Edward Said

Palestinian-American literary critic who founded postcolonial studies with Orientalism — showing how Western knowledge of 'the Orient' was a form of power — and who was the most prominent Palestinian intellectual in the West.

Orientalism: Western representations of the 'Orient' are not descriptions but constructions that serve imperial power — knowledge and power are inseparable. Culture and Imperialism: extending the analysis to 19th-century European novel. The question of Palestine: the intellectual as spokesperson for the dispossessed. The intellectual's role: to speak truth to power, not to serve the powerful.