Edward Said and the Task of the Intellectual Today | Los Angeles Review of Books

What is the task of the intellectual at a time when, at the heart of liberal democracies, genocide is normalized and protest suppressed?

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Gaza names the moment when the mandate of the oppositional intellectual can no longer be deferred, aestheticized, or selectively applied. The annihilation of an entire intellectual class; the destruction of Palestinian education; the targeting of teachers, students, archives, and universities; and the criminalization of Palestine solidarity expose not only the brutality of the settler-colonial state but also the bankruptcy of the liberal institutions that claim to safeguard knowledge while facilitating its erasure. At this historical juncture, the question is no longer whether the intellectual can afford to speak out, but whether silence is itself complicity.