Edward Said - Death and Post-mortem Tributes

Death and Post-mortem Tributes

On 25 September 2003, after twelve years of being sick with chronic lymphocytic leukæmia, Edward Wadie Saïd died, aged 67, in New York City, and was survived by his wife, son, and daughter; Mariam Saïd (née Cortas); Wadie Saïd, and Najla Saïd, an actress, playwright, and a founder of Nibras, the Arab–American theatre troupe.

In memoriam

The eulogists for the humanist E.W. Saïd — university professor, cultural critic, and public intellectual — included Alexander Cockburn “A Mighty and Passionate Heart”, Seamus Deane “A Late Style of Humanism” Christopher Hitchens “A Valediction for Edward Saïd”, Tony Judt “The Rootless Cosmopolitan”, Michael Wood “On Edward Saïd”, and Tariq Ali “Remembering Edward Saïd (1925–2003)”.

Architecture

In November 2004, Birzeit University renamed their music school the Edward Saïd National Conservatory of Music.

Books

Verso Books published Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward W. Saïd (2008), edited by Müge Gürsoy Sökmen and Bașak Ertür; the essayists include Akeel Bilgrami, Rashid Khalidi, and Elias Khoury, . Routledge published Edward Saïd: The Charisma of Criticism (2010), by Harold Aram Veeser, a critical biography of the public intellectual and the Man of Letters. The University of California Press published Edward Saïd: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representations (2010), edited by Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom, essays about Saïd’s intellectual contributions; the essayists include Joseph Massad, Jacqueline Rose, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Ella Shohat, Asha Varadhjan, R.R. Radhakrishnan, Ardi Imseis, Ghada Karmi, and Sabry Hafez; the book also includes interviews with Noam Chomsky, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Daniel Barenboim.

Memorial lectures

Since the death of Edward Saïd, in late 2003, academic establishments such as Columbia University, the University of Warwick, Princeton University, the University of Adelaide, the American University of Cairo, and the Palestine Center, instituted annual series of lectures about the subjects, topics, and themes that Edward Saïd discussed in his works; notable among the speakers have been Daniel Barenboim, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, and Cornel West.