Culture and Imperialism

Here, Said lays the groundwork for what he calls his “’contrapuntal reading’” of classic texts within the Western canon (66). Essentially, this kind of reading “means reading a text with an understanding of what is involved when an author shows, for instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is seen as important to the process of maintaining a particular style of life in England” (66). He argues that such a reading must both consider the basic facts of the pervasiveness of empire while also taking note of the resistance to it. Put another way, the reader must interpret the text both for what is included and for what is excluded.

Said elaborates on the notion that the rise of the novel and the expansion of empire are bound together: “With empire, I would go so far as saying, there is no European novel as we know it” (69). The novel works within the structures of power of a given society, which are formed via the project of imperialism, reproducing those structures of power. He reminds the reader that what is considered to be the first English novel—Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe—is a novel about an Englishman who “is the founder of a new world, which he rules and reclaims for Christianity and England” (70).