ABSTRACT
In his book Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said gave two defi nitions of culture: an expanded and a limited one.1 The expanded defi nition conceives culture as encompassing life itself, and the limited one refers to ‘all those practices, like arts of description, communication, and representation, that have relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political realm and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one whose principal aim is pleasure’. As the fi rst defi nition encompasses everything else dealt with in this book, the more limited one is fi tting for the next two chapters; with one reservation perhaps, that of pleasure being one of culture’s principal aims. In the Middle East it often seems that artists wish to convey pain and hurt as much as enjoyment and gaiety.
