Edward Said “States” refutes the view Western journalists, writers, and scholars have created in order to represent Eastern cultures as mysterious, dangerous, unchanging, and inferior. According to Said, who was born in Jerusalem at that time Palestine, the way westerners represent eastern people impacts the way they interact with the global community. All of this adds to, Palestinians having to endure unfair challenges such as eviction, misrepresentation, and marginalization that have forced them to spread allover the world. By narrating the story of his country Palestine, and his fellow countrymen from their own perspective Said is able to humanize Palestinians to the reader. “States” makes the reader feel the importance of having a homeland, and how detrimental having a place to call home is when trying to maintain one’s culture. Which highlights the major trait of the Palestinian culture: survival. Throughout “States”, Said presents the self-preservation struggles Palestinians are doomed to face due to eviction, and marginalization. “Just as we once were taken from one habitat to a new one we can be moved again” (Said 543).
Being exposed for such a long time to other cultures, Palestinians have had to deal with the effects of transculturation. Transculturation, as defined by ethnographers, is “to describe processes whereby members of a subordinate or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture” (Pratt 491). In other words Palestinians have absorbed parts of the different cultures they are now part of due to the nakba, or catastrophe, which marks the exile of more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from what is known today as Israel. On November 30, 1947 the United Nations v...
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... showing people that the Palestinians are indeed human.
Acknowledgements
The essay “States” is a great piece of literature that tries to convey a message important to society. Although, at first, it seemed as if analyzing this piece would be an easy job it was not easy at all. One has to read within and against the grain to understand Said. That is why I would like to thank Prof. Griffin, and my classmates Mariia and Fan for giving me their different insights on Said.
Works Cited
Said, Edward Wadie. “States.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 537-575. Print.
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 485-497. Print.
Wideman, John Edgar. “Our Time.” Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 657-694. Print.
Since the Arabs were living in Palestine when the Ottoman Empire control it. Since the Arabs defeated the Ottoman Empire with the help of from Germany, “Just short of 6 months the Palestinians were crushed, militarily and psychologically” (document 8) On the other hand, Israel grew beyond the partition lines, gained more defensible borders and they destroyed Arab homes reducing their population. The Palestinians rightly felt that the Israelis were taking over the area and were pushing out of lands promised to them in both the Balfour Declaration and the UN 1947 Partition.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
Jefferson, Thomas. “From Notes on the State of Virginia.” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Ed. Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, Bonnie Lisle. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. 378-383.
Abcarian, Richard. Literature: the Human Experience : Reading and Writing. : Bedford/Saint Martin's, 2012. Print.
An Anthology For Readers and Writers. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 1283-1296. Print.
The Arts of the Contact Zone by Mary Louise Pratt opened up a whole new concept for our class. The new term “contact zone” appeared and Pratt defined it as "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today." The idea of the contact zone is intended in part to contrast with ideas of community that trigger much of the thinking about language, communication, and culture.
This marked the beginning of the Palestine armed conflict, one of its kinds to be witnessed in centuries since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and World War 1. Characterized by a chronology of endless confrontations, this conflict has since affected not only the Middle East relations, but also the gl...
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Ways of Reading 8th Edition. Eds. David Bartholomae, A.P. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2008. 499-511.
Abcarian, Richard, Marvin Klotz, and Samuel Cohen. Literature: the Human Experience. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. Print.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. Print.
Prono, Luca. “Literature.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures: New England. Santa Barbara: ABC, 2004. Credo Reference. Web 25 April 2014.
There are so many different texts that are out there. People from different cultures and communities write texts that we usually do not take seriously. We don’t want to see their point of view about things. We just want them to understand our point of view but not theirs. “States” is a transcultural text. A contact zone is the space in which transculturation takes place. Mary Pratt defines “Transculturation as a process whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant metropolitan culture” (323). Palestinians are surrounded by dominant cultures. Pratt uses “transcultural” to describe the dominant groups or cultures because there are so many
When Yasser Arafat addressed the United Nations General Assembly, he tried to articulate the actions the Palestinian Liberation Organization had taken and to justify those actions. Arafat points out that the struggles with Imperialism and Zionism began in 1881 when the first large wave of immigrants began arriving in Palestine. Prior to this date, the Muslims, Jews (20,000) and Christians all cohabitated peacefully (pop. 1/2 million). In 1917, the Belfour Declaration authorized increased immigration of European Jews to Palestine. 1 From 1917 to 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine increased to 600,000 and they rightfully owned only 6% of the Palestinian arable land. Palestine population at this time was now up to 1,250,000. 1
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 10th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2013. Print.