Recognizing the Narrative, Part II: Edward Said and the importance of criticism
The 'question of Palestine' as told through Culture and Imperialism, Recognizing the Stranger, and Enter Ghost
Happy New Year’s eve! Last week, we talked about Isabella Hammad’s written works, exploring recognition as the moment when the truth dawns on a character.
In that essay I talked all about the idea of recognition on an individual, or metaphysical level (I highly recommend reading Part I, if you haven’t yet, prior to perusing today’s newsletter).
But recognition can also be seen as a political term; the way a country is ‘recognized’ as legitimate, or worthy of attention.
In Part II this week, I want to explore the idea of recognition as a diplomatic or imperial viewpoint by analyzing the written works of Isabella Hammad and Edward Said. In doing so, I hope I can convince you of the importance of criticism — its role, its applications, why we need it.
*This essay is free of spoilers — read on without fear!
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“When someone well-meaning seeks to “humanize” another human being, it’s worth investigating why that human being’s humanity should be in question in the first place.”
— Isabella Hammad | Source
In 1978, Edward Said, a Palestinian-American academic, critic, and activist, published Orientalism, and in doing so, became an established cultural critic, revolutionizing the way we think about colonialism, empire, and other cultures.
While today he is often referred to in academic circles when discussing politics and anthropology, Said was primarily a literary critic. His first published book, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, critiqued the West’s struggle for a sense of self, using Conrad’s personal letters to help him draw parallels between his work and his personal viewpoints.
Years later, in 1993, Edward Said published Culture and Imperialism. The central thesis of this book is that narratives, and the way they are constructed, are crucial in defining culture and, by extension, crafting and justifying the imperial mission.
“…nations themselves are narrations. The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them.”
— Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
We talk much more about Said (and his thoughts on Jane Austen) in a recent podcast episode:
Like Said, Hammad asserts that the narratives we hear are primarily those constructed by the West, often in the interest of self-preservation. And when it comes to Palestine, we are witnessing the same narrative of imperial prowess that we have witnessed for centuries.
Hammad writes, in Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative, that the question of Palestine has been written into a narrative of Israel vs. Palestine by the West — which ignores, or willfully obscures, its own role in the problem.
"And yet the pressure is again on Palestinians to tell the human story that will education and enlighten others and so allow for the conversion of the repentant Westerner, who might then descend onto the stage if not as a hero then perhaps as some kind of deus ex machina."
— Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger
And yet: Hammad also proposes ways to reclaim this narrative. Drawing from several global sources in her essay, she describes how dialogues among oppressed peoples can still force others to take note — without explicitly catering to them.
In Hammad’s most recent novel, Enter Ghost, the protagonist, Sonia, becomes heavily involved in a staging of Hamlet in the West Bank. Throughout the book, we learn how the play, and the characters’ involvement in the play, becomes politicized.
Hammad easily could have chosen an overtly political play, like MacBeth or Richard IV — but Hamlet, which many of us associate with familial ties, intimate relationships, and existential questions, compels us to draw a connection between the individual and the group.
The decisions that happen on a small, personal scale can mean just as much as a nation’s actions.
Having read Enter Ghost, I now feel that the political nature of Hamlet is so crucial to its story, that I wonder how I missed it before. Indeed, the last line of Hamlet is “Go bid the soldiers shoot,” spoken by Fortinbras as he is about to take the castle — this was the original title that Hammad had in mind for her book.
In an interview on the podcast Between the Covers, Hammad speaks about the process of weaving politics and life into art, and vice versa:
“…to your previous question about crossing borders, there is something very much about the colonial context and the structures of checkpoints of border crossings that are very, very theatrical, but I feel very weirdly theatrical and performative.”
— Isabella Hammad
Hammad is interested, most of all, in the processes by which people become politically aware. In this same interview she talks about her first book, The Parisian, and its unwitting protagonist:
“…that happens more to Sonya than it does to Midhat, because of the context, he’s politicized to the extent that everybody living in Nablus has a political sense. It’s the air they breathe, but he’s not a political actor and he’s not a hero. And so I suppose I’m interested in that process, how the mind changes, how individuals recognize themselves as part of a collective.”
— Isabella Hammad
I love that part at the end, where she says “that process, how the mind changes, how individuals recognize themselves as part of a collective.”
There are many who believe that the arts should be free of political discourse. And, there are many more who believe that a “problematic” work should be excluded from the canon — that people should be canceled for having the wrong viewpoint.
Said himself addressed ‘cancel culture’ many decades before the term even entered cultural consciousness. In reference to Jane Austen, and, in particular, Mansfield Park, he writes:
“Austen belonged to a slave-owning society, but do we therefore jettison her novels as so many trivial exercises in aesthetic frumpery? Not at all, I would argue, if we take seriously our intellectual and interpretative vocation to make connections, to deal with as much of the evidence as possible, fully and actually, to read what is there or not there, to see complementarity and interdependence instead of isolated, venerated, or formalized experience that excludes and forbids the hybridizing intrusions of human history.”
— Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
In other words, we should be critical in the way we read. We should be making reading political, just as life is political, and art is a reflection of life.
These exercises and analyses will not only enhance our own understanding of the world — but they will also increase our appreciation for the work itself.
Critiquing Jane Austen’s books should not decrease my appreciation for her work; it can only amplify it.
Hammad is, in many ways, an intellectual descendant of Said. She has herself written that Said’s work has influenced her writing — alongside dozens of other writers and thinkers.
It can be easy to feel discouraged by the conversations surrounding current events — the ‘question of Palestine’ is one, and there are countless others that demand our attention. The vitriol, closed-mindedness, and ignorance we face — primarily online, but elsewhere, too — can make it hard to continue these conversations.
But Hammad, again, has some words of wisdom for us:
"In what often feels like a cynical age, I have found Said's engagement with fiction as an heir to a particular kind of humanism encouraging and even consoling: a humanism that can evolve and expand beyond its exclusionary, bourgeois European and largely male origins, and that commits itself to crossing boundaries between cultures and disciplines — a humanism that holds the practice of criticism close to heart."
— Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger
— Shruti
Reflecting on 2024: Books and More
Today is the last day of the year and if you want even more to reflect on today, be sure to check out our final episode of the year in which we share our top ten reads of 2024, review a few new releases, and more!
We will be on hiatus from the podcast for the next few weeks, but you can still find us here at The Novel Tea Newsletter — if you love getting these emails each week, consider forwarding them to a friend!
See you in 2025 :)