Edward Said and the Politics of Worldliness: toward a “Rendezvous of Victory”

This essay addresses both the nature of what it means to be a public intellectual and the politics such an understanding would entail by examining the work of the late Edward Said. Said embodied both a particular kind of politics and a specific notion of how intellectuals should engage public life. The author takes up these issues by providing a critical commentary on the relevance of Said’s notion of wakefulness and how it both shapes his important consideration of academics as oppositional public intellectuals and his related emphasis on cultural pedagogy and cultural politics. The author concludes by arguing that Said’s work and legacy are crucial to rethinking the nature of academic work and the work of academia within the larger context of a democracy under siege.