History, Literature and Geography (1995)

Document Type : Keynote Address

Author

Columbia University

Abstract

In this keynote address (1994), Edward Said (1935-2003) establishes interconnections of history and geography with literary studies. Said here adopts an interdisciplinary approach which establishes critical ground for developing literary methods of investigation consciously adopting history and geography as critical approaches. The article establishes connections between critical terms such as temporality, spatiality, hegemony, historical imagination, as well as methods of literary inquiry such as “historicist philology”, “praxis”, and tracing “homological function”. Said concludes his address by raising the following question: “Is there a way for us to understand the connection not simply between history and literature, but between several histories and several literatures?” It is this question and its provided answers that bring us into the investigation of history, literature, and geography, subverting and expanding hegemonic Anglocentric and Eurocentric visions of the world. At the same time, this discussion, with its variety of critical methods, that some go back to the early 20th century, still continue to provide a good deal of relevance today. In her foreword to the article, Hala Kamal suggests that literary approaches can help us engage with the contradictions and challenges emerging in the 21st century at the crossroads of literatures, histories, and geographies, as we move forward into the critical realms of decoloniality and transnationalism.
Foreword by Hala Kamal.

Keywords

Keynote speech delivered at the Third International Symposium on Comparative Literature (1994); published in the Symposium Proceedings: History in Literature, ed. Hoda Gindi, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University (1995), pp. 7-22. 

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