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ANSWERING SAIDThere are a variety of criticisms that could be used to respond to the use of Said 's philosophy. Some of them indite Said directly, and others focus more on his writing. However, it is important to, when criticizing Said, lumping him into one of any number of categories that he might appear to fall into. This is a violation of the precise arguments he sets out, so be advised to avoid blanket criticism of a generic kind of writing (for example), and assume that it will apply to him. Also, because of his grounding in critical theory as well as his extensive research it is difficult to respond to his arguments by merely stating their opposite. For example, it would not be persuasive to argue against Said 's description of the stereotypes of Arab people by saying, "But Arabs really are all oil tycoons and terrorists." On the contrary, it is more effective to attempt to beat Said at his own game, by showing how he, or the debater using his writing, violates the very same criticisms that he makes. Beginning with indites of Said himself, his controversial stances are a good beginning point for critique. One of the most prominent examples is that Said openly and avidly opposed the Oslo Accords in the Israeli/Palestinian peace process. He took this position because of his dislike for Arafat and because the accords did not ensure a Palestinian state. However, the common belief is that that sort of compromise was inevitable, and was the only way to ensure any sort of autonomy for Palestinians. In this way, Said advocates radical change without being willing to compromise. A second personal criticism of Said has to do with his critique of academia. He indites those people who call themselves experts, because he sees the exercise of knowledge as a use of power over the people of whom you claim knowledge. However, he is himself an academic and an intellectual. He was educated at Harvard and Princeton, is a professor, and writes in an extremely dense, highbrow academic style that is completely inaccessible to many readers. The intended audience of his books is clearly not the common person, who would not be able to read it, even though they are the people most influenced by Orientalist images shown in mass media today. He writes books from an elite intellectual position for other academics to read, thus falling into the same indictment he makes of Orientalist intellectuals. Addressing Said 's writing and theory more directly, there are several important criticisms. For the most part, these consist of arguments debaters could make regarding why Said is not applicable to debate rounds. First of all, the majority of the research Said did and documentation he provides are is from European (nearly entirely French and British) history. His examination of the United States, in terms of its relation to the Orient, is minimal. Moreover, he acknowledges that Orientalism is a much less common concept to Americans than to Europeans, both because American scholars, unlike their European counterparts, have never called themselves Orientalists (so the reappropriation of the word makes little sense) and because they do not have the same history of colonization in the Orient as do the Europeans. A second issue of importance is that Said 's writings may be somewhat dated. Although he is still writing on similar subjects today, and despite the afterword to Orientalism he wrote in 1994, many of the examples he gives of images of Arabs constructed by academia seem old fashioned. This is not to say that there are no stereotypes of Arabs, perhaps the most common one is still the "towel-headed terrorist", but they have certainly changed since 1978 when he wrote the book originally. Moreover, the book does not take into account many recent factors which may have significantly changed the way images of the East are constructed. One of these factors is the internet. Said stresses that the use of imaginative geography is critical to the construction of the Orient, but the rules of geography that bound people in the 1970s simply don 't apply anymore. As the cliche goes, the world is getting smaller. Internet technology enables people to communicate rapidly and regularly with people around the world. It is also having a major effect on the way news media is distributed. Even if these changes haven 't ended Orientalism, they have certainly changed the way it is reproduced. A second important factor is the last decade 's movement towards political correctness. While one may still see the occasional racist cartoon in the newspaper, and some movies may still use a dark-skinned, turbaned man as the generic bad-guy, many people in all forums have attempted to make their language as uncontroversial as possible. The effect of this may have been to decrease Orientalist discourse, or perhaps merely to have made it more covert, but regardless, it has had a significant impact that Said has not addressed. One final way that Said 's philosophy can be undermined in debate rounds is merely by questioning the appropriateness of its application to the issues brought up by the resolution. How has your opponent applied Said 's writing? It is likely that debaters will often use his writing while simultaneously using the writings of another theorist that Said would abhor. Have they tried to use Said along with Kant 's categorical imperative, or Locke 's concept of natural law? Said wrote that "philosophers will conduct their discussions of Locke, Hume, and empiricism without ever taking into account that there is an explicit connection in those classic writers between their "philosophic" doctrines and racial theory, justifications of slavery, or arguments for colonial expansion"(Said Orientalism 13). Tease out those contradictions. BIBLIOGRAPHYTHE EDWARD SAID ARCHIVE (TESA), http://leb.net/tesa/, accessed May 24, 2000. Said, Edward W., BEGINNINGS: INTENTION AND METHOD, New York: Basic Books, 1975. Said, Edward W., COVERING ISLAM; HOW THE MEDIA AND THE EXPERTS DETERMINE HOW WE SEE THE REST OF THE WORLD, New York: Pantheon Books, 1981. Said, Edward W., CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM, New York: Knopf, 1993. Said, Edward W., THE END OF THE PEACE PROCESS: OSLO AND AFTER, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. Said, Edward W., ORIENTALISM, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Said, Edward W., OUT OF PLACE: A MEMOIR, New York: Knopf, 1999. Said, Edward W., PEACE AND ITS DISCONTENTS: ESSAYS ON PALESTINE IN THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS, New York: Vintage Books, 1996. Said, Edward W., THE PEN AND THE SWORD: CONVERSATIONS WITH DAVID BARSAMIAN, Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 1994. Said, Edward W., THE POLITICS OF DISPOSSESSION: THE STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINIAN SELF- DETERMINATION, 1969-1994, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. Said, Edward W., THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE, New York: Times Books, 1979. Said, Edward W., REPRESENTATIONS OF THE INTELLECTUAL: THE 1993 REITH LECTURES, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. Said, Edward W., THE WORLD, THE TEXT, AND THE CRITIC, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. 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