Edward Said and the Question of Subjectivity (PDF)

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.

"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