Culture and Imperialism

Exploring great works of the Western tradition — including Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Austen's Mansfield Park, Verdi's Aida, and Camus's L'Etranger — Edward Said, renowned literary and cultural critic, Professor at Columbia University, and author of numerous books, including Orientalism, exposes how the reach of Western imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been nothing less than devastating.

Culture and Imperialism focuses on how power and ideology work, both consciously and unconsciously, to form and maintain a system of domination that goes beyond military force. Taking up narratives brought back by Westerners from the colonized world, Said examines the language, images, and symbols therein to show how their formative, rather than simply expressive, nature has worked to shape the identity, imagination, subjectivities, history, culture, and interactions of the oppressor and the oppressed. He contends that such images have historically shaped how the West has negatively conceptualized the "other," justifying its obligation to rule.

Moving from the development of the empire to global struggles for indigenous freedom, Said cogently reveals the separatist nature of nationalism and attempts to illuminate the possibilities of global community. The critique, insights, and outlook found in Culture and Imperialism are certainly timely in the United States, where nationalism and Western "common cultural values" continue to be woven into the political rhetoric and the very fabric of public education in which mainstream students are taught to celebrate the uniqueness of their tradition at the expense of others. This book is of major importance to any educator who wishes to rupture this country's imperialistic practices and explore the possibilities of a pedagogy and politics of difference.

Main theme:

Said's (Orientalism) main theme in this dense, academic study is how literature has reflected and bolstered British, French and U.S. imperialisms, which use self-justifying rhetoric to condone the West's dominance and exploitation of non-Western people.

A relationship between Culture and Imperialism:

It is important to discuss the relationship between culture and imperialism. Edward Said relates it too. Though he directly does not say it, yet throughout the lecture he tries to prove that imperialism always impacts culture.

Edward Said had experienced life from every perspective. After studying a lot of books, he became a man of letter, especially in the field, under discussion. He can explain any topic, but a writer can illustrate best what he himself has experienced in his life. Having a background of a colonized country, he knows the drawbacks of imperialism, which is a sick practice to make a nation valueless.

To sum up, according to Edward Said, culture is the identification of a country. Imperialism, on the other hand, is no more than greed for power, resources, and land; therefore, it ruins the identification/culture.

Culture and Imperialism | Main Ideas:

The Merits of a Contrapuntal Approach

Throughout Culture and Imperialism, Said stresses the merits of a contrapuntal approach to the complex interrelationships of culture and imperialism. He builds this approach on a musical analogy. In Western music counterpoint is the ordered combination of different melodic lines. To forge a contrapuntal analysis, the researcher or historian must hold in mind two or more distinct points of view simultaneously, doing justice to each perspective.

Thus, in his discussion of "discrepant experiences" in Chapter 1, Part 4, Said juxtaposes two conflicting accounts of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. These accounts, which date from the 1820s, present strikingly different evaluations of the French conquest. In Chapter 2, Part 2, Said embarks on a contrapuntal exploration of Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park (1814). He stresses the social standing and way of life of Sir Thomas Bertram, one of the novel's major figures. Bertram depends on the profits from an imperialist slave-operated plantation on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Jane Austen may not emphasize this plot strand, but it is nevertheless crucial to the book's plot.

Likewise, in his analyses of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Rudyard Kipling's Kim, Said also depends on a contrapuntal approach. Despite criticizing some aspects of imperialism severely, for example, Conrad was unable or unwilling to imagine the liberation of subjugated peoples. Kipling ends Kim by enrolling the protagonist in the British Secret Service. Said depends on a similar counterpoint when he analyzes E.M. Forster's A Passage to India.

The Novel as Exponent of Imperialism

For Said the novel is the literary form that goes hand in hand with the phenomenon of imperialism. He points out one of the first English novels, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1720), features a protagonist who "creates a fiefdom for himself on a distant, non-European island." The growth of the novel's popularity coincides precisely with the flourishing of nationalism and imperialism. By 1840 the novel had become the literary form in two of the nations Said explores most fully: Britain and France.

Said expands on his claim for the centrality of the novel as an exponent of imperialism in Chapter 2, Part 1. There he asserts that "without empire there is no European novel as we know it." He devotes much of Culture and Imperialism to analyzing imperialist themes in a variety of novels. These novels include Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, and L'Étranger (The Stranger) and La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus.

The Universal Hybridity of Cultures

Said introduces the concept of hybridity as early as Chapter 1, Part 2. He comments that although the human urge to dominate may be universal, people have become more conscious than ever before of borrowings, connections, and interdependence.

In his discussion of the themes of resistance culture in Chapter 3, Part 2, Said stresses anew the fundamental notion of hybridity. He argues persuasively the history of all cultures is a history of borrowings. For example, western science borrowed from the Arabs, and Arabs in turn borrowed from Greece and India.

Said concludes his book by invoking once again the notion of hybridity. Labels, he asserts, are merely starting points, and no one in this globalized world, which is rife with movements and migrations, is purely one thing. Recognition of this truth can save people from reductive and divisive stereotypes.

Culture and Imperialism | Glossary

contrapuntal analysis: (n) examination that takes conflicting tensions into account

culture: (n) collection of practices separate from the social and political spheres, often taking aesthetic forms

decolonization: (n) withdrawal by an imperialist power from a colony or dominion

exceptionalism: (n) the concept that a particular group both deserves and enjoys special favor or consideration

globalization: (n) close international linkage and interdependence of economic enterprises

hegemony: (n) social, cultural, or economic influence of a dominant group over others

hybridity: (n) mixture or intermingling of separate or disparate elements

imperialism: (n) policy of extending national influence by territorial acquisitions

intifada: (n) Arabic for "rebellion" or "uprising"

lingua franca: (n) Latin for "common or shared language"

modernization: (n) process of updating or modernizing

nationalism: (n) a sense of national awareness that proclaims the superiority of one nation over others

nativism: (n) aggressive self-promotion by a group regarding itself as superior to outsiders or immigrants

négritude: (n) French for "blackness"; a sense of pride in African heritage

Orientalism: (n) beliefs about the cultural characteristics of Asia and the Middle East

Pax Americana: (n) Latin for "American peace"; a relatively peaceful state in which American influence prevails

polarization: (n) division into two sharply contrasting beliefs or sets of opinion

Third World: (n) the collected group of underdeveloped nations in the world