Culture and Imperialism

Said deconstructs the two terms in the title of his work, Culture and Imperialism. Culture, in Said’s view, “means two things in particular. First of all it means all those practices, like the arts of description, communication, and representation, that have relative autonomy from the economic, social, and political realms” (xii). This kind of culture is “aesthetic,” with the purpose of providing “pleasure” (xii). Second, Said indicates that “culture is a concept that includes a refining and elevating element, each society’s reservoir of the best that has been known and thought” (xiii). Said is interested in particular forms of cultural production, specifically the novel, though he also looks at opera and theoretical criticism. While these definitions seem innocuous and devoid of political intent, Said quickly moves to destabilize what the reader might understand as culture, underscoring its participation in the project of imperialism:

Scarcely any attention has been paid to what I believe is the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience, and little notice has been taken of the fact that the extraordinary global reach of classical nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European imperialism still casts an extraordinary shadow over our times (5).

Said is not interested in examining cultural productions devoid of context; instead, his project is to reveal how culture supports a particular agenda with real-life consequences.