Said Said

This fall I’m teaching an advanced ethical theory course featuring C. René Padilla, James Baldwin, and Edward Said. All three are exemplary public intellectuals committed to promoting justice, mercy, and love within and without their respective colonized communities. They’re writings are worthy of our sustained attention.

While revisiting Said’s book The World, The Text, and The Critic, I found this quotation about Socratic critical distance arresting.

A knowledge of history, a recognition of the importance of social circumstances, an analytical capacity for making distinctions: these trouble the quasi-religious authority of being comfortably at home among one’s people, supported by known powers and acceptable values, protected against the outside world. (p. 16)

Historical consciousness, an eye to social context, and a knack for constructing meaningful distinctions are necessary for Socratic self-examination and critical consciousness. Like Socrates, people with these three traits never feel at ease in their communities. They feel unsettled. And their consciousness unsettles others. Consequently, the established powers find Socratic figures unacceptable, disturbers of “traditional values,” and beyond protection. For these gatekeepers, Socrates and his kin aren’t just a pesty gadfly; they’re a menace. And their existence demands resorting to law and order with a splash of hemlock. Just skim Plato’s Apology and you’ll see what I mean.

A parting word. Said writes as a Palestinian. He isn’t simply taking a Socratic shot at the US empire and its storehouse of empire-maintaining gatekeepers. He’s also offering a painful insight into the experiences of a historically and socially conscious exile whose people are suffering genocide and settler colonialism. For a fuller sense of how these words apply to his own people, and especially his family, see Said’s memoir Out of Place.