Abstract
This paper returns to Edward Said’s call for a new commitment to a “radical humanism” in late works such as Representations of the Intellectual (1996) and Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004), which appeared one year after his death, as well as in subsequent discussions of his work in collections such as Waiting for the Barbarians (2008). Running through all of these discussions is the fundamental question that became increasingly central to Said’s work: what are the connections between those diverse forms of knowledge, creative expression, and critical inquiry that we associate with the humanities and the underlying concept of humanism? And inseparable from this: what is the public role of the intellectual today? For decades, theoretical debates influenced by Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser dismissed humanism for its complicity with the very power structures that it claimed to oppose, but as Said argued, this position also entailed an almost complete negation of the possibility of human agency. Rather than confronting this dilemma as a problem, Said argued that it is more accurate and more productive to recognize it as a valuable starting point as we position ourselves to concentrate on the extent to which the humanities still have the potential to help us to be more fully engaged with the issues of our day, a position which implies, explicitly or otherwise, a model of agency that was already implicit in his arguments for a form of radical humanism.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Edward Said, Radical Humanism, Humanities, Public Value, Agency
