Edward Said Memorial Conference - Etienne Balibar

Keynote lecture by Prof. Etienne Balibar: "Edward Said's internal border." Edward Said Memorial Conference, 15 April 2013, Utrecht.
What is this lecture about?
"Ever since the Enlightenment, which gave the Europeanization of the World its progressive legitimacy, the articulations of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, community and universality, have been linked to a construction of the moral, political, and aesthetic subject in terms of what Fichte called the internal border, the perilous limit where his identity is assured, or threatened. I will submit that Said's meditation of the perpetual dis-placement of the post-colonial subject, involving fidelity and projection, exile and translation, performs a radical metamorphosis of that category, which is not so much framed as "double consciousness" (as in Du Bois and Fanon) than "transposition" and "paraphrase" of the dominant theme (as in musical elaboration). The border thus becomes at the same time sharpened, densified, and lost. With the help of this assumption, returning to some of my preferred texts of engagement and criticism in his work, I will try to explain how it was possible for him, not only to combine a merciless critique of the codes of imperialism with a deep commitment to the tradition of secular humanism, but to open the path towards a new understanding of the cultural time-space in which we are entering."
Edward Said Memorial Conference was organised by the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University as one of the Treaty of Utrecht commemoration events on 15-17 April 2013. More information available at: cfhutrecht2013.com/.