"Those gods that always fail demand from the intellectual in the end a kind of absolute certainty and a total, seamless view of reality that recognises only disciples or enemies." - Edward W Said, in 'Representations of the Intellectual'.

The inevitable in the end had to happen. Many who have been reading and admiring him wished it could be postponed for a little while so that we could savour more of Edward Said's wisdom and intellectual wit, like a delicious last helping that magically keeps on coming.

The Sword of Damocles - the term which a callous doctor had actually used when the diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia was explained to Said in 1991 - had finally fallen.

Ironically I was en route home from the United States after attending a medical conference when I learnt of his passing on Sept 25, while reading the newspapers in Japan Airlines' lounge at Narita airport.

That it did not come as a shock, having known of his fatal diagnosis for several years, hardly diminished my sadness at the loss of a great polymath and a brilliant public intellectual, and above all, a passionate, yet open-spirited defender of the Palestinian cause.

Had I been in the US when the news of his death was made public, I would have been very much tempted to extend my stay and fly to New York City to pay my last respects to the man whose "worldliness" has been a source of my secular education for much of my adult life.

From obituaries around the world, we learnt that Professor Said was a much loved teacher at Columbia University. His death plunged the campus into great sadness and mourning among friends, colleagues and students.

Ground-breaking work

I suppose when talking about Said, as many others before have done, it is only appropriate to begin with his tour de force of cultural criticism, 'Orientalism' (unless one is a literary critic, then one may begin with his earlier works, including one on 'Joseph Conrad and Beginnings: Intention and Method').

'Orientalism' was published in 1978 but I only read the paperback version a couple of years later as a young medical undergraduate.

Even today, I have to say that Said's prose in 'Orientalism' is dense and often difficult, that non-specialist first-time readers may need to read some paragraphs twice or maybe more to get an adequate grasp of what he wanted to say.

But one's perseverance would be immensely rewarded by the writer's dazzling insight into the question of scholarship, literature and culture, and their relationship to power, specifically European imperialism.

'Orientalism' is about the relationship of knowledge to power, of culture to imperialism. It is about the making of images and the manipulation of those images in the exercise of power.

With a combination of historical insight culled from an encyclopedic source of references and a brilliant rhetorical force, Said deftly challenged received wisdom and opened up old concepts for re-examination under a new, more corrosive light.

'Orientalism' and his subsequent work of cultural criticism is also about the notion of "discrepancies", discrepancy between what is often claimed for, and by the West, and what Westerners have actually done in the non-West.

What we generally find in historical and political literature, and literary works in the West in the past, is a great emphasis on the role of enlightenment in the making of civilisation and its discourse. We find a great deal of emphasis on rationalism, on democracy and democratic values, and on liberalism as an aspect of enlightenment.

This is of course true, but there is an almost remarkable tendency to not mention imperialism as shaping the contours of Western civilisation.

'Orientalism' is about how 18th and 19th century British and French novelists, poets, politicians, historians, philologists, travelers-adventurers and imperial administrators (some examples: Chateaubriand, Lemartine, Nerval and Flaubert, Ernest Renan, Richard Burton, T.E. Lawrence, Alfred Balfour, Lord Cromer) had constructed a representation of the 'Orient' (Arabs and Muslims) as the different 'other' - as brutal, uncivilised people whose culture is inferior, and therefore legitimate subjects of the "civilising mission" of the West.

More often than not, this is translated into suffering and death, plundering of their natural resources, land appropriation, subjugation, if not outright slavery - and inhumane treatment - of colonised peoples.

Of course 'Orientalism' had many critics. John Esposito, a respected scholar of Islam, felt that Said's critique of the Orientalist tradition was a little over the top. Others were harsher.

Sinologist Pierre Ryckmans described it as "300 pages of twisted, obscure, incoherent, ill-informed and badly written diatribe".

The epitome of modern-day orientalist Bernard Lewis argued that Said attempted to denigrate the work of well-intentioned, disinterested Orientalists, and that he had politicised an innocent scholarship.

But Said retorted by saying that Lewis "merely delivered historical and willful political assertions in the form of scholarly argument, a practice thoroughly in keeping with the least creditable aspects of old-fashioned colonialist Orientalism".

But for a handful of shrill detractors, the world's reading public and academics in the humanities have made up their mind. 'Orientalism' is a truly ground-breaking work which has taken on a life of its own.

Unintended consequence

The vast amount of literature that has been generated in the wake of 'Orientalism' has testified to its critical impact.

To the late activist and intellectual Eqbal Ahmed, veteran of Third World liberation movements in Algeria and Palestine, and to whom Said dedicated the book 'Culture and Imperialism', there are two periods - before and after 'Orientalism'.

After 'Orientalism', scholars in the humanities and the social sciences could no longer ignore questions of "difference" and the "politics of representation".

Beyond the Arab and Muslim world, native Americans, Africans, Asians, Latin Americans and other colonised peoples located in 'Orientalism' a method to challenge a chronic tendency of the West to deny, suppress and distort their cultures and histories.

In academia, 'Orientalism' has spawned what came to be known as "post colonial studies" and "colonial discourse analysis".

Paradoxically one unintended consequence of 'Orientalism' which Said deplored is the emergence of "Orientalism in Reverse" or "Occidentosis", especially in the Islamic world, where there is a tendency of ascribing to the West everything that is evil in this world.

He would also be quick to deny that he was championing Islam. He was merely talking about one specific activity of the Orientalists, that of representation.

Even if the reception to 'Orientalism' and its far-reaching influence was beyond Said's expectations, there is one nagging question that has remained unanswered. If the Orientalists have misrepresented Islam and Muslims, then what is the true Orient? Is there one?

It is might as well that Said did not attempt to give an answer, for it is the Muslims themselves who have to correct this misrepresentation.

At any rate, in its raw nakedness 'Orientalism' is still very much with us. Referring to the 1991 Gulf War, Said in an interview said, "... I don't think a war like that could have been fought, paid for by Arabs against other Arabs with contempt toward the whole procedure of negotiating, without Orientalism."

One can easily detect the same deployment of the Orientalist logic that allowed the invasion of Iraq on the ridiculous pretext of then president Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction'.

US President George W Bush would not have the nerve to invade North Korea because the North Koreans are not Arabs or Muslims.

In a way, Said's subsequent books 'Covering Islam' (1981) and 'Culture and Imperialism' (1993) answered his critics by providing an elaboration and refinement of the original thesis of 'Orientalism'.

I can't help seeing 'Orientalism' and 'Culture and Imperialism' as the scholarly equivalent of the highly acclaimed movies Godfather and Godfather Part II. One explains the other, yet each stands on its own.