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.
Edward SaidRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the subjective nature of historical knowledge and the importance of interpretation in understanding human society.
Edward Said emphasizes that historical knowledge, unlike scientific knowledge, relies heavily on personal judgments and contextual interpretations. The facts themselves are not enough; their significance is shaped by who interprets them, for whom, and in what context, making the understanding of human society a complex interplay of perspective and time.
Themes
KnowledgeHistoryInterpretationSocietyFacts
In practice
Example use cases
A historian discussing the interpretation of events during a classroom lecture.
More from Edward Said
All quotes →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.
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Since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.
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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.
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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.
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Theory is taught so as to make the student believe that he or she can become a Marxist, a feminist, an Afrocentrist, or a deconstructionist with about the same effort and commitment required in choosing items from a menu.
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