Culture and Imperialism

Said draws attention to the importance of history to the present, writing, “Neither past nor present, any more than any poet or artist, has a complete meaning alone” (4). He argues that a clear understanding of the past influences the narrative that is told about the present: From the perspective of imperialism, this implies that texts will yield different interpretations based on the reader’s experience of history and current events. For example, an Iraqi views the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 through a very different lens than an American might.

Said goes on to define imperialism in several ways. Under its most basic definition, imperialism is concerned with the conquering of land and the controlling of peoples in places other than the metropolitan center; it is also undeniably concerned with profit and resources. However, he continues, it is also inextricably intertwined with culture, with the production of artistic and cultural objects—such as novels—that support the empire, resist the empire, or do both at the same time. As he posits, “Imperialism [...] lingers where it has always been, in a kind of general cultural sphere as well as in specific political, ideological, and social practices” (8). He compares the apotheosis of nineteenth century empires, such as the British and French, to the twentieth century dominance of America. While the earlier empires were invested in their own imperial project, the American imperial ambition is largely left unacknowledged, in a kind of willful, if misplaced, innocence.

Finally, Said defends against his method of interpretation by suggesting that to read a work of literature with its imperial entanglements in mind is not to do it a disservice; Rather, it enhances the reader’s understanding and their appreciation of the text. He emphasizes that this kind of reading explicitly acknowledges the dynamic nature of culture—always changing, never static—and that “cultural forms are hybrid, mixed, [and] impure” (14).

Said draws attention to the ways in which peoples—both in the metropolitan center and at the colonized margins—sanitize their pasts. For example, as European empires were consolidating power in various parts of the world, there was a need “to project their power backward in time, giving it a history and legitimacy that only tradition and longevity could impart” (16). Hence, this is why Queen Victoria’s declaration as Empress of India was accompanied by traditional ceremonies, as if her rule had always been so. By comparison, decolonized peoples celebrate a pre-imperial past that does not necessarily represent actual truths: Said uses the example of how the poet W.B. Yeats created an aggrandized Irish history to mobilize resistance against English occupation.

Said points to the contradictions that both colonizer and colonized must grapple with in the post-colonial moment: One example is the nostalgia in England for a “lost” India, which necessarily smooths over the discomfiting ideology of an era in which dominion over others was seen as permissible. In contrast, a generation of thinkers and writers from former colonies struggle to balance the just condemnation of what was an inequitable, often brutal and cruel system of governance with the notion that some benefits were gained, including “liberal ideas, national self-consciousness, and technological goods” (18). Said himself wants to move away from these tensions in order to privilege the idea of “intertwined and overlapping histories” (18), in which both the formerly governing metropolis and the once colonized territory are interdependent.

In this section, Said uses Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, to illustrate two competing visions of the consequences of colonialism and post-colonialism. Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, is at once an insider—he bears witness to the depredations of Kurtz’s ivory-mad mission in the interior of Africa—and an outsider who critiques said mission. Just as Conrad himself was an outsider, a Polish immigrant writing in his second language of English, so Marlow possesses that same “self-consciousness,” which allows him to see what those too close to the center cannot (25).

In one vision, Conrad portrays “darkest Africa” as a place “irredeemably, irrecusably inferior” (25), in need of enlightenment and European rule. This justifies the “civilizing mission” and the project of imperialism. In the second vision, however, Conrad questions such a view, at least implicitly; the earlier vision is rooted in a particular time and specific place, and as such, can be modified. Conrad “dates imperialism, shows its contingency, records its illusions and tremendous violence and waste” (26). Imperialism, in the second vision, is not inevitable and certainly not permanent. Said also argues that Conrad reveals that his “darkness”—whether his barbaric impulse or profit motive—resides both in Kurtz’s jungle but in the heart of London, where Marlow happens to be telling the story. While Conrad cannot clearly see this—thus, nor can his characters—“what they saw, disablingly and disparagingly, as a non-European ‘darkness’ was in fact a non-European world resisting imperialism” (30). Conrad lays the groundwork for future readers, writers, and scholars to see that resistance for what it was. Said lists several post-colonial writers—including Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, and Chinua Achebe, among others—who are now able to give voice to the “native” point of view.

Said explains what he means by “discrepant experiences.” (For a more detailed definition, see “Index of Terms”). Essentially, he argues that for every historical event, there are competing perspectives based on different experiences that come to explain that event or circumstance. For example, Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt was seen by the French in one way—as a project of national enrichment and cultural excavation—while it was seen quite differently by the Egyptians of the time. The Egyptian scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti sees the French incursion as a form of humiliation and punishment for wrongs previously committed by the Egyptians. In this, Said observes the seeds of anti-Western sentiment and Islamic fundamentalism take root.

Said also argues that contemporary movements that emphasize nationalism, tribalism, and religious fundamentalism around the world are the direct consequence of imperialism and its aftermath. This is exacerbated by the West’s continuing depictions of Arabs and others in stereotypical and reductive ways—not to mention its continuing insistence that it stands at the center of history and culture. Said points out that these clashes are repeated again and again, because they fail to recognize that these histories—of the West, the Middle East, Africa, , and so on—are inextricably intertwined and constantly overlapping. Ultimately, though, Said acknowledges that these views are changing with new scholarship. As an example, he points to recent academic work that posits the very field of English literary study actually grew out of the imperial project in India “for the ideological pacification and re-formation of a potentially rebellious Indian population” (42). Put another way, the study of English literature originated, at least in part, as a form of imperial control.

Said argues that “comparative literature”—which should aim to “move beyond insularity and provincialism and to see several cultures and literatures together” (43)—has actually become another instrument by which the West asserts supremacy over the marginalized, colonized places of the world. He traces this evolution back to the Cold War, which engendered “an even more complacent ethnocentrism” (47) in the name of national, cultural defense.

He targets the fallacy of the Western observer as a detached arbiter of what belongs in the cultural canon. This, in turn, creates a myth that identity, national or otherwise, is fixed, static, and stable. On the contrary, “no identity can ever exist by itself and without an array of opposites, negatives, oppositions: Greeks always require barbarians” (52). Said illustrates this through the notion of British identity, which depends on the imperialized margins as much as the metropolitan center. Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, for example, relies on “Thomas Bertram’s slave plantation in Antigua” for the wealth and aesthetic beauty that is admired on the English estate (59). That such facts are elided is evidence of the complicity with which scholars read English literature. It also shows that novels themselves are produced without the acknowledgment that imperialism underpins the entire cultural venture.

Said concludes by emphasizing that, without the margins, the center cannot be defined. The primacy of the metropolitan center—London, New York, Paris, and so on—cannot be so without the subjugation of the imperialized margins; ironically, the places of power are wholly dependent on the places that are allegedly conquered. He provides a framework for how to move forward as a critical and political scholar: First, the literary canon must be seen in the light of imperial expansion, as the two are inextricably bound together. Second, “theoretical work must begin to formulate the relationship between empire and culture,” as Said attempts to do in this book (60). Third, the concerns of the present—decolonization, rising nationalism and fundamentalism, political polarization—must provide “signposts and paradigms for the study of the past” (61). Just as the metropolitan center cannot be fully understood without the acknowledgment of the colonized margins, so the past and present must also be integrated to gain a more comprehensive perspective on the canon and its implications.