Rewriting History: An Analysis of Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine

Abstract

Postcolonialism as a literary theory analyses the history, culture, politics and discourses of European imperialism on the colonized countries. Edward Said, one of the forerunners among the postcolonial theorists, through his work Orientalism has contributed to different perspectives of the theory. As a social, cultural and political theory, it looks into the life of the people of once colonized countries and the process of decolonization from a theoretical perspective. Consequently, it addresses the need of heeding to the voice of the voiceless. As a Palestinian Arab, Said focuses on the political implications of the theory of postcolonialism and analyses the ground situation of the people of Palestine through his work The Question of Palestine. Decolonization process also involves the need for rewriting the history from the marginal perspective of the natives, which was otherwise written by European imperialism. Hence, the objective of this article is to reexamine the romanticized version of the Meta historical account of the people of Palestine. The proposed hypothesis of the study is that there exists a significant difference between the historical accounts written by the imperial world to that of reality on the ground. Said, through The Question of Palestine, entreats the literary world that the narratives of the West need to be revisited for the real understanding of history.