The USM community mourned the death of Edward Said last week with a panel discussion and an exhibition of videos. The prominent and controversial Middle-Eastern intellectual succumbed to leukemia last September, prompting universities throughout the U.S. to mark his passage with similar events. The event brought Middle-Eastern conflict to USM last week in all its complexity. Messages of hope and conciliation clashed with ideology and resentment, making it clear that nothing about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict can be made simple.
Amer Kamal, a Senior at USM in Business and International Relations, spearheaded the organization of the event. Kamal is a Palestinian on exchange to USM who said he has been trying to bring Said to speak at USM since he arrived two years ago. When Said died, Kamal decided to arrange a tribute instead, with the help of Rebecca Sockbesen, director of Multicultural Student Affairs. The event featured a panel of speakers from the USM faculty and a representative from the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence in Portland. The panel was interspersed with videos and moved at a very fast, even hurried, pace. The event was not without its critics.
Said is best known for his seminal work, “Orientalism,” in which he outlines a phenomenon in Western scholarship and everyday belief systems, called Orientalism, now a well-established critical term. In the book, he argues that racism and ethnocentrism are not only present, but built into every facet of Western thought when applied to the East, or Orient. He paints a bleak picture of an overwhelming bias in Western thought that forces all knowledge to conform to official power structures – where the European West must be seen as morally and intellectually superior in all situations.
His book has served as the cornerstone for an entire field of colonial and postcolonial criticism. He is the first of a wave of so-called “third-world intellectuals,” exiled thinkers who are educated and go on to teach in American universities and produce highly regarded and politically charged scholarship.
“There were dangerous undercurrents in the presentation. There was extreme name calling,” Eli Kaufman, an organic farmer from Israel, said. “He calls Israel the ‘zionist entity’ with sadism for every Palestinian man, woman and child. In the context of a cool discourse of breaking down ethnic barriers, this is very dangerous.”
USM’s Provost, Joseph Wood, opened the event with a short speech. “I’m not here to pay tribute to the problematic part [of Said’s life],” he said. “I’m here to pay tribute to the scholarship.”
Janet Gunn, professor of Women’s Studies, disagreed. “I want to pay tribute to the problematic part, with all respect due to the Provost. I gobbled up Said’s work before I knew Said’s political background.” She spoke about Rupture, the point in an intellectual field where ideas clash discordantly and productively, as overlapping with ruptures and upheavals in the real world. “Rupture is a very productive place.”
Indeed, Said’s politics ruptured the event at almost every turn. The participants remained decorous throughout the discussion, but disagreements cropped up at every corner of the fast-paced two-hour panel.
Said has used Orientalism as the basis for withering criticism of American and Israeli foreign policy in the Middle East. His critics accuse him of championing, ironically, a prejudiced and monomaniacal stance against Israel. Some go so far as to brand him an ideologue with a vendetta against Israel and Jews in general. Said was certainly among Israel’s harshest and most famous critics. During a break from the speaker’s panel, the event featured a video of a fiery speech by Said condemning Israel for its occupation of Palestinian land in the wake of an American activist’s death in the region. Rachel Corey, an American activist, died on March 16, 2002 under the blade of an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Her death has served as a rallying point for those protesting Israeli occupation there and elsewhere in the region. During a short question-and-answer session after the video, Eli Kaufman, an organic farmer from Israel, said the speech “perpetuates a cycle of blame.”
“It’s important that we don’t allow stereotyping. As an Israeli and a Jew, I feel like it’s happening here,” Kaufman said. Gunn, who had spoken before said that she was uncomfortable with the speech herself.
“It wasn’t the best of Said,” she said. “This isn’t the occasion to settle the balance question.”
Abraham Peck, assistant dean of Arts and Sciences, disagreed. “I think history will show he was right about a federation,” he said, referring to the idea that Israel and Palestine should be one state with both ethnicities represented democratically. “A South African solution is the solution for Israel.”
The increasingly political conversation was interrupted by another video, this time of two segments from a theater performance titled “Re-orientalism” and another speech by Said. In the first segment from “Re-orientalism,” a college-aged woman recited a beat-style poem attacking big tobacco companies. The second clip featured a middle-aged man who spoke about brotherhood. “I know there’s something that ties us together, a thread,” he said. “If we could find it, we could pull on it, and my enemy and I would finally see each other face to face.”
Said’s speech was a strong contrast to that idealized concilliation.
“The basic dignity of Palestinians is that we are a people,” Said said in the speech. He went on to lambaste a former Palestinian spokesman who was appointed by former Prime Minister Yassir Arafat and, he said, “is as spineless as he is clueless.” He complained that all of Arafat’s spokesmen have a history of kowtowing to Israeli and American interests.
Kamal capped the event with a short speech. “I grew up seeing only hate, anger, violence. I thought I wouldn’t see it here, but the first thing I heard was ‘there’s no such thing as Palestine,'” He said. “The reason I am here now is because of Said.” He said Said had inspired him and helped him to find his way in his first weeks and months in an alien country. “We thank you for what you’ve taught us.”