Apologies to those of you who have already seen this:
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Centre for Civil Society Centre for Civil Society
Sent: den 26 september 2003 14:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [in the zone] Edward Said has died
Dear All,
My son tells me, via the attached, that Edward Said is dead.
My socio-political consciousness - like my bookshelves - is lined with people who have shaped that consciouness. As I look up from this machine, they nod at me: C Wright Mills, Dorothy and Edward Thompson, Raymond Williams, Lynne Segal, Lewis Mumford, Russell Jacoby and many, many more, including, of course, Edward Said. My life, our lives, are lessened by their passing. I mourn him and will be the lesser for his death. A fine person.
Alan
--- Original Message -----
From: Peter Lipman
To: Beata Lipman ; Alan Lipman
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 9:47 PM
Subject: Edward Said has died
6.30pm update
World-renowned scholar
Edward Said dies
George Wright and agencies
Thursday September 25, 2003
Edward Said, the world-renowned scholar, writer and
critic has died aged 67, it was announced today.
Said died at a New York hospital, his editor Shelly
Wanger said. He had suffered from leukaemia since
the early 1990s.
He was born in 1935 in Jerusalem - then part of
British-ruled Palestine - and raised in Egypt before
moving to the United States as a student. He was for
many years the leading US
advocate for the Palestinian cause.
His writings have been translated into 26 languages
' and his most influential book, Orientalism (1978), was
credited with forcing Westerners to re-examine their
perceptions of the Islamic world.
His works cover a plethora of other subjects, from
English literature, his academic speciality, to music
and culture. His later books include "Musical
Elaborations" in 1991, and "Cultural Imperialism"
in 1993.
Many of his books - including The Question of
Palestine (1979), Covering Islam (1981), After the Last
Sky (1986) and Blaming the Victims (1988) - were
influenced directly by his involvement
with Palestine. He was a prominent member of the
Palestinian parliament-in-exile for 14 years before
stepping down 1991.
Said, a professor at Columbia University for most of
his academic career, was consistently critical of Israel
for what he regarded as mistreatment of the
Palestinians. He prompted a
controversy in 2000 when he threw a rock toward an
Israeli guardhouse on the Lebanese border.
Columbia did not censure him, saying the stone was
not directed at anyone, no law was broken and that
his actions were
protected by principles of academic freedom.
He wrote two years ago after visits to Jerusalem and
the West Bank that Israel's "efforts toward exclusivity
and xenophobia
toward the Arabs" had strengthened Palestinian
determination.
"Palestine and Palestinians remain, despite Israel's
concerted efforts from the beginning either to get rid
of them or to circumscribe them so much as to make
them ineffective," Said wrote in the English-language
Al-Ahram Weekly, published in
Cairo.
His outspoken stance made him many enemies; he
suffered repeated death threats and in 1985 he was
called a Nazi by the
Jewish Defence League and his university office was
set on fire.
After the signing of the Oslo peace accords between
Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation
(PLO), Said also criticised
Yasser Arafat because he believed the PLO leader
had made a bad deal for the Palestinians.
In a 1995 lecture, he said Arafat and the Palestinian
Authority "have become willing collaborators with the
(Israeli) military
occupation, a sort of Vichy government for
Palestinians."
Salman Rushdie once said of Said that he "reads the
world as closely as he reads books".
The Irish critic Seamus Deane described him as:
"That rare figure: a truly public intellectual who has a
powerful influence
within the academy and also a potent public
presence. He's a very brilliant reader, of both texts and
political situations."
Hamid Dabashi, chairman of Columbia's Middle East
and Asian Languages and Cultures Department, said:
"Over the past three decades he was the most
eloquent spokesman for the plight of the Palestinians."
Said is survived by Miriam, his second wife.
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