I don't remember when exactly I read my first comic book, but I do remember exactly how liberated and subversive I felt as a result.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the transformative power of comic books as a medium that fosters freedom and challenge to normativity.
Edward Said expresses how the act of reading comic books instilled in him a sense of liberation and subversion. The quote highlights the profound impact that literature, especially in its more unconventional forms like comics, can have on one's perspective, encouraging an exploration of ideas that challenge societal norms and expectations.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion on the importance of comic books in educational settings.
All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.
Uninformed and yet open to appeals for justice as they are, Americans are capable of reacting as they did to the ANC campaign against apartheid, which finally changed the balance of forces inside South Africa.
Refuse to allow yourself to become a vegetable that simply absorbs information, pre-packaged, pre-ideologized , because no message.. is anything but an ideological package that has gone through a kind of processing.
Since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.
Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.
It is quite common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in a jar.
For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.
I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.
I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people.
It's tricky when you're doing a recording, because the only weapon you have is your voice and the delivery of that voice. You don't have a gesture or a facial expression, there are no costumes or set pieces. Everything needs to be present in the voice.
Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.
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