Nubar Hovsepian, Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual (American University in Cairo Press, 2025).
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Nubar Hovsepian (NH): As I note in the Preface of my book, Stuart Schaar suggested I write a book about Edward Said similar to the book he had written about our mutual friend, the late Eqbal Ahmad. After this, I experimented with the idea through talks delivered at various universities and conferences. But I was not ready to write yet. I needed more time to muster the courage to write in the past tense (but always present) about Edward Said.
Others have written worthy books, but my book focuses mostly on Said’s politics. To do so, I answer a simple question: how did Said’s humanism inform his politics? I view Said as a humanist and a political thinker, who was suspicious of statist authority, but politically he chose Palestine as a test case for true universalism.
After writing the first five chapters, illness interrupted the completion of this book. After a three-year interregnum, I completed the last chapter and the editing process in the context of the start of the ongoing Israeli genocide of Gaza.
J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?
NH: I posit that Edward Said and Noam Chomsky are the quintessential oppositional intellectuals insisting on challenging systems of authority and domination. The oppositional intellectual is juxtaposed with the “native informant” (Fouad Ajami and Kanaan Makiyya); the servants of power—a large cohort of cheerleaders for war against Arabs and Muslims (Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis); and the “morally anguished” who sit on the fence (Albert Camus and Michael Walzer). I compare Said’s trenchant critique of US policy and militarism, and his advocacy of Palestinian rights, to the servile views of the servants of power, be they foreign or native.
The book is divided into six chapters that trace the development of Said’s humanism through his seminal works, Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, leading to his engagements with liberation and resistance. In this context, Said chose to affiliate with and be part of communities of resistance. He thus publicly identified with the Palestinian movement, for which he demonstrated his solidarity, as well as criticism.
The final chapter summarizes the puerile and vindictive attacks on Said, not only by right wing zealots, but also by liberal Zionists like Michael Walzer and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. Unlike these critics, Said always insisted that the future must be based on inclusion. Said’s humanism is not abstract; he advocated for direct political engagement in “seeking peace and reconciliation between adversaries.” He advocated for ending systems of domination by opening the door for the creation of “coexistence among human communities.”
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
NH: My work on Edward Said is a direct continuation of my previous work on Palestine and Lebanon. I first wrote about him in the first book on Said’s work, edited by Michael Sprinker in 1992. But this book was more difficult to write because of my close friendship with Edward Said. I had to wade through multiple archives (of Said, Ahmad, and Chomsky) and read many an unreadable text by some critics. I learned that after Orientalism, Edward adopted the essay as his form of writing (borrowed from Adorno) to deal with worldly and local issues; he concluded that the essay (relatively short and skeptical) is central to the production of (secular) criticism.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
NH: I hope to attract the non-specialist reader, particularly young and critically engaged political activists. They would benefit from learning about Edward Said, the oppositional intellectual. I hope to reach readers of the Nation, the London Review of Books, and the New Left Review, as well as Middle East scholars and writers.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
NH: My pursuit of further projects is hampered by medical conditions (heart and kidney dialysis). But if my health holds up, I want to construct a hybrid memoir of sorts. It would be informed by the example of Juan Goytisolo’s Landscapes of War. The focus would be on struggles (events) in specific times (for example, the civil war in Lebanon) which I experienced. But the focus would also be on the significance of these historic times, and much less on me as the observer. The idea is brewing in my head. I imagine it as a letter to the young about the significance of not-so-distant times.
Excerpt from the book (from the Preface, pages xiii to xviii)
…In his dual roles as a prolific scholar and as an oppositional intellectual, Said insisted that boundaries and barriers must be transgressed. Said, like Noam Chomsky, believed that it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies, hypocrisy, and deceptions of the holders of power…both Said and Chomsky maintain that oppositional intellectuals should reject the dominant liberal consensus and simultaneously commit themselves to solidarity with those struggling against oppression anywhere and everywhere…
In his eulogy of Said, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish observed, “Edward placed Palestine in the world’s heart, and the world in the heart of Palestine.” But Edward Said was not only a Palestinian; he was more nuanced and complex. He is one of a class of modern thinkers, along with Raymond Williams and Michel Foucault, Natalie Davis and E.P. Thompson, who critically interrogated the modernist project. Like Williams and Foucault, his interrogation shows us how this project has resulted in oppression and exploitation. These… thinkers reconfigured the intellectual world by showing how seemingly intractable…forces of oppression could be fought. Said is clearly influenced by Foucault, but he diverges from Foucault and arrives at a more pronounced understanding of agency, resistance, and liberation. In so doing, he aligns more closely with Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, and more contemporaneously, with his friend the late Eqbal Ahmad.
The Book’s Central Idea
…In this modest book, I cannot offer a comprehensive intellectual biography… Rather, [I am] guided by a simple inquiry: How does Said’s humanism inform his politics? Most authors writing on Edward Said have not focused systematically on his politics as an oppositional intellectual. Said’s literary career and politics feed into each other, and they connect his interest in exiled writers—or writers out of place with his political and personal affiliations—with Palestine, the Middle East, and the formerly colonized world. To students of Said’s cultural criticism, I offer a measured and educated guide to Said’s political engagements and contributions. In this capacity, I dub Said the oppositional intellectual par excellence, a notion I develop more fully in the first chapter.
My Friendship With Edward
…Before relocating to New York from Beirut in late 1978, I co-founded with Hani Hindi and al-Hakam Darwaza a publishing house called the Institute for Arab Research. A few months after the publication of Orientalism (1978), I approached Said to secure his permission to publish an Arabic edition. He was suspicious and bluntly informed me that he had already secured an Arabic-language publisher. Within a few weeks, he called me early in the morning to ask: “Are you serious about the offer to produce an Arabic edition?” I confirmed our seriousness and told him that we would secure a subsidy to ensure a proper translation of the book. He eventually relented but insisted that I be present at the meeting with our senior publisher, Hani Hindi. As promised, I was in Beirut in January 1980 for the signing of the contract. I mention this episode because I came to learn that Edward insisted on loyalty and trust from his friends. I proved my loyalty, and our friendship took off. But loyalty was a two-way street, and Edward would demonstrate his loyalty to me in a variety of ways.
…By 1980,…the frequency of my contact with Edward increased. I would often visit him at his office. He would check in with me through early morning calls. Edward was an insomniac whose workday started in the early morning hours; hence, a 6:00 am call seemed appropriate to him. He wanted to know about my family—Armenian exiles who lived in Egypt, where I was born. Sometime later, he penned one of his first articles on exile, published in Granta, which he also incorporated in his book on the subject. In it, he recounts “my friend Noubar’s” family experience. My Armenian background and my choice to affiliate with Palestine fascinated Edward. Indeed, I spent most of the 1970s in Beirut, advocating the Palestinian quest for self-determination. This fact, more than anything else, intrigued Edward and drew us closer as friends. My connection to Palestine was not abstract; rather, it was grounded in the quotidian struggle for Palestinian liberation…
…We conspired for justice together. He relied on my organizational skills to put together meetings, conferences, and seminars to discuss the challenges facing the Palestinian movement. Some of these efforts are amply discussed in chapters 4 and 5 of this book. We traveled together to attend sessions of the Palestine National Council (PNC), of which he was a member for a few years. We worked with attorneys to protect Palestinian representation in the United States, which was being challenged by the us administration. I organized events on his behalf, which are detailed in chapters 4 and 5.
…When I traveled to Tunis or to Beirut in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, he expected me to call to keep him informed of what I was experiencing. Once when I was in Tunis, Edward’s mother Hilda passed away at her domicile in Washington, DC. I called to express my condolences. He told me that he would have been hurt had I not called. He felt quite adrift after his mother’s death. He seemed unable to work at home. Several of his friends met him over lunch to help ease the pain of grieving. I met him on Broadway, across from the main entrance of Columbia University.
…At times, we would get together to enjoy each other’s company, and toward the end of his life we remembered and honored his departed friends (Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod). At other times, he would ask me to stand in for him at an event. This is how I ended up accompanying his daughter Najla to the taping of interviews with Nelson Mandela for Nightline, held at the City College of New York…
In writing about Edward, I have relied on my daily diaries to reconstruct certain events and meetings. I spent long hours at the special collections of Columbia University’s libraries to read parts of his archives. I was also aided by two other archives that capture the nature of the relationship between Edward and his dear friends, Eqbal Ahmad (Hampshire College) and Noam Chomsky (MIT)…
Edward asked me to accompany him more than once to the hospital where he was subjected to chemo and radiation therapy for his medical condition, chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He would drive to Long Island Jewish Medical Center for his treatment and to see his doctor, Kanti Rai. I would drive the car back, and he often would doze off during the long trek home. On one occasion, he insisted that we go to lunch at a small bistro on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. By then, both of his dear friends, Eqbal and Ibrahim, had passed away. Though we did not usually drink at lunch, he ordered single malt scotch for us to toast our departed friends.
…Edward’s biggest asset was that he insisted on telling the truth. His political views have proven prescient. He combined his politics with a clear moral message. Edward was not a tactician; rather, he connected his political message to serving truth and justice. I start Chapter 6 with a long quote from an unpublished essay written by Edward,…In this essay, Said offers a vision that insists on inclusion. He explicitly challenges Jewish intellectuals to throw away their blinders. He suggests that the road ahead is clearly marked: “We are either to fight for justice, truth, and the right to honest criticism, or we should simply give up the title of intellectual.” These words, written in 1989, still resonate today.