Edward Said's "States"

Edward Said's "States"

In his "States" Edward Said writes about the "alienated" Palestinians (he includes himself within this group). Said begins the essay by describing the situation of Palesinians, with pictures. Said's description of his third picture summarizes his view, "He seems unsettled, poised for departure... All at once it is our transcience and impermanence that our visibility expresses, for we can be seen as figures forced to push on to another house, villiage, or region. Just as we once were taken from one "habitat" to a new one, we can be moved again" (Said, 573). Said describes the Palestinians as people without a home, or more precisely, people without an identity. Palestine was conquered, and its people were sent into exile out of Israel. Following their exile, the Palestinians spread out to the surounding countries, but these countries would not accept the Palestinians either. According to Said, the surrounding countries either rejected entrance, or impeded the lives of Palestinians. Many Palestinans were even thrown into special camps, away from society. However, despite hardships, and to the disappointment of the surrounding countries, the Palestinians, remained loosely united and "Palestinian." The Palestinians refused to accept the life of the world around them, so the world around them rejected them. Finally, fourty years after Israel's conquest of Palestine, the new generation of Palestinians has been left confused and without identity. They know their ethnicity but do not fully understand their origins. They have no home and are always wandering, and are always oppressed by the local government (mainly in the Middle East). Following his description of the Palestinians' problem, Said talks about the many influences that the Palestinians had on the people around them. (However for the sack of this entry, I shall focus mainly on Said's problem of identity.) According to Said, the real problem of Palestinians is that they have no country to unify with. They are merely a dispersed people with no country. Said talked about many instances where Palestinians tried to unify under surrounding countries, such as Syria and Egypt, but all of these attempts eventually failed the Palestinians as the governments of these countries turned against them.

According to Said, the Palestinians are a people without a country, and also without an identity. Their identity had been stolen from them, and yet they still tried to remain in their lost identity, despite losing their home. At the time of the conquest of Palestine, the industiral revolution had succeeded in changing the identity of a person from their family and their job, to their country. After the industrial revolution a man became an American, an Englishman, or a Palestinian. This system of identity by country, initially worked and unified people together, but in Palestine, as described by Said, this unification became a hard bond to break, and even after the fall of the country, its people still paraded as Palestinians. However, also as described by Said, the loss of their country, will lead to their eventual destruction. They are a people without a country and as such they live only through memory and eventually their children, who never saw Palestine, will lose their identity as they have already lost their country.

Can a man choose his own identity or is he forced to live in the identity that the world gives him?