Historically famous critics

Edward Said

1935-2003 · Palestinian-American · 20th century

Palestinian-American literary critic who founded postcolonial studies with Orientalism

Edward Said was a Columbia University literary critic whose 1978 book Orientalism showed how Western scholarship built a false, self-serving image of the East to justify empire. That argument founded the field of postcolonial studies and reshaped how scholars read the link between knowledge and power. As a prominent Palestinian voice, he also turned his criticism on U.S. and Israeli policy and on media portrayals of Islam, insisting that culture is never innocent of politics.