Edward Said the radical intellectual

Author's name: Edward Said Publisher: Al-Rafidain for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2021 Literary classification: Intellectual biography Brief about the book: No one among Arab intellectuals in the twentieth century placed the intellectual in the eye of criticism like Edward Said did in his book (Representations of the Intellectual) and in a global manner so that it often applies to all the conditions of the modern intellectual worldwide. Said lived his life as a radical intellectual rejecting injustice, including what happened to his Palestinian ontology, and he lived a life fighting injustice wherever it appeared. He was known as a traveler in exile in the East and West until his death. But Said never left his life in vain; he started writing early in his life and continued writing against until the last breath. I say "writing against" in a radical manner, which is a trait of the radical leftist intellectual, not out of naive celebration of writing itself but for the sake of the cause of the human being deprived of homeland. However, Said was never deprived of will, and this is a second trait of the radical leftist intellectual compared to the conservative right-wing radicals, as we understand their rise at the end of the twentieth century. Thus, Said did not perceive exile as a geographical locus that protects him from others’ arrows; rather, he penetrated the ontology of the other from the beginning when he made the "other" a subject of reflection. He made it the subject of all his reflections in everything he wrote, driven by a radical vision, non-hostile. Instead of empty hostility towards the other, Said invested this theme successfully to speak the truth, and this is another trait of the radical intellectual. The chapters of the book reveal some traits of this unique writer and attempt to go further in contemplating his phenomenon and analyzing new aspects of his influential work.