Postmodernism and Subjectivity Reconstructed in Edward Said's Out of Place: A Memoir

Abstract

Abstract
This paper studies the connection between the textual politics of ethnic
autobiography and postmodern aesthetics as demonstrated in Edward Said's
Out of Place: A Memoir (1999). It explores the complexities of the
relationship between the dominating western discourses of identity and
constructing subjectivity. This paper shows that Said is rewriting the
diasporic model of subjectivity as a position of difference, by doing so he
challenges both the traditional prevailing notion of a coherent universal
transcendental subject, and the essentialist concepts of the other. It also
examines the way in which Out of Place as a postmodern autobiography
provides insights into the contemporary dilemmas about the limits of an
autobiographical discourse attempting to speak in the name of truth and yet
of difference.