Edward Said on the Prospects of Peace in Palestine and Israel

"In this new work of political theory, John Randolph LeBlanc examines the political oeuvre of critic and activist Edward Said and finds that Said preferred "reconciliation" to segregation in Palestine/Israel. LeBlanc argues that, for Said, the path to reconciliation requires recognizing the complex, intertwined positions of self and other in the region. Said's criticism speaks to the importance of negotiating the troubling, proximate, and unsettling presence of our most perplexing others; it suggests that peace will come not from rearranging geographies but from working through the after effects of exile and learning to share deeply contested space. Forbearance and recognition, not separation, make reconciliation possible between two "communities of suffering.""--