Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said (review)

Book Reviews Edward W. Said. C u l t u r e a n d I m p e ria lis m . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Pp. xxviii + 380. $25.00 cloth. Culture and Imperialism is a difficult book to review. It is both a magnificently erudite reflection upon many currents within what has emerged as “ postcolonial studies” in the academy (a term which, it should be noted, Said rarely uses), and a heartfelt rumination on global patterns of domination. Broadly speaking, the book addresses the connections between Western imperialist practice and cultural production, as well as the characteristics of various resistance cultures within the so-called peripheries. Said articulates an approach within literary and cultural studies that would actualize those “ hybrid counter-energies” which “ provide a community or culture made up of numerous anti-systemic hints and practices for collective human existence . . . that is not based on coercion or domination” (335). The book both outlines and (to some extent) embodies Said’s proposed method of contrapuntal analysis, which requires “ a simultane­ ous awareness both o f the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts” (51). Such is necessary to bridge what Said posits as the gap, with little possibility of overlap or connec­ tion, between the poles of Western Eurocentrism and the postcolonial Third W orld’s “ rhetoric of blame.” It is the figure of the migrant, the “ consciousness . . . of the intel­ lectual and artist in exile, the political figure between domains, between forms, between homes, and between languages” (332) which can span this disjuncture through a hybrid(ized) sensibility. Said’s own positionality is implicated therein; he states that his aim is “ not to separate but to connect,” because “ cultural forms are hybrid, mixed, impure, and the time has come in cultural analysis to reconnect their analysis with their actuality” (14). It is probably not coincidental that the problems one might find in Culture and Imper­ ialism reflect those within postcolonial studies at large. One is the collapse of historical specificity sometimes demanded by the overarching generalities in the equation of the book’s title. A relatively minor but telling example is Said’s assertion, in his discussion of dictatorial post-independence one-party states, that “ [t]he debilitating despotism of the Moi regime in Kenya can scarcely be said to complete the liberationist currents of the Mau Mau uprising” (230), a statement which omits a number of significant historical steps between Mau Mau and Moi (e.g., M oi’s position vis-à-vis Kenyatta’s legacy, as well as the role of U.S. support through the 1970s and 80s of that government). While it is crucial to elicit large historical patterns, the elision of more local contingencies can effectively render the non-West as always already known (i.e., as American media portrays it: riven by famine, religious “ fundamentalism,” and “ tribal conflicts” ). Also troubling is the way in which the book reflects the ascendancy of the term “ post­ colonial” over “ Third W orld” ; within literary critical practice, that has meant a continued, even intensified scrutiny given already-canonized Western writers and an almost total eli­ sion o f non-Western writers (especially those who do not reside in the West and do not write in European languages). In Culture and Imperialism, there are entire chapters (or large portions thereof) devoted to Conrad, Austen, Camus, et al., whereas the sole “ resis­ tance” writer to merit an entire chapter is Yeats (with less extended discussions of such writers as Ngügï wa Thiong’o and Aimé Césaire, as well as scholars such as Gauri Viswanathan and C. L. R. James). And while the subtleties of imperialist discourse are dis­ cussed at some length, there is little if any mention of how that discourse intersects with issues of gender and class (or of the studies thereof). Moreover, the delineation of VOL. XXXIV, NO. 2 117 L ’E spr it C r éa te u r “ culture” in its Arnoldian sense elicits no interrogation; rather, it is defended. Sympto­ matically, these gaps and elisions mark those issues and areas which academic postcolonial studies need...