Worldliness of texts

Starting from Orientalism (1978) through Culture and Imperialism (1993) to the latest Guardian article "A Window on the World" (August 2, 2003), Said declared his preference for multipolarity as a cure for a world, which, thanks to the American hegemony, was becoming threateningly unipolar. Reminding everyone of us that identities, over which so much of blood was being spilt in the world today, were not fixed and unchanging essences, he spoke passionately in favour of a world of "mixtures, migrations and crossings over", but without meaning to empty it, in postmodernist fashion, of all historical content.

If there was one theme which I took home for closer reflection, it was Said's advocacy of the notion of the intellectual as someone who consciously refused any affiliations with power. Intellectual work, he said, was sustained by "openness to occasions and surprises", by keeping alive in us that childlike capacity for wonder. Edward Said, whom the world will miss as long as it slides on in its uneven, unjust ways, had the true intellectual's passion and pluck for self-effacement. HIMANSU S. MOHAPATRA The Hindu Literary Review Sunday, Dec 07, 2003