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.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the simplistic and careless attitude towards the complex realities of the Middle East by those in power.
Edward Said's quote highlights the naivety and arrogance of political leaders who simplistically propose to reshape the Middle East without understanding the intricate histories, cultures, and societies that exist there. It emphasizes the fallacy of treating nations and peoples as mere objects to be rearranged at will, rather than acknowledging their rich and diverse identities.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about foreign policy 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.
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.
Pakistan's political instability is its greatest vulnerability, and a decline in U.S. power would reduce America's ability to aid Pakistan's consolidation and development.
The dangers of unexamined and unregulated monopoly power, particularly in the state executive, are hardly news. The right reaction is not passive acquiescence.
By virtually every metric, the liberal international order has made the world healthier, wealthier, wiser, more secure and more tolerant than it has ever been.
Don't get mad. Don't get even. Just get elected, then get even.
It was clear, for example, in 1988 that the political process had already become perilously remote from the electorate it was meant to represent.
[Y]ou will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government.
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