Culture and Imperialism’s implications for thinking about the lives and identities of contemporary post-imperial Europe

Edward Said has been perhaps the most important influence on my own work in postcolonial studies. Three things have struck me in my deliberations over how to engage with Culture and Imperialism twenty years after it was first published; a) what new scholarship has brought new light on the thematic areas explored in C&I; b) what is the relationship between the world as historically and contemporarily constructed in C&I and how its disciples, such as myself, read the world twenty years on; c) in what ways have new theoretical insights evolved, which build upon insights similar to Said’s, yet also develop a new approach better equipped to deal with the reality of 2012. In my paper I wish to interconnect these three points to my own current research on postcolonial/post-imperial Europe, which builds upon Said’s insistence on relating the European presence in the non-European world to the very core of the formation of a European identity – in the past as well as in the present.