- Paperback: 121 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books; New title edition (1 Nov 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679761276
- ISBN-13: 978-0679761273
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 1 x 20.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 637,254 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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In this series of essays, based on his 1993 Reith Lectures, Edward Said explores what it means to be an intellectual today. It is, he argues, the intellectual's role to represent a message or view not only to, but for, a public, and to do so as an outsider - someone who cannot be co-opted by a government or corporation. Interweaving literature, history and philosophy, Said describes and demonstrates how the intellectual must remain a dissenter, never putting solidarity before criticism, and speak from the margins for both the people and the issues which are routinely forgotten or ignored.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The item that I recieved was according to the description that was advertised. I recieved it on the time period as I expected. Although the item was a second hand item but it was in a good shape and condition. I am quite satisfied of this purchase.
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13 reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
High point in the history of the Reith Lectures
20 May 2002
Format:Paperback
Edward Said's definition of the intellectual as someone who "speaks the truth to power" is hardly an original notion. As any literate person will know, it recalls and derives from the Greek concept of the "parrhesiastes", the truth-teller. Crucially, not anyone who speaks the truth is a "parrhesiastes". A grammar teacher, for example, may tell the truth to the children he teaches, but he is not thereby a "parrhesiastes". However, when a philosopher addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant and tells him that his tyranny is wrong, the philosopher not only voices the truth but also takes a risk. It is this element of risk and what we might call disinterested courage that defines a figure like Socrates but also a contemporary like Noam Chomsky. Of course, both the Greek notion and Said's concept, equally, exclude those who serve the status quo. Henry Kissinger is neither a "parrhesiastes" nor an intellectual. A merchant banker may utilise or produce "ideas" but he is too bound to the dominant system to be capable of truly critical thought. What this book addresses, though, is not so much the intellectuals themselves as the way they are perceived in different historical and social situations. What value does this figure of the truth teller, the risk taker, hold in different polities? In totalitarian societies he is paid the grotesque homage of censorship and state violence. In the U.S.A. and many Western democracies, by contrast, he is usually treated with contempt or barely concealed irritation. I have seldom seen "intellectual" used favourably in the British press. It is, all too frequently, prefixed with "pseudo-" or "trendy". What Said's book demonstrates is that the idea of the intellectual has an ancient and venerable history, and that power and truth are seldom comfortable bedfellows.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Excellent essay on the role of the thorns in society's side
27 Sep 2003
Format:Paperback
My personal favorite of Said's books.
For those who feel ambivalent about Said's specific political views, this book touches on them minimally. (Though, obviously, his thinking is informed by those views throughout.)
The general question is: What is the role of a true thinker in our times? If you believe the "authorities" (i.e., the New York Times, or Charlie Rose, etc.) they are just scholars or thoughtful observers with a public voice. The upshot is that the intellectual is nothing more than an ambassador -- a mouthpiece -- for received opinion (that is, the orthodoxy). Intellectuals are nothing more, in this popular view, than a kind of secular clergy.
Representations of the Intellectual skewers this notion, and beautifully. Said had a singular breadth of mind. In Representations, he draws on a expansive knowledge of disparate fields to offer a convincing picture of the intellectual as a reasoned, passionate dissenter.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
The Intellectual's Role as Critic
2 Aug 2002
Format:Paperback
In this slim, yet thought-proking volume, Edward said attempts to provide an outline of the function and duty of the intellectual in modern society. Implicitly, Edward Said goes about the task of challenging the increasingly cozy relationship between the so-called intellectual, i.e., academia, and the political/military power structure that has developed in the wake of McCarthyism and the subsequent paranoia of the Cold War. Case in point, do you know where Napalm was "invented", not in the bowls of the Pentagon, but at Harvard University, by scientists (intellectuals) with a duty to expand human understanding and knowledge, not to be used as a means to power and destruction. That, Said would contend, is precisely the problem with the role of the intelelctual today. Au Courant the climate of the "expert" reighns supreme and almost completely in the cause of war--in whatever manifestation it is found. Unfortunately, this is a problem that has been ignored for far too long, obscured with baseless, yet effective, claims of a leftist domination of academia to which Said's subtle analysis provides a vitally important counter.
Using the example of intellectuals such as James Baldwin, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Viginia Woolf and Noam Chomsky as a model of intellectual vigor and concern for social justice, both in words and in action. In this vein Said offers a critically important meditation on the vital influence that such can have on public opinion and, more importantly, government policy. Thus, the intellectual in today's society, in Said's mind, has a duty and an obligation to be an agent of social and political justice--a radically dissident voice if need be--against the dictates of blind power.
Using the example of intellectuals such as James Baldwin, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Viginia Woolf and Noam Chomsky as a model of intellectual vigor and concern for social justice, both in words and in action. In this vein Said offers a critically important meditation on the vital influence that such can have on public opinion and, more importantly, government policy. Thus, the intellectual in today's society, in Said's mind, has a duty and an obligation to be an agent of social and political justice--a radically dissident voice if need be--against the dictates of blind power.
For those who admire critical thinking, moral courage and a helthy respect for honest debate Representations of the Intellectual is for you. There awill always be those who seem to believe that ad hominem attacks and smear campaigns can replace critical thinking and objective analysis, both of which are only a substitute for intellectual vigor. Yet, many of his critics seem to be perfectly content with a system in which the main function of an intellectual is as a petty propagandist of pragmatic ideology, providing justification for the continued imperial wars of aggression, right-wing insurgency, political assasination and even genocide, carried out by Western powers since WWII. Those who ignore these facts are either grossly naive or recklessly misguided by their own historico delusions.
But, for those who want to get beyond the simplistic dualisms and vacuous black/white oppositions by all means, read Said's book--your view of the intellectual in Western society will never be the same.
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