Culture and Imperialism

Citation

Said, E. W. (2024). Culture and Imperialism. Vintage Classics. (First published 1993.)

Chapter Summary

Context and Argument

Said describes Culture and Imperialism as growing out of lectures given in 1985 and 1986 and as a sequel to Orientalism that widens its argument from the Middle East to a general pattern of relations between the modern Western metropolis and its overseas territories. Two threads run through it: a worldwide pattern of imperial culture, and a history of resistance to empire that, in his words, usually succeeded in the end. The book concentrates on the novel, which he treats as especially important in forming imperial attitudes and references. He argues that stories matter because the struggle over land was also fought in narrative, and the power to narrate, or to block other narratives, links culture and imperialism. The edition is about 540 pages and is divided into an introduction and four chapters, each with numbered sections.

Introduction

The introduction sets out two senses of "culture": the arts of description and representation that have relative autonomy from economic and political life, and the refining ideal of the best that has been known and thought. It illustrates the method with two novels. Dickens's Great Expectations is read through its convict, Magwitch, and the penal colony of Australia, and Conrad's Nostromo through the American financier Holroyd and the pattern of outside control in a Latin American republic. Said treats Conrad as both critic and product of imperialism. He also looks ahead to the "new alignments" across borders that challenge fixed ideas of identity.

Chapter 1: Overlapping Territories, Intertwined Histories

The chapter's five sections are: Empire, Geography, and Culture; Images of the Past, Pure and Impure; Two Visions in Heart of Darkness; Discrepant Experiences; and Connecting Empire to Secular Interpretation. It argues that Western and non-Western histories overlap and cannot be read apart, and it proposes reading metropolitan culture together with the territories it ruled.

Chapter 2: Consolidated Vision

The longest chapter has eight sections: Narrative and Social Space; Jane Austen and Empire; The Cultural Integrity of Empire; The Empire at Work: Verdi's Aida; The Pleasures of Imperialism; The Native Under Control; Camus and the French Imperial Experience; and A Note on Modernism. It takes canonical works in the British and French traditions and in opera and asks what role empire plays in them. Reviewer Michael Gorra called the chapter on Austen's Mansfield Park one of the best in the book.

Chapter 3: Resistance and Opposition

The five sections are There Are Two Sides; Themes of Resistance Culture; Yeats and Decolonization; The Voyage In and the Emergence of Opposition; and Collaboration, Independence, and Liberation. The chapter turns to the culture of resistance, with writers and thinkers such as Yeats, Fanon and C. L. R. James, and examines the limits of nativism and of nationalism once independence is won.

Chapter 4: Freedom from Domination in the Future

The final chapter has three sections: American Ascendancy: The Public Space at War; Challenging Orthodoxy and Authority; and Movements and Migrations. It brings the story to the United States as the leading power after Europe and ends with a call for intellectuals to look beyond national interests.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapter 1

• Imperialism: defined as the practice, theory and attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory.
• Culture in two senses: practices of representation with relative autonomy, and the refining idea of a society's best thought and knowledge.
• Narrative and power: the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming, ties culture to empire.

Chapters 2–3

• Contrapuntal reading: reading a metropolitan work with awareness of the imperial history behind it, as with Mansfield Park.
• Structure of attitude and reference: the pattern of references to empire in a culture, such as the colonies in Dickens's novels.
• Culture of resistance: the oppositional writing and thought of colonised peoples, treated in Chapter 3.
• Nativism: the turn to a single, essential identity that Said treats as a trap on the way to liberation.

Chapter 4

• American ascendancy: the United States as the new centre of a civilising mission.
• The intellectual's role: the chapter closes by urging public intellectuals to look beyond national interests.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A sustained argument about culture and power. Gorra, writing in the New York Times Book Review, described Said's account of the dialectical relation between imperialism and resistance as the most persuasive he knew and admired the balance of the call for a contrapuntal approach to the Western canon.
• Close readings of familiar works. The introduction already shows the method on Great Expectations and Nostromo, and Chapter 2 works through Austen, Verdi and Camus, so the book can be read as a set of case studies.
• Two halves, one project. The first half examines the culture of empire and the second turns to resistance, which answers a limitation Gorra saw in Orientalism.
• A guided structure. Each chapter has numbered sections with descriptive titles, so a reader can find the discussion of a particular author.

Limitations

• Suggestive rather than exhaustive. Gorra found that the book's scope forces it to be suggestive on any one text, and that its chapters, which began as lectures, sometimes read as digressions or as strings of names.
• A synthesis rather than a breakthrough. Gorra judged that the book, while urgently needed, is not a conceptual breakthrough on the order of Orientalism but a synthesis of work in a field Said himself defined.
• Contested. Ernest Gellner accused Said of exploiting Western guilt about imperialism, a reminder that the book takes a position and has been disputed.
• Prior knowledge assumed. The chapters presuppose acquaintance with the novels, operas and political histories discussed and move quickly between them.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the postcolonial literature course Said gives the view from the metropolitan canon. For a first course, John McLeod's Beginning Postcolonialism is written for undergraduates meeting the field and Elleke Boehmer's Colonial and Postcolonial Literature gives a historical and critical introduction to colonial and postcolonial writing in English. Both prepare for Said.

Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin's The Empire Writes Back is a foundational account of post-colonial writing in English from places such as India, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia and Canada. Said complements it by showing how the metropolitan canon was shaped by empire, so the two are best read together. Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera and Truong's The Book of Salt are written from the borderlands and the diaspora, the kinds of voices that Said's contrapuntal reading tries to hear beside the canon.

How to Use This Book

The book suits advanced undergraduates and graduate students in English, comparative literature and postcolonial studies, and also readers of history interested in empire. A course in postcolonial literature or theory helps, as does having read Mansfield Park, Heart of Darkness and Great Expectations.

Start with the introduction, which states the project and models the method. Then read Chapter 1 and choose chapters 2 and 3 according to your primary texts; read the Austen section alongside Mansfield Park and the Yeats section with his poems. Read Chapter 4 last, as it moves to the contemporary period. Keep a list of the works Said discusses and read at least a few of them before the chapters that treat them.