The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994

Edward W. Said

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, May 30, 1995 - History - 512 pages

Ever since the appearance of his groundbreaking The Question of Palestine, Edward Said has been America's most outspoken advocate for Palestinian self-determination. As these collected essays amply prove, he is also our most intelligent and bracingly heretical writer on affairs involving not only Palestinians but also the Arab and Muslim worlds and their tortuous relations with the West.

In The Politics of Dispossession Said traces his people's struggle for statehood through twenty-five years of exile, from the PLO's bloody 1970 exile from Jordan through the debacle of the Gulf War and the ambiguous 1994 peace accord with Israel. As frank as he is about his personal involvement in that struggle, Said is equally unsparing in his demolition of Arab icons and American shibboleths. Stylish, impassioned, and informed by a magisterial knowledge of history and literature, The Politics of Dispossession is a masterly synthesis of scholarship and polemic that has the power to redefine the debate over the Middle East.

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THE POLITICS OF DISPOSSESSION: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1993

User Review  - Kirkus

A lucid compilation of 39 essays by Said (Comparative Literature/Columbia), the most eloquent spokesperson for the Palestinian cause in the Western world since the Arab defeat in the 1967 war against ...

The politics of dispossession: the struggle for Palestinian self-determination, 1969-1994

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

In this volume Columbia professor Said, for some an enfant terrible while for others the most articulate English-language spokesperson for organized Palestinian efforts to achieve political ...

Contents

• Acknowledgments: xi
• Introduction: xiii
• PALESTINE AND PALESTINIANS: 1

About the author

Edward W. Said was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, raised in Jerusalem and Cairo, and educated in the United States, where he attended Princeton (B.A. 1957) and Harvard (M.A. 1960; Ph.D. 1964). In 1963, he began teaching at Columbia University, where he was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature. He is the author of twenty-two books which have been translated into 35 languages, including Orientalism (1978); The Question of Palestine (1979); Covering Islam (1980); Culture and Imperialism (1993); Peace and Its Discontents (1996); and Out of Place: A Memoir (1999). Besides his academic work, he wrote a twice-monthly column for Al-Hayat and Al-Ahram; was a regular contributor to newspapers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; and was the music critic for The Nation. He died in 2003 in New York City.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994; Vintage Series
• Author: Edward W. Said
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1995
• ISBN: 0679761454, 9780679761457
• Length: 512 pages
• Subjects: History / Middle East / General; History / Middle East / Israel & Palestine; Literary Collections / Middle Eastern; Political Science / World / Middle Eastern