Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied.
Interpretation
Understanding ideas and cultures requires examining the power structures that shape them.
Edward Said emphasizes the importance of analyzing the underlying power dynamics when studying ideas, cultures, and histories. He argues that these elements cannot be fully understood in isolation; instead, one must also consider how power influences their development and interpretation, thereby leading to a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of human experiences and societal structures.
In practice
A professor discussing the role of power in shaping historical narratives.
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.
It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?
I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.
Peace is the inner nature of humankind. If you find it within yourself, you will then find it everywhere.
Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
Hold loosely to the things of this life, so that if God requires them of you, it will be easy to let them go.
When men abandon reason, physical force becomes their only means of dealing with one another and of settling disagreements.
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