"I urge everyone to join in and not leave the field of values, definitions, and cultures uncontested."

Our envoy to human conscience

I cannot bid Edward Said farewell, so present is he among and within us and in the world at large, so alive. The Palestinians' envoy to human conscience grew weary of the absurd struggle against death. He would never have grown weary of resisting the new world order, asserting justice, humanism and the affinity between cultures and civilisations.

For 12 years he proved himself accomplished at dodging death. He renewed his fertile creative life, through writing and music and registering the human will, the vital quest for meaning and essence, situating the intellectual endeavour in its rigorous context. Any Palestinian asked what he was proud of in the contemporary world would undoubtedly reply, "Edward Said". In the cultural arena Palestine never gave birth to anything of such genius, or such a unique plurality, as Edward Said.

At present, and until further notice, he will be credited with transferring the name of his native country from the common plane of politics to that of universal cultural consciousness. Born of Palestine he was to become -- through loyalty to the justice denied its people and advocacy of their right to life and liberty -- the proverbial father of the Palestine to come. His perspective on the conflict that rages there is both cultural and moral; it not only justifies the Palestinians' right to resistance but views it as a national and human duty.

He was a whole person in whom the critic, the intellectual, the musician and the politician all worked in harmony. His imposing personality gave off a remarkable charisma that made a unique international phenomenon. Seldom does one encounter a person in whom the intellectual and the star combine in the way they did in Edward, a dashing presence, as eloquent and profound as he was fierce and lucid, maintaining a steadfast fascination with the aesthetics of life and language.

On bidding him a difficult farewell, with his presence belying the impossible condition of his absence, the world meets Palestine at a rare moment of convergence, a moment during which we cannot specify with certainty who the family of the deceased might be since the whole world, for a moment, is his family. The loss is common to us and the world, and so are the tears, for Edward, his lively conscience and encyclopaedic knowledge, managed to place Palestine at the heart of the world, and place the world at the heart of Palestine.

-- Mahmoud Darwish

 

Published at Al-Ahram weekly: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/658/special.htm

Books

A list of some outstanding books:

• Presence of Mind: Edward Said at the Limits
  by Mustapha Marrouchi (2004) - not yet released
• Edward Said
  by Harold Veeser (2003) - not yet released
• Culture and Resistance: Conversations With Edward Said
  by David Barsamian (2003)
• Freud and the Non-European
  by Edward Said, et al (2003)
• Edward Said: Criticism and Society
  by Abdirahman A. Hussein (2002)
• Reflections on Exile and Other Essays
  by Edward Said (2002)
• Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews With Edward Said
  by Gauri Viswanathan (2002)
• Cronicas Palestinas
  by Edward Said (2001)
• Blaming the Victims
  by Edward Said (2001)
• Edward Said
  Routledge Critical Thinkers by Bill Ashcroft, et al (2001)
• The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After
  by Edward Said (2001)
• The Edward Said Reader
  by Edward Said, et al (2000)
• Out of Place: A Memoir
  by Edward Said (2000)
• Edward Said and the Religious Effects of Culture
  by William D. Hart (2000)
• Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians
  by Noam Chomsky, Edward Said (1999)
• Edward Said: The Paradox of Identity
  by Bill Ashcroft, et al (1999)
• After the Last Sky
  by Edward Said, Jean Mohr (1998)
• Open Secrets: Israel Nuclear and Foreign Policies
  by Israel Shahak, Edward Said (1997)
• Culture & Imperialism
  by Edward Said (1997)
• Orientalism
  by Edward Said (1996)
• Culture and Imperialism
  by Edward Said (1994)
• The Question of Palestine
  by Edward Said (1992)
• Beginnings: Intention and Method
  by Edward Said (1987)
• The World, the Text, and the Critic
  by Edward Said (1984)

On-line Books

You can read selected resources, On-line and freely, from questia.com