Abstract
Defends the work of controversial Palestinian American academic Edward Said (b. 1935), with particular reference to an article by Dutch cultural historian Peter Rietbergen (see entry 51A:128) that criticized Said's book 'Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient' (1992). Rietbergen's criticism does not take account of a number of major developments in the philosophy of history relevant to the history of Western expansionism and colonialism, and the work of Said and his followers in the field of postcolonial studies is an important contribution to this area of research.