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A review by millie_rose_reads
Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said
4.0
Culture and Imperialism has a constant balancing act between being an academic and didactic text. This naturally affects the flow of the prose at times, stymying it as further elucidation is needed for comprehensive analysis. Mostly, Edward W. Said handles the challenge deftly, but is occasionally burdened by his own fastidiousness.
Regardless, Culture and Imperialism is a book that is just as relevant in 2020 as it was in 1993, as it deals with ideological levers that can take decades to fully pull or push. Much of the reactionary figures (hostile to any divergence from traditional mores and narratives) presented here keep step with the cultural curmudgeons of today:
However, this book isn't an indictment on one specific culture or country; the book has loftier aims than that. Instead its an examination of the interdependence of each of them, dispelling the myth of the nation state born in isolation. I expected and appreciated all of the critiques of imperialism and its excesses, but it was Said's critique of rampant nationalism (while also acknowledging it being a successful antidote to colonialism) that really surprised me. It can be difficult to see past the narratives a people create to uplift themselves from tyranny—and begin to cogently extrapolate its own excesses, and I really learned a lot from it.
This book is at turns fascinating and insightful, poised to educate and not lecture, and I'd recommend it to even those just interested in how the literature of uncontroversial writers like Austen and Dickens perpetuate imperial orthodoxy.
Regardless, Culture and Imperialism is a book that is just as relevant in 2020 as it was in 1993, as it deals with ideological levers that can take decades to fully pull or push. Much of the reactionary figures (hostile to any divergence from traditional mores and narratives) presented here keep step with the cultural curmudgeons of today:
One perhaps trivial example of this atavism occurred in a column written for The Wall Street Journal on May 2, 1989, by Bernard Lewis, one of the senior Orientalists working in the United States. Lewis was entering the debate about changing the "Western canon." To the students and professors at Stanford University who had voted to modify the curriculum to include texts by more non-Europeans, women, and so on, Lewis—speaking as an authority on Islam—took the extreme position that "if Western culture does indeed go a number of things would go with it and others would come in their place." No one had said anything so ludicrous as "Western culture must go," but Lewis's argument, focussed on much grander matters than strict accuracy, lumbered forward with the remarkable proposition that since modifications in the reading list would be equivalent to the demise of Western culture, such subjects (he named them specifically) as the restoration of slavery, polygamy, and child marriage would ensue. To this amazing thesis Lewis added that "curiosity about other cultures," which he believes is unique to the West, would also come to an end.
However, this book isn't an indictment on one specific culture or country; the book has loftier aims than that. Instead its an examination of the interdependence of each of them, dispelling the myth of the nation state born in isolation. I expected and appreciated all of the critiques of imperialism and its excesses, but it was Said's critique of rampant nationalism (while also acknowledging it being a successful antidote to colonialism) that really surprised me. It can be difficult to see past the narratives a people create to uplift themselves from tyranny—and begin to cogently extrapolate its own excesses, and I really learned a lot from it.
This book is at turns fascinating and insightful, poised to educate and not lecture, and I'd recommend it to even those just interested in how the literature of uncontroversial writers like Austen and Dickens perpetuate imperial orthodoxy.