Edward Said, who is an erudite, polymath and cultural critic, was and still a central point of studying western legacy and its culture. For a non-western people, it is quite impossible to make sense of western culture and to fully comprehend its empire expansion and colonial ambition at the expense of colonized countries. Africa, India, Asian and Middle East had been colonized by the west for decades. Tons of narrative had been written about the western voyage to the colonized countries- though most of these narratives are written from the perspective pf the colonizer while the others are silent or invincible, intentionally for political reason. However, with the awakening of the colonized consciousness and the tumultuous events of post-world war trauma, thousands of multifarious narratives had been written by the colonized people to liberate themselves from the western hegemony. These writers do not only write for liberating mission but also to pin point of the western edifice of its Eurocentric worldview and to deconstruct the white supremacy that had been practiced against them since decades.
Interestingly, scholars, writers, philosophers, intellectuals and cultural critics had perceived this issue from different perspective. Emphatically, Edward said book “culture and imperialism” is one of the best books so far that is very controversial but yet indispensable. In the chapter two of his book. He actualizes the notion of “resistance and opposition” and how the two concepts manifested in the social, political, cultural and ideological discussion of western colonization and its imperial expansion. Subsequently, he addresses the issue of resistance as a weapon used by the colonized to fight back, remake, reform, reclaim, rearticulate, reorganize, reformulate, reorder and to re-orient their social, political, cultural and human right and identity. Resistance, as a tool, is used to counter attack the western power and its hegemony on the native people. Said asserts that by reading the narratives of the colonizers, one could easily fetch out the void of “the other”, the other that he claims to be silent, that cannot speak, the subaltern that are voiceless, and even if the subalterns can speak, would their voice be heard?? of course, no. Resistance is used in a compelling, decisive and immaculate way to impede the colonial power and to stop its territorial expansion before and after the age of colonization.
Arguably, studying the relationship between the “West and others” is essential and important in understanding the geopolitics and socioeconomic issue and also it is an entry to understand the formation and meaning of western cultural practices. Said uses the term “influence” to elaborate on the self-conflict between the individual and the tradition which he or she is part. The issue of identity is the tenet in the resistance/opposition discourse. The colonized claim of their identity is the topnotch of the academic discourse that cannot be deterred. Said stresses on the conflict of interest of an individual that is toggled between the western culture that had impoverished him and his imbued tradition value; for instance, Gide that his sexual desire strips him off his carrier, wife and reputation.
Opposition, as Said emphatically explain, manifests itself in social and cultural value. the native resorted to “opposition” to accentuate the misrepresentation of their culture. The natives exemplified a mimetic landscape to counterattack the misapprehension of their culture and misrepresentation of their cultural identity. Tayib Salih, is an immaculate example in his novel “a season of migration to the north” where he portrays the narrator who uses his cultural identity to oppose the western Eurocentric city and superiority by implementing the western tactics.
With the rise of nationalist movement, orators, postcolonial critics, cultural critics, the western Eurocentricity and hegemony had been not only been question but also eradicated. Fanon, is one of the critics that shed more lights on the western atrocities and restored the African identity by calling for liberation in his writings. Writers like Chinua Achebe, Soyinka, Senghor, subaltern scholars, Spivak, minoglo, to n
ame but a few had immensely contributed to the conceptuality of the fundamental reality of the colonized resistance and their opposition. Said makes it crystal clear that even though culture is not linear, nor homogenic but rather its heterogenic and that the relationship between the “west and other” is not always monologue but rather its dialectic which invokes the binary opposition and that the natives are not always silent but rather they are resistant, and oppose to the colonial power and supremacy.
To round it up, Edward Said had presented a prodigious account and yet challenging. His projection is to substantiate the fact that resistant had been exercised by the natives and it still continues. Opposition, on the other hand is widely known after the post-independence era.
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