Nubar Hovsepian, "Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual" (AUC Press, 2025)

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Hello everybody and welcome back to New Books and Middle Eastern Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I am to remember the host of the channel. Today we'll be talking to Nubarhov Sepian about his new book. edward side the politics of an oppositional intellectual thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today my pleasure maybe for the listeners who don't know you that well can you

Tell a little bit about yourself and what you are working on. Sure. You know, I just retired as an academic. I've been involved in writing. publishing. I founded the publishing house that published Said's Orientalism in Arabic, in Beirut, which was also destroyed as a result of the 82 war, minor details like that. And I have essentially also worked on the United Nations, on the international question, on the question of Palestine.

And the past 21 years, I was a professor at Chapman University here in Orange, California. And before that, I was in Philadelphia and New York. Said was a good friend. I've known him for a long time. And we just, we connected because... how the issue of exile connects us as an Armenian versus as a Palestinian. And we both shared a common denominator, Cairo.

Because I grew up in Cairo the first 30 years of my life, and Saeed enjoyed Cairo. I mean, he found Palestine to be very limited, very small, right? Which it is in terms of size, right? You know, he can put the entire population of Palestine and Lebanon and Syria in a part of Kyrie, not Egypt, just a part of Kyrie. So he can, you know, it's the same way with... Istanbul, how large it is, right? Or the large cities, Shanghai, to almost 20 million. So anyway, the friendship matured with time.

And it was based on mutual respect and loyalty, even though he's 15 years my senior, was 15 years my senior, right? And so... The book itself was an attempt to capture that. It's difficult to capture it because you almost have to mentally acknowledge speaking about Saeed in the past.

And that's a difficult step to take. Thank you so much. And when did you know that you wanted to start writing a book about Edward Said? And why did you want to... Why did you want to write this kind of book? Well, first, why this kind of book? Because I felt that a lot of the other books that have been published on Said, and there are quite a few, right? He's only a significant figure. And there are hatchet jobs, stupid books.

And great books written on Said, right? I actually wrote a chapter in the first book on Edward Said, edited by Michael Sprinker, called... You know, I'll show you the book and see if I can find it right away. Yeah. So Edward Said, the critical reader. Right. So, and the first chapter is Edward Said's connection to Palestine. So I had written on Said before. And then David Barsamian, who does the alternative radio, had me write an introduction to

Said's book, The Pen and the Sword, the set of interviews he did. Now, the reason I was chosen is because the person who had written the first introduction had passed away and so had the subject. Iqbal Ahmad had written it, a brilliant man who I refer to often in my book on Edward Said. So I was left as the final choice, as it were, the alternative, still living, that is, right? And so I've written about Saeed. We knew each other well.

Then I decided that we need to explain what is it about his view of the world and how does that view engage him in politically. That's precisely the simple question I asked. How does humanism inform his politics? So I went with that as the basis, which I think is significantly different. than the other books on said and there are some good ones tim brennan his former student wrote a masterful book

I appreciate. He goes into parts of it, which I don't even cover. But, you know, I didn't try to be comprehensive. I had that one formula that guided me, you know, how humanism informs his politics. Thank you so much, Professor Hofsipian. And as you already told us that you had a close relationship with him, was it kind of difficult for you to write this book?

because of it or did this relationship help you to achieve what you wanted to do with this book it's both it's both it was difficult to write because it was difficult to proceed with the project, right? But at the same time, another set of obstacles occurred. I had finished. five out of the six chapters of the book. And then all of a sudden, I fell ill. I required open heart surgery, five bypasses, which is kind of extreme.

And that kind of sidelined me for three years because mental fog, I was unable to focus. In many ways, I say those three years are gone. I cannot retrieve them. As Poust would say, à la recherche du temps perdu. It's gone. Well, so those are two things. The choice to write and then the difficulty of writing because you want to write in the present but also in the past. And then my illnesses. Those are the two principal obstacles.

that prevented me from finishing it in a timely fashion. And my editor was so gentle, always asking about me, not to push me. but to inquire about my well-being, which I appreciate. Yes, that's important. And coming to the title of the book, The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual,

Can you explain what you wanted to convey with this kind of title? Yeah, see, this is a very selected title. It's judiciously arrived at. That is, in general, writings on intellectuals. There is something called public intellectuals. Well, public intellectuals are, as I say, as in American terms, a dime a dozen, you know. They're all over. So I wanted to come up with a category of the oppositional intellectual, one who... who plays a role in opposing power, opposing orthodoxy, right?

and also addressing his concerns not to power, but to empower people who will resist that power. So this is precisely what I do in the preface of the work and then also in chapter one. And I show how Saeed and Chomsky are very much kindred spirits. in that regard. So I distinguish the opposition intellectual from other types of intellectuals. The intellectual who serves power, you know, people like Sam Huntington.

at Harvard, Bernard Lewis, Edward Said's nemesis, or Edward was his nemesis because he couldn't deal with Edward Said. public opposition, intellectuals who serve power as in Arabs like Kanan Makiyya and Fouad Ajami. So that's one. type, but then also is the native informant, right? Americans love to have brown faces who love the West. I don't know if you understand the meaning of this. Brown faces meaning the other. So the other hates the other and therefore appreciates the American supremacy.

and that America is the world's greatest society. Whatever that means, doesn't mean anything, right? Everybody who enjoys their life, thinks where they live is a great society. without the nationalistic stupidity of the claim. So I think then there is the people who choose to stay on the fence. The classical case of the fence sitter is Albert Camus. Albert Camus in The Stranger, Letranger, right? I mean, after all, he sits on the fence, right?

opposes the French war, but he doesn't support the indigenous population. He stays on the fence. He opposes it to some extent. Unlike his compatriots of the time, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir, who were clearly against the

the French occupation and needed it to end, right? And of course, you know, Sartre wrote the introduction to Fanon's drachd of the earth right which is an important piece of work that appeared at the time so when you look at these intellectuals you know saeed is the oppositional intellectual who doesn't serve power than those who serve power and those who serve power by being native informants. Brown people against their own people. Thank you so much. And your book...

consists of five chapters can you tell us a bit how they are connected with each other and what can we learn from them about said sure see What I wanted to do was, again, that simple formula, I arrived at. which I raised in the first few pages of the preface to the book, that how does humanism inform this politics? But to do that, you need to at least draw a connection.

of this equation to some of his important contributions, Orientalism being one. And of course, in that chapter on Orientalism, I also discuss his critics. But also draw out of it that what is his view that is central to Orientalism is looking at how the West, which is not a singular thing, dominates the East, right?

And then he's looking for the voices that stand out to oppose that domination. So that brings in chapter two, culture and imperialism. And culture and imperialism is... is I think an important book because he travels across multiple locations to investigate African. Latin American figures who constitute the opposition to imperialism, right? I wish Saeed had focused more, say, on people like Amilcar Cabral. He does focus quite a bit on Fanon, deservedly so. He obviously had read...

Cabral because we had discussed Cabral together, especially his essay on the weapon of theory. So he was very respectful of the influence that Cabral had on liberation thinking. for sure, right? So, but that chapter then deals from looking at the West creating domination to, well, how does domination get resisted? Cultural imperialism. So these are the two. And of course, within it, I focus on other works by Said, but these are two kind of pillars.

Then the third and fourth chapter are essentially. Chapter one was the oppositional intellectual. I put the claim as contrasted with the other intellectuals. The second was Orientalism and its afterlives, right? And the third is on imperialism culture. in the colonial present, all right? So the colonial presence is manifested in Iraq. We can see it today, being manifested in Iran, being manifested in the...

remains of the conflicts in Libya, in Syria, you name it, right? So then I say, well, Saeed focused a lot on Palestine.

And one of his important books as a political essay was the question of Palestine. So I divided my treatment of... Palestine, Said's engagement with Palestine in two specific chapters. Four deals with, and it's also a chronological. Said's treatment of Palestine as from the standpoint of solidarity, and then from the standpoint of the critic in chapter five.

you know, we see, and I critique Said as well, you know, said, well, you know, he was a bit too soft on the nationalist movement, right? But then most people who are affiliated with nationalist movements, tend to subdue their criticism. But eventually he got around to it and his criticism was all done to the present. And he criticized not only the Palestinian leadership, but also the peace plans that are not peace plans, as in Oslo, right?

and writers like you know great writers like abish line brilliant israeli historian of iraqi origin right he he wrote a piece next to Edwards on the London Review of Books, in which he welcomed Oslo as a positive development for the future. And Saeed obviously wrote the opposite, right? Two years after that article, especially after Saeed's death, Schleim writes another article saying Saeed was right and I was wrong, right?

He's an honest man. He's also a brilliant man. In his latest book, which is Three Worlds, Avi Schleim, in which he presents himself. as an Arab Jew. It's an important concept, right? In other words, it's not a conflict between Arabs and Jews. The Arab and Jew are one. And Schleim shows that rather effectively.

All right. So with that said, then I wanted to conclude the book with a certain set of reflections. Well, Saeed made all sorts of... attempts to explain the subject of Palestine, of saying we need to have inclusion as the basis of a solution. that the other must be part of the equation, not excluded, right? The other never reciprocated. The Jewish other in New York went after him with a vengeance. His book, Question of Palestine, was critiqued.

by Walter Lacquer, one of the big historians on Israel, Palestine and all that. Nobody saw, with the exception of Iqbal Ahmed, who saw the book as an And as he dubbed it in the title of his review in The Nation magazine, an essay in reconciliation. All right. But I think the. The poise of any crowd wanted complete vengeance, complete domination, which is reflected brilliantly in Netanyahu's a genocidal war today against the people of Palestine in Gaza. So the last chapter opens up.

with a quote from an article that remained unpublished. And I explained why it was unpublished. It was unpublished because Saeed's friends thought it would probably was not positive enough or they would put him in a bad limelight and people would critique him. Guess what? They critiqued him anyway. I was the only one, but I was the junior member of his friends. My view was go ahead with it. Write it, publish it, right? Well, you know...

Now there's a new generation of people who appreciate what Saeed had to offer, right? I mean, you take a young... young meaning in his 40s, I think, early 50s, Peter Beinert. Peter Beinert is now on a book tour of his own book. His first book on Zionism, the first line was, i'm a zionist well he's become now one who says that's too simple that's not critical enough you know uh he he you should actually review his his work uh peter minor it's a book on the war in ghazza

and its impact on the Jewish whatever, as he puts it. So Saeed opens the door to have to engage people, to show them that we must be able to imagine the other as part of our future, as part of our present to lead to that future. That's a very, very... avant-garde position that he presented. And I leave it at that, right? It wasn't reciprocated. There is a new generation of people who see in what he offered a road to pursue further. Thank you so much. And the writings that he...

published are very complex and extensive, as you mentioned earlier. How did you know what kind of writings, essays, books you wanted to choose for this book that you wrote? was important for you to mention from his writings? See, I mean, first I read everything. And then I read a lot of stuff in the archives, Saeed's archive at Columbia University.

when I found some interesting pieces, including the unpublished essay I referred to, although I had a copy of it because Saeed had given me a copy of it. He always gave me copies of things he was writing. All right. But ultimately what I chose to write about had to fit the scope that I defined and the scope that I defined. being informed by a simple proposition of how his humanism informs his politics. So I have to explain the sources of his humanism.

And I deal with that in multiple locations of the work. I deal with a lot of his books and articles and performances. You know, and even some of his writing on music, right? Especially his book with Daniel Berenbaum, Parallels and Paradoxes, right? So, but... Based on that, I was able to also read what many others had written. So for example, one of the...

Saeed's former student, who's also an important professor in his own right, Amir Mufti, finds that, say, Saeed's photo essay with John Berger. after The Last Sky, as probably one of his most important pieces of writing, which I agree, right? And what's interesting is, especially given where you are in Berlin, The book is modeled after a book written about Turkish migrant workers in Germany, which is John Berger's book, The Seventh Man, right?

And that's the model that Saeed and John and the photographer, John Moore. to put together. So that's a major work. But in general, I read everything, but then I decided to bring to bear ideas. that explain the themes I chose in the successive chapters that I outlined already. And maybe you mentioned it already a little bit, but...

especially with what is going on in Palestine today. Can you tell us a bit maybe what we could learn from Edward Said's writing that are still relevant today? Well, the most important thing that Said stood for was to think in terms of the future as a shared space. Now, that's clearly not the message you're getting from Israel today.

And the message you're getting from Israel is of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Right. But then the opposition of forces, which are very few right now. Right. I mean, you know, it's like. You live in a society right now that lost its ability to think during the Second World War, right? And now the same thing. They don't think about Palestine. Anything about Palestine is excluded, right? So Saeed's insistence on the future is imagining the future as us.

not us versus them. To me, that's important. And it still resonates today, right? Because there will be no future without that. There will be constant war. constant conflict. Now, unfortunately, the constant conflict has a very uneven relationship. The Israelis control have the power and the Palestinians don't have power.

Right. But to me, that's a central point that Saeed articulated about Palestine. Of course, his other works that... inform his notion of democratic humanism, his humanistic impulses and all that, his view of power as one to be opposed. which he and Chomsky shared. And so these are the elements that remain consistent to the present in informing young people. informing people who are unschooled about these matters that there are some intelligent ideas that are morally grounded.

that can help us move out of conflict into a future of coexistence rather than separation. Thank you so much, Professor Rost-Bian. I read a lot about your work and about Brun Saeed and how you think about him. And coming to the last question for our podcast, do you have anything that you are working on right now or thinking about?

which your next project could be after this book came out? Yeah, I'm thinking of, you know, as you get older, you start thinking about the past and what it says about the present and future. So I'm thinking about a highly selective memoir. Now, I have lived through war in Lebanon, civil war and Israeli invasions. And what I want, though, is to come up with a formula to deal with time and place more than me. The events...

would be the focus and not me. And what is it about that past that is useful to inform a younger generation, right? I haven't figured out the writing style yet. elements of it. I suppose some autobiographical things that... Why as an Armenian from Egypt, I focused on Palestine? That might be an interesting question, but that's one of the reasons Edward Said and I became friends, right?

And also the Cairo connection. You know, when he and I spoke, we spoke in the Egyptian dialect as opposed to the Palestinian one, right? So that's the type of work I am thinking of, probably modeled after kind of a work by Juan Goytisolo. called Landscapes of War, in which he goes through different areas of conflict and writes about it. So the areas of conflict are more important than...

Juan Goytisolo, who's a brilliant Spanish writer. Thank you so much, Professor Hoffsby, and for sharing your work with us and your experience. And thank you for joining us. uh on the podcast today it was really a pleasure to talk with you thank you so much thank you my pleasure thank you