The Guardian

The Guardian appears in Edward Said’s account as a newspaper reporting on legal action against Bernard Lewis in France. Its cited role is specific: alongside Libération, it is named as a source documenting suits brought by Armenian and human-rights organizations over Lewis’s denial that a genocide of Armenians took place under the Ottoman Empire. The reference connects public reporting to Said’s wider concern with the political effects of knowledge claims about the Middle East and its histories.

Cited reporting

Said attributes the report to The Guardian’s March 8, 1994 issue, paired with Libération’s March 1 coverage. According to these reports, Lewis faced criminal and civil suits in France. The charge concerned statements in French newspapers denying that a genocide of Armenians had occurred under the Ottoman Empire. Said notes that the accusation was brought under the statute that also made denial of the Nazi Holocaust a crime in France.

Place in Said’s argument

The citation is used as a concrete instance of what Said calls tendentious generalization becoming consequential beyond scholarly debate. The Guardian’s report supplies evidence that Lewis’s claims had entered a legal and public arena: Armenian and human-rights organizations were pursuing action, and the dispute implicated a French law addressing genocide denial. The book does not discuss The Guardian’s editorial position or give further details about the proceedings; its documented function here is to report the case as one example in Said’s critique of authoritative representations of Middle Eastern history.

Relation to the book’s wider concerns

Elsewhere, Said distinguishes the study of other peoples for understanding and coexistence from knowledge enlisted in campaigns of affirmation, domination, or control. He argues that accounts of the Orient are shaped by power as well as by claims to expertise, and that generalizations can obscure the historical experiences of the people they describe. The Guardian’s appearance in the discussion of the Lewis case gives that argument a specific contemporary reference: a dispute over historical representation, reported by a newspaper, had become the subject of legal action by organizations representing affected communities.