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.
Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.
We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.
The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, journalism, communications theory, American studies, transatlantic studies, black studies, history, musicology, comparative literature, English, linguistics, and other disciplines.
Her education only made her unhappy thinking about it - that no matter how much she changed her life, she could not change the world that surrounded her.
I read for the 'ah-ha's,' the information that makes a light bulb go off in my mind. I want to put information in my mind that is going to be the most beneficial to me, my family and my fellow man - financially, morally, spiritually, and emotionally.
The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly.
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