We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies. (p. 5)
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of acknowledging historical and cultural influences on our understanding of various subjects.
Edward Said highlights the critical necessity of recognizing imperialism and its contexts when engaging in academic studies. He argues that ignoring the influence of empires can lead to incomplete or skewed interpretations of historical and cultural phenomena, underlining the interconnectedness of knowledge and power dynamics.
In practice
In a university lecture on the impact of colonial histories on modern literature.
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.
Praise your child explicitly for how capable they are of learning rather than telling them how smart they are.
Cambridge is one of the best universities in the world, especially in my field.
A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.
As long as you're just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you're gonna be alright. But if you go beyond that then you're gonna have these grave doubts that give you stomach problems, headachesmake you want to go out and do something else. So, I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out.
Children are wonderfully confident in their own imaginations. Most of us lose this confidence as we grow up.
There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.
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