Dr. Robert P. Jackson visited the RBML last year as part of his Edward W. Said Research Study Award. Editor of a recent volume on Gramsci’s Notebooks, Jackson brings his expertise on the Italian theorist to bear on the papers of late scholar and public intellectual Edward Said. Below, Jackson discusses some of the archival finds he made for his project, entitled “Edward Said as Reader of Antonio Gramsci: Postcolonial and Critical Thought in Counterpoint.”

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What brings you to Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library?

I was very fortunate to receive an Edward W. Said Study Award 2024 from The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities for my project investigating Said’s sustained engagement with the ideas of the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, their multi-faceted influence on Said’s work, and Said’s role in transforming contemporary understandings of Gramsci’s contributions to critical thinking.

How long have you been using RBML materials (for this and/or previous research)?

I’d learnt a great deal about Edward Said’s ideas through the work of other scholars that have previously accessed his papers in the archives, such as Tim Brennan (Places of Mind) and Jeanne Morefield (Unsettling the World). This year was the first time that I’ve had the opportunity to visit and consult the collection of the Said Papers in the archives myself.

What have you found? Did you come here knowing this material was here?

I was aware of the profound influence that Gramsci’s writings had had on Edward Said’s thought. However, the archives provided me with a new appreciation of the generative nature of this influence, and its relation to Italian thought more broadly.

I found Said’s acceptance speech for the 1996 Premio Nonino International Prize. The ceremony gave him the opportunity to acknowledge his affiliations with Italian thought: ‘I owe a great deal intellectually to three Italian writers and thinkers, whose example and lessons have been central to my view of humanistic and intellectual work’, namely Giambattista Vico, Antonio Gramsci, and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (author of The Leopard).

Newspaper clippings from the Italian press (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, il Giornale, etc.) during Said’s visit give a sense that the prize marked a significant moment in his rise to prominence as a public intellectual in Italy (around the time of the translation into Italian of his book Representations of the Intellectual).

What have you found that’s surprised or perplexed you?

Said’s creative engagement with Gramsci’s writings unsettled established ‘images’ of the Sardinian thinker. His insistence that Gramsci viewed the world in ‘geographical, territorial terms’ helped to situate Gramsci as an importance source of inspiration for postcolonial thought.

My own work uncovers the subterranean ways in which Said’s energetic intellect reveals a counterpoint by combining his global intellectual influences, for example, juxtaposing sources in Arabic and European literature.

I was surprised quite how directly Said states in his acceptance speech: ‘My book Orientalism published in 1978 was an attempt to apply Gramsci’s ideas about society and history to western representations of the Orient’.

Said refers to his visit for the ceremony, in a letter to Antonella Nonino (5 Feb 1996), as ‘one of the greatest experiences of my life’.

What advice do you have for other researchers or students interested in using RBML’s special collections?

Discuss your work with the archivists. Their knowledge and experience can help to synchronise your box requests with your progress – it can be hard to know in advance when you’ll get through your boxes quickly, and when you’ll strike gold and need more time!

 

 

 

 

Further Reading
Rethinking Trajectories of the Intellectual: Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci