Culture and Imperialism

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As he explains repeatedly, “understanding that connection does not reduce or diminish the novels’ value as works of art: on the contrary, because of their wordliness, because of their complex affiliations with their real setting, they are more interesting and morevaluable as works of art” (13). Like we are all eating tons of hummus and kimchi now and read non-Western authors, Murakami lol, watch Iranian movies and have African wooden masks or at least some Buddha shit in our bed rooms. Held up for analysis throughout the book are Rudyard Kipling's Kim, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

S. and French literature is not to dismiss the literature of unworthy of analysis but to suggest the need for the complexity of our analysis and examination of literature in relationship to empire.

In my personal case it would be terribly weird NOT to empathize with the colonized given that my country only recently escaped what was very clearly a typical imperialist exploitative relationship (and hasn’t run far enough away, at that). Missing is discussion about Russian/Soviet and East Asian imperialist literatures - perhaps there is more that Said wrote/spoke on these regional literatures, but undoubtedly similar contrapuntal reading opportunities here too with Eastern European, Balkan, Ukrainian, Korean, Philippine, Vietnamese, Cambodian (etc etc etc) voices. He highlights the importance of examining cultural productions in their historical and political context, and argues that doing so can reveal the complex ways in which culture and power are intertwined.

Both of these intellectuals seem to have battled with their identities in exile and came out with similar perceptions of how it is through “fear and prejudice” that patriotism and intolerance are made up. Said argues that cultural productions such as literature, music, and art are shaped by the political and economic context in which they are produced. In regard to the universalization of Western philosophy and myth of objective truth, Said is following Fanon, where he famously said: “for the native, objectivity is always directed against him. Most importantly, his stance isn’t anything as ridiculous as merely saying that a work is ‘imperialist’ and stopping at that but much more akin to a precise psychological dissection of the ways the imperialist mindset affected the work and the stance of the author. Said posits many ideas relating to imperialism and nationalism and his bottom line (with which I agree) is that both tend to be internecine in nature.While imperialism is: “Now we (the colonizer) own you (the colonized), your land and we will be exploiting your economic resources to our benefit using culture and language alongside nuanced force. The imperialism comes into it as a new framing device through which he analyses multiple works of fiction (including for some reason an opera). The last part is the most interesting one re: modern day imperialism (read: early 1990s) and American ascendancy to global hegemony.

That is not to say that Saïd condemns European culture as irredeemably racist, or heaps scorn upon the aforementioned works. I will definitely reread Culture and imperialism after I’ve read colonialism and postcolonilsm for dummies, something I’ve should of done the first time around! In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Western powers built empires that stretched from Australia to the West Indies, Western artists created masterpieces ranging from Mansfield Park to Heart of Darkness and Aida. Readers accustomed to the precision and elegance of Edward Said's analytical prowess will not be disappointed by Culture and Imperialism .Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.