Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said

Timothy Brennan

Mar 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon

About this audiobook

As someone who studied under Edward Said and remained a friend until his death in 2003, Timothy Brennan had unprecedented access to his thesis adviser's ideas and legacy. In this authoritative work, Said, the pioneer of postcolonial studies, a tireless champion for his native Palestine, and an erudite literary critic, emerges as a self-doubting, tender, eloquent advocate of literature's dramatic effects on politics and civic life. Places of Mind reveals Said as a study in opposites: a cajoler and strategist, a New York intellectual with a foot in Beirut, an orchestra impresario in Weimar and Ramallah, a raconteur on national television, a Palestinian negotiator at the State Department, and an actor in films in which he played himself. Brennan traces the Arab influences on Said's thinking along with his tutelage under Lebanese statesmen, off-beat modernist auteurs, and New York literati, as Said grew into a scholar whose influential writings changed the face of university life forever. With both intimidating brilliance and charm, Said melded these resources into a groundbreaking and influential countertradition of radical humanism, set against the backdrop of techno-scientific dominance and religious war. With unparalleled clarity, Said gave the humanities a new authority in the age of Reaganism, one that continues today.

About the author

Timothy Brennan is the author of several books, including At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now; Borrowed Light: Vico, Hegel, and the Colonies; and Salman Rushdie and the Third World: Myths of the Nation. His writing has appeared in the Nation, the Times Literary Supplement, and other outlets.

Timothy Andres Pabon is an actor and Spanish and English voice-over artist/audiobook narrator from Washington DC. He has recorded over 140 books, one of which was nominated for a 2015 Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Award and another which received an AudioFile Earphones Award as part of an ensemble cast in 2014.