Edward Said

Edward Said is one of the most important literary, political and cultural theorists of the contemporary world. But until now no one has attempted to assess and explain the significance of his journalism and scholarship in one accessible full-length volume.In this refreshingly clear and timely introduction to Said and his work, Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahluwalia set out the key tenets of his position and the context out of which his work emerges.Whilst acknowledging the crucial importance of his best-known and most paradigm shifting early work Orientalism , they unravel for the first time the vital part played in his writings by the concept of 'worldliness'. They also illuminate Said's subtle demonstration of the paradoxical nature of 'identity' in the post-colonial world. Edward Said is an extremely useful and enlightening introduction to a key figure for twenty-first-century thought.

This book provides a distinctive account of Edward Said's critique of modern culture by highlighting the religion-secularism distinction on which it is predicated. It refers to religious and secular traditions and to tropes that extend the meaning and reference of religion and secularism in indeterminate ways. It covers Said's heterogeneous corpus--from Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, his first book, to Orientalism, his most influential book, to his recent writings on the Palestinian question. The religion-secularism distinction lies behind Said's cultural criticism, and his notion of intellectual responsibility.

'in our era, criticism is not merely a library of secondary aids to the understanding and appreciation of literary texts, but also a rapidly expanding body of knowledge in its own right' David Lodge This new edition of David Lodge's Modern Criticism and Theoryis fully revised and expanded to take account of the developments in theoretical contemporary literary criticism since the publication of the first edition in 1988. Building on the strengths of the first edition, this volume is designed to introduce the reader to the guiding concepts of present literary and cultural debate by presenting substantial extracts from the most seminal thinkers. As with the original edition there is a selection of the most important and representative work from the major schools in contemporary criticism. Concise introductions with updated suggestions for further reading give a context for each essay and the editors have provided footnotes that help explain the most difficult references. Both students and general readers are encouraged to identify for themselves links between essays, as the selection is ordered both historically and thematically.

Much controversy has recently come to surround the status and value of postcolonial theory. In this comprehensive and accessible survey, the author examines the objections that have been raised against postcolonial theory.

An accessible introduction to the complex new field of postcolonial theory

Moving deftly among literary and visual arts, as well as the modern critical canon, Christopher Prendergast's book explores the meaning and value of representation as both a philosophical challenge (What does it mean to create an image that "stands for" something absent?) and a political issue (Who has the right to represent whom?). The Triangle of Representation raises a range of theoretical, historical, and aesthetic questions, and offers subtle readings of such cultural critics as Raymond Williams, Paul de Man, Edward Said, Walter Benjamin, and Hélène Cixous, in addition to penetrating investigations of visual artists like Gros, Ingres, and Matisse and significant insights into Proust and the onus of translating him. Above all, Prendergast's work is a striking display of how a firm grounding in theory is essential for the exploration of art and literature.

From Kosovo to Québec, Ireland to East Timor, nationalism has been a recurrent topic of intense debate. It has been condemned as a source of hatred and war, yet embraced for stimulating community feeling and collective freedom. Joan Cocks explores the power, danger, and allure of nationalism by examining its place in the thought of eight politically engaged intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the antagonist of capital, Karl Marx; the critics of imperialism Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and Frantz Fanon; the liberal pluralist Isaiah Berlin; the neonationalist Tom Nairn, and the post-colonial writers, V. S. Naipaul and Edward Said. Cocks not only sheds new light on the complexities of nationalism but also reveals the tensions that have inspired and troubled intellectuals who have sought to lead lives between detached criticism and political passion.In lively, conversational prose, Cocks assesses their treatment of questions such as the mythology of national identity, the right to national self-determination, and the morality of nationalist violence. While ultimately critical of nationalism, she engages sympathetically even with its defenders. By illuminating the links that distinguished minds have drawn between thought and action on nationalism in politics, this stimulating work provides a rich foundation from which we ourselves might think or act more wisely when confronting a phenomenon that, in fundamental and perplexing ways, has shaped our world.

Very much a warrior flourishing words and ideology as his weapons, Edward Alexander launches a counterattack in the war of ideas against Zionism. These essays begin with a dissection of the intifada at the end of 1987 and deal with people and events through 1994, when Israel began to withdraw from the disputed territories. Ineffective militarily, Edward Alexander notes, the intifada proved a potent propaganda tool: "The spectacle of young Palestinian Arabs (at least in early the early stages of the uprising, before the violence became highly organized) facing Israeli soldiers won for the Arabs precisely the victory they had sought: it swung liberal, including (if not especially) Jewish liberal, sympathy decisively to the side of the Arabs and against Israel". Alexander's book is the first to subject to withering criticism the "body of ideas that lured Israel into the quagmire called the 'peace process.'" He excoriates prominent figures in politics, journalism, education, and literature who express hostility,to, or open hatred of, Jews, Judaism, and Israel. Convinced that it is in the realm of ideas that the battle will be lost or won, Alexander has given special attention to "some of the more brazen and flamboyant combatants in... the'Jewish wars' - Edward Said, Patrick Buchanan, the late George Ball, Alexander Cockburn, Michael Lerner, Noam Chomsky - and still more to certain omnipresent personality types: the timorous Jew cloaking his timidity in the robes of the biblical prophet; the treacherous Jew presenting betrayal of his own people as ethical idealism; the ferocious antisemite parading as a dispassionate 'critic of Israeli policies'; the journalist and publicist exploiting thefull public-address and public-relations systems afforded by his profession while complaining that his voice is being 'stifled' by 'the Jewish establishment.'" Recurring themes in Alexander's essays are the relations between