Summary of Edward W. Said's Culture and Imperialism

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The poet is a talent that works within a tradition that cannot be simply inherited. The poet’s task is to obtain a tradition that involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which is a perception of the pastness of the past and its presence.

#2 The past shapes our present understanding and views of the present. How we represent the past determines how we view the present. The American and Iraqi versions of the past clashed during the Gulf War in 1990–91.

#3 The modern imperial experience has had a profound impact on the lives of individuals around the world. The British and French empires between them controlled vast territories, which were later liberated from their control.

#4 The world is one, and we are all connected to it in some way. We must consider the impact of empires on art, and how it can be difficult to separate the two.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669399308

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Insights on Edward W. Said's Culture and Imperialism

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The poet is a talent that works within a tradition that cannot be simply inherited. The poet’s task is to obtain a tradition that involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which is a perception of the pastness of the past and its presence.

#2

The past shapes our present understanding and views of the present. How we represent the past determines how we view the present. The American and Iraqi versions of the past clashed during the Gulf War in 1990–91.

#3

The modern imperial experience has had a profound impact on the lives of individuals around the world. The British and French empires between them controlled vast territories, which were later liberated from their control.

#4

The world is one, and we are all connected to it in some way. We must consider the impact of empires on art, and how it can be difficult to separate the two.

#5

The rise of the West, and Western power, allowed the imperial metropolitan centers to acquire and accumulate territory and subjects on a truly astonishing scale.

#6

The American experience was from the beginning founded upon the idea of an imperium, a dominion, state or sovereignty that would expand in population and territory, and increase in strength and power.

#7

The primacy of the British and French empires by no means obscures the modern expansion of Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and, in a different way, Russia and the United States.

#8

The expansion of the great Western empires was fueled by profit and hope of further profit, but there was also a commitment to them over and above profit. This allowed decent people to accept the notion that distant territories and their native peoples should be subjugated.

#9

The imperial past is not completely contained within the era of high nineteenth-century imperialism, but it has entered the reality of hundreds of millions of people. We must take stock of the nostalgia for empire, as well as the anger and resentment it provokes in those who were ruled.

#10

There is a serious split in today’s critical consciousness, which allows us to spend a lot of time elaborating the aesthetic theories of Carlyle and Ruskin while ignoring the authority that their ideas simultaneously bestowed on the subjugation of inferior peoples and colonial territories.

#11

The novel Dombey and Son is a prime example of how Dickens expresses the egoism of the British mercantile ethos. The book is a description of Dombey’s overweening self-importance, and his coercive attitude to his barely born child.

#12

The connections between literature and culture and imperialism are complex and dynamic. I am not trying to separate them, but to connect them. I am interested in this for the main philosophical and methodological reason that cultural forms are hybrid, mixed, and impure.

#13

There is a growing awareness that all cultures have an aspiration to sovereignty, sway, and dominance. In this, French and British, Indian and Japanese cultures agree. However, they also concur that these are not unitary or monolithic cultures but rather hybrid experiences that incorporate many contradictory elements.

#14

The Invention of Tradition is a book that explores the origins of traditions, and how they are created and perpetuated by the ruling classes. It demonstrates how the European ruling classes needed to project their power backward in time, and so they created traditions.

#15

The legacy of imperialism is extremely complex, and it is difficult to handle. Many people in England feel some remorse or regret about their nation’s Indian experience, but there are also many people who miss the good old days.

#16

The post-colonial world is too small and interconnected to allow for the passively happening of conflicts between Western and non-Western cultures.

#17

The world we live in today is a result of the imperialism of the past, and it is up to us