Theory is taught so as to make the student believe that he or she can become a Marxist, a feminist, an Afrocentrist, or a deconstructionist with about the same effort and commitment required in choosing items from a menu.
Interpretation
The quote critiques how theories are taught, suggesting they are simplified to the point of being a mere choice rather than a serious commitment.
Edward Said's quote reflects on the prevalent educational practice where complex ideologies like Marxism, feminism, and Afrocentrism are presented to students as easily selectable options, akin to choosing items from a menu. This approach undermines the depth and complexity of these theories, implying that a superficial commitment is sufficient to identify with them, rather than recognizing the engaged learning and serious consideration these ideologies require. It challenges educators to ensure that the teaching of theories fosters deep understanding rather than mere surface-level acceptance.
In practice
In a lecture on critical theory, one might quote Said to emphasize the need for deeper engagement.
All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.
Uninformed and yet open to appeals for justice as they are, Americans are capable of reacting as they did to the ANC campaign against apartheid, which finally changed the balance of forces inside South Africa.
Refuse to allow yourself to become a vegetable that simply absorbs information, pre-packaged, pre-ideologized , because no message.. is anything but an ideological package that has gone through a kind of processing.
Since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.
Much as I have no wish to hurt anyone's feelings, my first obligation has not been to be nice but to be true to my perhaps peculiar memories, experiences and feelings.
It is quite common to hear high officials in Washington and elsewhere speak of changing the map of the Middle East, as if ancient societies and myriad peoples can be shaken up like so many peanuts in a jar.
Princeton ignited my intellectual curiosity and introduced me to a new social world. It... challenged me on the most fundamental levels imaginable. It was where I became a man.
Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.
I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
It can be said that there are four basic and primary things that the mass of people in a society wish for: to live in a safe environment, to be able to work and provide for themselves, to have access to good public health and to have sound educational opportunities for their children.
I read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.
To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.
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