R.I.P. EDWARD SAID
Damn, damn, damn.
One of the strangest things about America in the post-9/11 period is that just when it seemed like the best time for us, as a citizenry, to question our assumptions about faraway people, and discover how these assumptions and stereotypes came about, we simply didn't do any of those things. The administration let its daisycutter bombs do the talking in Afghanistan and its clusterbombs and napalm do the same in Iraq.
-when Bush told us that he would launch a "crusade"
-when angry men beat up Indian-Americans because they didn't see the difference
...and so many more examples give me perspective on the intellectual quests sought out by people like Edward Said. He will be missed in the scholarly discourse on how we perceive the world.
Damn, damn, damn.
One of the strangest things about America in the post-9/11 period is that just when it seemed like the best time for us, as a citizenry, to question our assumptions about faraway people, and discover how these assumptions and stereotypes came about, we simply didn't do any of those things. The administration let its daisycutter bombs do the talking in Afghanistan and its clusterbombs and napalm do the same in Iraq.
-when Bush told us that he would launch a "crusade"
-when angry men beat up Indian-Americans because they didn't see the difference
...and so many more examples give me perspective on the intellectual quests sought out by people like Edward Said. He will be missed in the scholarly discourse on how we perceive the world.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home