Introduction

Abstract

Edward Said’s political thought yields a perspective from which two internally diverse communities—Israeli and Palestinian—might work separately and then together to establish the groundwork for a peaceful political solution to a seemingly intractable conflict. In Said’s work, most of the heavy lifting—dealing with the history, consequences, and ongoing practices of displacement; confronting the checkered history of “democracy” in facilitating those practices; and, finally, the development of a healthy detachment from narrow and short-sighted versions of self and other—must be done before we can speak of a humane politics (Said finds the term “democracy” apropos) in the region. On my reading, the implication of Said’s political and critical work on Palestine/Israel is clear: nothing that happens or has happened between the two communities can be viewed as “political” in any constructive sense until a firmer groundwork of equality and openness is established between the two communities, on which they can interact. Said’s political theory, I argue, may be characterized primarily as a prelude to what we ordinarily understand as politics.