Edward Said And The Question Of Subjectivity Hardcover

India

Prasad Pannian

Edward Said and the Question of Subjectivity explores the notion of subjectivity implicated in and articulated by Said in his writings. Analyzing several of his major works, Pannian argues that there is a shift in Said's intellectual trajectory that takes place after the composition of Orientalism. In so doing, Said forthrightly attempts to retrieve a theoretical and political humanism, as Pannian identifies, despite the difficult and sanguinary aspects of its past. He elaborates upon Said's understanding that only after recognising the structures of violence and coming to discern strategies of interpellation, may the individual subject effectively resist them. Pannian also explores Said's ideas on exilic subjectivity, the role of intellectuals, acts of memory, critical secularism, affiliation and solidarity before dwelling on his interface with Marxist thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Theodor Adorno, and Raymond Williams. This engagement marks Said's own subject formation, and shapes his self-reflexive mode of knowledge production.

1137548649

9781137548641

English

Palgrave MacMillan

03 Feb 2016

Prasad Pannian is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Central University of Kerala, India. He has won the Edward Said Fellowship (2018-19) instituted by the Heyman Centre for Humanities, Columbia University, USA.

This comprehensive study does ample justice to Edward Said's critical thought, illuminating the profound importance that Said placed on criticism in the service of responsibility and dissent. Said's refusal of both identity politics and impersonal systems gets full treatment in this sympathetic yet critical study. The book will be a valuable resource for students of postcolonial studies. - Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, USA