in the development of
Said’s later belief that the true vocation of the intellectual
was not to compromise with power, but to resist it.
General
Imprint: |
I.B. Tauris
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
April 2022 |
Authors: |
M. D Walhout
|
Dimensions: |
234 x 156mm (L x W) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
304 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-7556-3922-9 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-7556-3922-7 |
Barcode: |
9780755639229 |
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