ABSTRACT

Today, the basic assumptions of Orientalism are conventional, indeed axiomatic, in many areas of the humanities. In one important respect, however, Said’s progress from margin to center seems to have been reversed. In Representations of the Intellectual, Said unequivocally declared that the “true intellectual is a secular being.” Adorno’s arguments are made entirely in the secular tradition, based on the solid ground of philosophy, economics, and musical theory. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern certain continuities that unite the various significances acquired by the term in his work. The concepts of the contingent and the secular explicitly merge in Vico’s idea of “gentile” history, which he elaborated in The New Science. One of the most compelling arguments against the two-state solution was that it involved, at least in practical effect, abandoning the principle that exiled Palestinians had the right of return to their former homes in Israel.