You Cannot Continue To Victimize

Just As None Of Us Is Outside Or Beyond Geography, None Of Us Is Completely Free From The Struggle Over Geography. That Struggle Is Complex And Interesting Because It Is Not Only About Soldiers And Cannons But Also About Ideas, About Forms, About Images And Imaginings.

The Orient And Islam Have A Kind Of Extrareal, Phenomenologically Reduced Status That Puts Them Out Of Reach Of Everyone Except The Western Expert. From The Beginning Of Western Speculation About The Orient, The One Thing Th Orient Could Not Do Was To Represent Itself. Evidence Of The Orient Was Credible Only After It Had Passed Through And Been Made Firm By The Refining Fire Of The Orientalist’s Work.

But I Do Not Know Whether The Photograph Can, Or Does, Say Things As They Really Are. Something Has Been Lost. But The Representation Is All We Have.

Speaking As A New Yorker, I Found It A Shocking And Terrifying Event [9/11], Particularly The Scale Of It. At Bottom, It Was An Implacable Desire To Do Harm To Innocent People. It Was Aimed At Symbols: The World Trade Center, The Heart Of American Capitalism, And The Pentagon, The Headquarters Of The American Military Establishment.

The Central Fact For Me Is, I Think, That The [role Of The] Intellectual... Cannot Be Played Without A Sense Of Being Someone Whose Place It Is Publicly To Raise Embarrassing Questions, To Confront Orthodoxy And Dogma (rather Than To Produce Them), To Be Someone Who Cannot Easily Be Co-opted By Governments Or Corporations, And Whose Raison D'etre Is To Represent All Those People And Issues That Are Routinely Forgotten Or Swept Under The Rug.