“It seems that my tribute to Edward Said on the anniversary of his death has turned away from tribute and towards analysis. That’s exactly my intention. For, while it is hardly my right to tell anyone the proper way to mourn, I would maintain, with what I hope is a touch of Saidian intemperance, that there are in fact ways of missing Edward Said that miss his point. One such way would be to offer up sentimental remembrances of the man while allowing his work to be forgotten. This is always a danger with intellectual and political figures whose careers, and lives, are interrupted by early deaths, leaving us with the sense that they have been stopped mid-sentence. All too easily, they are transformed from intellectual and political interlocutors into statues: Saint Fanon, Saint Foucault, Saint Malcolm, Saint Martin. We need to resist simply offering pieties upon the altar of Saint Edward and then proceeding as though the difficult questions raised by his work no longer exist.”

From “Missing Edward Said” 

I’m a few days late on posting this reflection on the anniversary of Edward Said’s death. I will say that Representations of the Intellectual was one of the most life changing books I have ever read. Similar to Adorno’s Minima Moralia, both books changed the way I understood what was at stake in living a philosophical and intellectually engaged life.

Perhaps that sounds terribly pretentious and maybe on some level it is. But if given the choice (and there is a choice) between a life of critical inquiry and occasional melancholy or one of minimal introspection and constant happiness, I’ll take the path of critical thought and crushed idealism.