Table Of ContentEdward Said’s Rhetoric of the Secular
Also available from Continuum:
The Next Step in Studying Religion, Mathieu E. Courville
Edward Said’s Rhetoric of
the Secular
Mathieu E. Courville
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-0-8264-3755-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Courville, Mathieu.
Edward Said’s rhetoric of the secular / Mathieu E. Courville.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0-8264–3755-6 (HB)
ISBN-10: 0–8264-3755–9 (HB)
1. Secularism. 2. Said, Edward W. I. Title.
BL2747.8.C68 2009
211’.6092--dc22 2009016705
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
For our families & familiarities
. . . like a diplomat of terrorism, with a place at the table.
—Edward W. Said
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgments x
“Voyages In”: An Introduction 1
Chapter 1. B eing and Not Being a “Mere” Book: History, Memory,
and Self-Understanding 22
Chapter 2. T he Empire Writes Back: From Bernard Lewis to
Martin Kramer 45
Chapter 3. S cholars of Religion and the Return of the Repressed:
William D. Hart and Carl Olson 65
Chapter 4. E mergent Conversations: Working with and through
Said’s “Religious” Questions 85
Chapter 5. T heoretical Travelogues: A Slight Return from Foucault
Back to Fanon and Sartre 91
Chapter 6. “ Convergences”: “The Other Arab Muslims” and
“The Other America” 109
Chapter 7. “ The Essay as Form” of Resistance: On the Essayistic
Spirit in Said and Adorno 135
Chapter 8. “ Out of Place”: A Conclusion 141
In Lieu of a Postface: An Appreciation of Edward W. Said 145
Vivek H. Dehejia
About the Author(s) 149
Notes 150
Bibliography 213
Index 237
Preface
Representations of the “religious” and the “secular” in Edward Said’s oeuvre
are the central concerns of this book. Some of his critics claim he unduly
dichotomizes these two notions. This study, however, aims to constructively
demonstrate that Said’s oeuvre can be interpreted as far more subtle; his
representations of these integral dimensions of human existence are not so
“Manichean,” not so radically dualistic when studied carefully and critically.
I argue his oeuvre be read as subtly acknowledging religions and/or religiosi-
ties are not something that can be wished away and that secular humanism is
not that which single-handedly deconstructs religion, fi lling the void left in its
wake. Secular humanism, for Said, is a necessary supplement to, as opposed to
a wholesale replacement of, the religious; in this, a needed step toward recon-
ciling divisive identities. Secular humanism, understood here as both a “style of
thought” and as an emergent way of life, aims to reconcile divisive identities
with one another, seeking to reconcile human agents and agencies with
realities such as modernity, modernism, and postmodernism. Such reconcilia-
tory processes, however, can only take place if secular humanism emerges
from within the religious traditions themselves. This book’s introductory chap-
ter aims to make plain the foregoing perspectives.
In the fi rst chapter of this study, I examine recollections from Said’s memoir
as a backdrop or matrix of his views of the religious and the secular, important
for understanding such views. Chapter 2 examines criticism leveled against
Said’s work by certain exemplary critics from within Middle Eastern studies,
namely, Bernard Lewis and Martin Kramer. Chapter 3 examines criticisms lev-
eled against Said’s work from critical locations within Religious Studies, namely,
in the works of William D. Hart and of Carl Olson. In Chapter 4, I discuss prior
work on Said’s notion of the religious and the secular that is more heuristic in
orientation.
Chapter 5 intervenes into a debate within Said scholarship, specifi cally
regarding his intellectual debt to French “high” theorist Michel Foucault, by
showing the equally signifi cant redeployment of some of Frantz Fanon’s
arguments within Said’s work, arguments Fanon himself had decontextualized
and recontextualized from Jean-Paul Sartre’s work on anti-Semitism. Chapter 6
aims to show that via essay writing, Said aimed to deconstruct prevailing stereo-
types of the Middle East, and conversely, of America also. Chapter 7 aims to
Preface ix
theorize Said’s espousal of “The Essay as Form” by comparing Said’s essayism
to that of Theodor Adorno, suggesting that for both the essay is a form of
resistance to what Said calls “epistemologies of imperialism.” Since Said c ritiques
epistemologies of imperialism via an enlightenment rhetoric—a rhetoric based
on a critical theory of the religious—his view of the essay is another prime loca-
tion for thinking what he envisioned by his use of the term “secular.” In this
work’s concluding chapter, I try (i.e., essay) to proverbially “bring it all back
home,” that is, metaphorically to be sure, making clearer what implications
such work may have for contemporary studies of human religiosities and cul-
tures, areas of knowledge that are still crucial today.
I began my study of Edward W. Said’s work before September 11, 2001. Since
that fateful day, I have not ceased, nor could I have in good faith. Moreover,
I enjoyed the encouragements of mentors along this path, two of whom I
should like to especially thank, namely, Professors M. Gardaz and R. Pummer.
Many more mentors do deserve thanks. The studies that constitute this work,
interconnected as they are, are some of the results of my efforts, although not
in isolation, to clarify my thinking about issues Said’s oeuvre forcefully engages.
Much of this was initially presented in 2007 as a doctoral dissertation for the
department of Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. The reader is here
presented with its revised and revisited incarnation. I have not tried to change
the document’s “essential nature,” that is, how it is also an intervention into a
time and place, except where I could do so without altering it beyond
recognition.
In his 1975 publication Beginnings, Said argues, with great subtlety, that the
age of exhaustivity (or the belief in good faith of its possibility) is past. In this
respect then, this work is self-consciously essayistic in spirit and form. Its
strength, like the essay form, is to be found in being suggestive. It is the author’s
hope that both senior and (especially) junior colleagues will recognize many of
the inroads here indicated in their general contours, many not followed to the
extent they deserve. These inroads will be found not only in the text proper, but
many could only be included and briefl y discussed in the endnotes (a scholarly
tradition students of religions such as Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Jonathan
Z. Smith have practiced in exemplary ways). As Chuck Zerby’s book The Devil’s
Details: A History of Footnotes (2001; New York: Touchstone, 2003), makes plain,
there are good reasons, especially within the Humanities, for struggling to keep
this intellectual tradition alive. Moreover, it may be something of a microcosm
of greater ongoing struggles on the stage best called the world.
Mathieu E. Courville
The University of Victoria, BC
April 2009
