Arena · Season 1 · Episode 441

Edward Said: the Idea of Empire

Friday, February 12

Palestinian writer, academic and exile, Edward W Said takes a journey into the worlds of history, literature, ideas and imagination to explain how he wrote his most recent book, Culture and Imperialism. Opening in New York, "the city of exiles", Said's passionate and challenging TV essay ranges from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to the Gulf War. In it, he shows how attitudes forged over the last 200 years continue to enforce the relationship between the west and the developing world. Challenging the barriers imposed by race, religion and nationalism, he argues that the experience of empire connects us all - whoever we are, wherever we are from - that our histories overlap, that all our cultures are hybrid and impure.