Edward W. Said.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note

Edward W. Said was the epitome of the engaged intellectual. A man of great erudition and sophistication, he thrust himself into the struggle for Palestine, becoming the most articulate spokesperson in the United States--and perhaps the world--for that cause.

"I carved it out for myself," he told me when I interviewed him on the radio in 1995. "It was almost fool-hardy, but I did it out of stubbornness and a sense of duty."

Said was an intellectual heir of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who popularized the term "hegemony," referring to the dominance the ruling class exerts over the cultural realm. This concept was the starting point for Said's towering work, Orientalism. Said argued that the very concept of "the Orient"--and the set of sweeping generalizations made about it and the many peoples therein--was an invention that served first the European colonizers and then the U.S. empire. Said used his analysis to dispute "the general liberal consensus that 'true' knowledge is fundamentally nonpolitical."

He explored this turf further in other works, including Culture and Imperialism, as well as Representations of the Intellectual. I kept the latter by my computer for inspiration for a couple of years. "Least of all should an intellectual be there to make his/her audiences feel good: The whole point is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant," he wrote.

Back in December 1993, Said wrote an influential cover story for us entitled "A Palestinian Versailles." This was his denunciation of the Oslo Accords and marked his break with Yasser Arafat.

When we decided to revamp our Editorial Advisory Board back in 1996, Said was one of the first we invited.

Over the years, we interviewed Said in our pages three times, a record for us. David Barsamian did the last two. In April 1999, Said discussed his idea of a binational state for Israelis and...