Just a few comments.
1.) I don't doubt AA is sincere in his praise of Said's work around the Palestinian cause. As I didn't argue otherwise, I've no idea how this is relevant, but who cares.
2.) Relatedly, I was criticizing AA's response to Said's work on orientalism, and Said's academic and scholarly work-- really to ES's biography. It is an ad hominem or personalist "attack" because Said is being blamed for being bourgeois -- AA refers to ES's piano-playing, opera-loving tastes -- and for being, like AA himself of course (!), part of what he calls the literary intelligentsia, for not being revolutionary Marxist enough, and for the "fact" that, allegedly, some dupes are using and being influenced by his work, and yet these same people are not revolutionary Marxists. I think this is lame. It is not Said's fault that some of his reader's are not as radical as he, nor is it Fanon's nor Marx's, etc. etc. Texts and authorship don't work in that way, there is not such a close relation b/w the words on the page, and the thinking and actions of their readers. Same thing with theory and practice: not tidy nor linear at all. It is just a bolshevist and idealist phantasy to think that they do. I will get AA's book back from the library to dig out the page numbers of the bourgeois-baiting, but it is definitely in print, and is well known.
3.) I've photo copies of the first two chapters, and the older version of the Social Text piece on Jameson. I've still notes, but have long since recycled the screed on Said, b/c I've already too many on him, and just kept the substantial ones. I've no idea why you spoke so highly of the first chapter, as it is an unexceptionable, global "history" of the profession, and of lit. intellectuals therein, with the occasional and casual reference to "real world" events going on at the same time. The title is "Lit Thry and 3rd World Lit: Some Contexts.", and that is exactly what it provides, some notes about context.
You will have noticed it doesn't do much in re the topic of the 3rd World, just as it can only assert that post-structuralism is, by implication, the product of the business cycle doing its thing in the early 70s, and the "retreat of socialism." To which one might add: A/c to the same logic, they are also the product of cows breaking wind in Illinois.
You might be right that this is the "meat" of the book, but that is hard cheese on Ahmad. The purpose of said history is to set-up the literary (why such a narrow focus one wonders; compare Bourdieu or W Mills) intelligentsia as guilty of being bourgeois, and of being epiphenomena of History. This is news? It is certainly convenient: you can then place the non-revolutionary, non-Marxists in this bracket, or at the end of this telos and -- bingo! -- instant "devastating" critique. Balibar's response to Bourdieu's *homo academicus* is relevant here: Does he have any idea how well this applies to himself?
I just wish the senseless murder of innocent trees -- in the name of a (bogus) Critique of the Treason of the Clerks -- would stop. I can hear them screaming even now, just as I hear Marx whirring in his grave over all this hatred of thinking beyond "vulgar" or Leninist Marxism.
4.) You note: "But again, one could even agree with you about the Said section, and still not touched at all on the heart of the book's arguments. ...[What were those again? Of course, I don't take the Treason-mode to be an argument, and I've already praised the critique of Jameson]......... Most of Ahmad's would be critics engage in this strategy, the *New Politics* discussion of his book is a classic example...I would hope you would not."
I was addressing the Said section and scattered comments specifically, which suck for lack of content. You were the one who stated it was a "powerful" critique of ES. The "biographical" approach and the (un-named) "unintended consequences" "criticism" are -- to quote Trotsky on McDonald -- "stupid." I've called it ad hominem for the reasons noted above; perhaps I should just say it is not an *intellectual* analysis, one that deals adequately with concepts, method, and the like. You mentioned the Foucault bit in Ahmad, which I'll have to look at again or which you will have to actually explain or describe. But Mein Gott it would generally be admitted that *Orientalism* (the bk.) is perhaps the most useful and the best _use_ or application of Foucault yet to appear in English, just as, imho, Spivak's is the best in re Derrida's work, just as, imho, the Subaltern Studies historians are amongst the best in re "post-" (Marxist? Structuralist?) historiography. Said is the guy who did so much to introduce -- critically -- the work of Foucault to English speaking folk. Check out *Beginnings,* last chapters.
As for the "new Politics* section in AA, this too has nothing to do with Said and orientalism, but I'll eyeball it when I get the chance. IN the meantime, perhaps you can refresh my memory. How does it differ from, say, dozens of other "rants" or "critiques" about so-called identity politics, "new" social movements, the poco- or pomo- baddies, etc. etc. Or is it entirely different, and is it taking on Thatcherism and the like? I hope it is better than David Harvey's similar screeds in the Pomo book (final section), which have been taken to task -- perhaps too much -- for being simplistic and bad-old-left-like, which is to say, eurocentric and anti-feminist.
I would stand by my assertion that left-conservatives (in Butler's sense, and in the additional sense of: conservatism = anti-intellectualism; often = bolshevism-as-intellectual-posture) are enamored of Ahmad, b/c it is convenient and to their bent. (Even Eagleton, who is one himself, is a bit sheepish in referring to Ahmad in his hysteric review of Spivak in the London Review.)
I don't know if I would say that about Ahmad (I'll check that final chapter again, but if I had to guess......), or you, whom I don't know other than as someone whom is interested in the plight of workers in China. So should we all be. But I still suspect you (and Ahmad and your cyber comrade) of either not having read ES's book, or not having "got it." Or of performing your identities as Leninists. I trust this wont keep you up at night. If it does, then post something about the book (you still haven't done so, but have gotten into the reception of AA's), or explain to me how/why orientalism and Said's project there -- apprehending colonialism, most grandly -- is less important than whatever it is you believe is more important.
--dfv
------------------------------------------------------ Daniel F. Vukovich Dept. of English; The Unit for Criticism University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 ------------------------------------------------------