ABSTRACT
Edward Said is one of those individuals who seem permanently to occupy an embattled, and to their way of thinking principled, kind of middle ground. One of the criticisms levelled at Orientalism is that Said neglects evidence of native agency in general, and indigenous resistance in particular, in a manner which parallels Western or Orientalist attitudes. Orientalism also effects various combinatory moves, bringing together on the one hand two major twentieth-century theorizers of intellectuals, Gramsci and Foucault, and, on the other, a vast, disparate-but-connected group of intellectuals, the Orientalists. Two major aspects of the book are its discussion of resistance and what one could call an emphasis on inter-connectedness, particularly, of course, that of culture and imperialism. The Palestinian struggle also exemplifies something which for Said characterizes both anti-colonial and post-colonial or anti-imperialist resistance, namely people's rejection of the attempt to confine them whether physically, or by means of strategies such as representation.
