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This comprehensive study does ample justice to Edward Said's critical thought, illuminating the profound importance that Said placed on criticism in the service of responsibility and dissent. Said's refusal of both identity politics and impersonal systems gets full treatment in this sympathetic yet critical study. The book will be a valuable resource for students of postcolonial studies. - Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University Prasad Pannian underlines the centrality of 'subjectivity' in Edward Said's activist secular humanism, formulated in response to postmodern and postcolonial deconstructions of identity, subjectivity, and agency. His novel readings of Said's major works are illuminated by his own commitment to overcoming differences that continue to undermine political agency. Highly recommended on both counts. - Arif Dirlik, Independent Scholar, USA A welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on Edward Said and his legacy of non-humanist humanism, Prasad Pannian's book is an admirable endeavor to critically unpack the category of subjectivity in Said's work and account for its performance across uneven terrains and contradictory imperatives. In focusing on the relationship, in Said's critical agenda, between an exilic humanism and critical secularism, Pannian demonstrates how crucial it is for Said to reclaim, reform, and redeem humanism in the name of humanism. - Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, Chancellor's Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine, USA A learned and wide-ranging study of this major thinker, and a most invaluable addition to Saidian scholarship. - Kenneth J. Surin, Professor of Literature, Religion and Critical Theory, Duke University, USA

This comprehensive study does ample justice to Edward Said's critical thought, illuminating the profound importance that Said placed on criticism in the service of responsibility and dissent. Said's refusal of both identity politics and impersonal systems gets full treatment in this sympathetic yet critical study. The book will be a valuable resource for students of postcolonial studies. - Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, USA Prasad Pannian underlines the centrality of 'subjectivity' in Edward Said's activist secular humanism, formulated in response to postmodern and postcolonial deconstructions of identity, subjectivity, and agency. His novel readings of Said's major works are illuminated by his own commitment to overcoming differences that continue to undermine political agency. Highly recommended on both counts. - Arif Dirlik, Independent Scholar, USA A welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on Edward Said and his legacy of non-humanist humanism, Prasad Pannian's book is an admirable endeavor to critically unpack the category of subjectivity in Said's work and account for its performance across uneven terrains and contradictory imperatives. In focusing on the relationship, in Said's critical agenda, between an exilic humanism and critical secularism, Pannian demonstrates how crucial it is for Said to reclaim, reform, and redeem humanism in the name of humanism. - Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, Chancellor's Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine, USA A learned and wide-ranging study of this major thinker, and a most invaluable addition to Saidian scholarship. - Kenneth J. Surin, Professor of Literature, Religion and Critical Theory, Duke University, USA

This comprehensive study does ample justice to Edward Said's critical thought, illuminating the profound importance that Said placed on criticism in the service of responsibility and dissent. Said's refusal of both identity politics and impersonal systems gets full treatment in this sympathetic yet critical study. The book will be a valuable resource for students of postcolonial studies. - Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University Prasad Pannian underlines the centrality of 'subjectivity' in Edward Said's activist secular humanism, formulated in response to postmodern and postcolonial deconstructions of identity, subjectivity, and agency. His novel readings of Said's major works are illuminated by his own commitment to overcoming differences that continue to undermine political agency. Highly recommended on both counts. - Arif Dirlik, Independent Scholar, USA A welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on Edward Said and his legacy of non-humanist humanism, Prasad Pannian's book is an admirable endeavor to critically unpack the category of subjectivity in Said's work and account for its performance across uneven terrains and contradictory imperatives. In focusing on the relationship, in Said's critical agenda, between an exilic humanism and critical secularism, Pannian demonstrates how crucial it is for Said to reclaim, reform, and redeem humanism in the name of humanism. - Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, Chancellor's Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine, USA A learned and wide-ranging study of this major thinker, and a most invaluable addition to Saidian scholarship. - Kenneth J. Surin, Professor of Literature, Religion and Critical Theory, Duke University, USA Reviewer: Harold Aram Veeser, Professor of Literature, CUNY Graduate Center, USA Review: Prasad Pannian's ms. Enters the field of Edward Said studies. This book brings a special emphasis that has no real parallel in the many books and articles devoted to Edward Said. This special emphasis is Said's theories of subjectivity and those theories' impact on Said's thought, activism, and role as a model for other politically concerned and politically active scholars. The book is written in a moderately technical idiom and a straightforward academic style. It is flawed by with some repetition but is commendably free of jargon and generally lucid in its exposition. The strength of this ms. is its unique angle of attention to a little-studied topic. A further strength is the author's careful definitions of subjectivity and his generally systematic exposition of the topics that he treats. The weakness is that the insights are sometimes repeated. The many insightful observations are well-grounded in other published works by other authors. Pannian's book has usefully brought together in one place all of Said's comments and theories about subjectivity. This will be a useful book for graduate students and scholars who wish to pursue this very particular and extremely important bandwidth of Said studies. The structure and organization of the book are rational and systematic. The author analyzes the topic of subjectivity in four successive chapters. These chapters are thematic. In chapter one, subjectivity is considered as a factor in Said's major work, Orientalism, and in Western constructions of the non-Western subject. In chapter two, the focus shifts to Culture and Imperialism and Said's work as a critic of ideology. A theorist of postcolonial subjectivity, Homi Bhabha, is paired in this chapter with Louis Althusser, a theorist of ideological formations of the subject, and this is a useful comparison. In chapter three, the classic Said theme of exile comes in for consideration. The author argues that exile gains the high status of an almost ontological category across the range of Said's work. The primary texts reviewed in this chapter include Said's memoir and memoir-like books and essays. In chapter four, Pannian turns to another classic Said topos, the topos of the intellectual and his or her role. He derives Said's thinking from theorists well-known to Said scholars. In chapter five, the author explores Said's connection to Marxism. The argument here rests on Said's favorable remarks about a string of Frankfurt school theorists along with Antonio Gramsci and Raymond Williams. Since it is impossible to argue that Said was himself a Marxist, the author settles for arguing that Said revived a New Humanism that had some Marxist leanings. The conclusion summarizes the chapters. While it is evident from my summary that the author has used thoroughly familiar sources and arguments, it is also true that his book represents a valuable intervention by isolating for study the topic of greatest interest to contemporary students and scholars. By packing between covers all the relevant arguments on Said's theory and practice of subjectivity, the author has created a text that fills a long-neglected niche in Said studies. I recommend the book for publication.

This comprehensive study does ample justice to Edward Said's critical thought, illuminating the profound importance that Said placed on criticism in the service of responsibility and dissent. Said's refusal of both identity politics and impersonal systems gets full treatment in this sympathetic yet critical study. The book will be a valuable resource for students of postcolonial studies. - Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, USA Prasad Pannian underlines the centrality of 'subjectivity' in Edward Said's activist secular humanism, formulated in response to postmodern and postcolonial deconstructions of identity, subjectivity, and agency. His novel readings of Said's major works are illuminated by his own commitment to overcoming differences that continue to undermine political agency. Highly recommended on both counts. - Arif Dirlik, Independent Scholar, USA A welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on Edward Said and his legacy of non-humanist humanism, Prasad Pannian's book is an admirable endeavor to critically unpack the category of subjectivity in Said's work and account for its performance across uneven terrains and contradictory imperatives. In focusing on the relationship, in Said's critical agenda, between an exilic humanism and critical secularism, Pannian demonstrates how crucial it is for Said to reclaim, reform, and redeem humanism in the name of humanism. - Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, Chancellor's Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine, USA A learned and wide-ranging study of this major thinker, and a most invaluable addition to Saidian scholarship. - Kenneth J. Surin, Professor of Literature, Religion and Critical Theory, Duke University, USA

Author Information

Prasad Pannian is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Central University of Kerala, India. He has won the Edward Said Fellowship (2018-19) instituted by the Heyman Centre for Humanities, Columbia University, USA.

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