Enn um Edward Said

Sæl öll.

Í kjölfar þess að hafa sett lista yfir "mikilmenni" á síðuna, þá langaði mig að setja inn þessa tilvitnun úr bók Edward Said´s "Orientalism":

"These contemporary Orientalist attitudes flood the press and the popular mind. Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization. Always there lurks the assumption that although the Western consumer belongs to a numerical minority, he is entitled either to own or to expend (or both) the majority of the world resources. Why? Because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being. No better instance exists today of what Anwar Abdel Malele calls "the hegemonism of possesing minorities" and anthropocantrism allied with Europocentrism: a white middle-class Westerner believes it his human prerogative not only to manage the nonwhite world but also to own it, just because by definition "it" is not quite as human as "we" are. There is no purer example than this of dehumanized thought."

Þetta er það sem maður kallar "food for thought".