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L ’E spr it C r éa te u r “ culture” in its Arnoldian sense elicits no interrogation; rather, it is defended. Sympto­ matically, these gaps and elisions mark those issues and areas which academic postcolonial studies need to acknowledge or pursue. The book is, however, at its best in the extended discussions of the canonical writers; Said’s detailed and highly nuanced discussions of Conrad and Kipling, for example, are nothing less than superb. As well, his call for a recognition of the intricate relationship between representation and social formations, while not unique, is certainly long overdue in the academic mainstream. Although the Introduction states that this project began in the early 1980s, it is the legacy of the 1990-91 Gulf War—in its militarized atrocities and the media-driven American cultural complicity therewith—which emerges as the subtext of much of Said’s analysis, and as the source of the sense of urgency underlying Culture and Imperialism. Doubtless that urgency is not misplaced; the weight of recent history rests squarely behind it. J o y c e E . B o ss University o f California, Los Angeles Aijaz Ahmad. In T h e o r y : C la s s e s , N a ti o n s , L i t e r a t u r e s . New York: Verso, 1992. The recent publication of Aijaz Ahm ad’s In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures has created quite a stir in academic circles. Keen interest has been provoked by the ambitious task Ahmad proposes: none other than an account o f “ the determination o f literary theory itself, as it negotiates the issues of colony and empire, by the conditions of its production and by the location of its agents in specific grids of class and institution” (320). The response to In Theory signals the eagerness with which scholars have awaited an inquiry into the political implications of our conceptual tools and theoretical positions. Unfor­ tunately, despite its promises, In Theory is not this study. Ahmad addresses the producers of the theories which govern the reading of “ Third W orld” texts in the U.S. academy in the book’s central chapters on Fredric Jameson and Edward Said. An accompanying reading of Salman Rushdie’s Shame corrects what he argues are the misreadings dominant theories have fostered. His account of the conditions of the production of U.S. scholarship is completed in surrounding chapters on the develop­ ment o f literary theory in the twentieth century, various progressive and reactionary uses of nationalisms, their relation to the emergence of a “ Third W orld” literary canon, and a con­ cluding defense of M arx’s position on imperialism. Ahmad’s charge against contemporary scholarship is serious: since the 1960s in the U.S. critical theory has been “ mobilized to domesticate, in institutional ways, the very forms of political dissent which [social] movements had sought to foreground, to displace an activist culture with a textual culture” (1). To support this accusation, he offers the following types of claims: American radicals of the late 1960s did not believe in the desirability of socialism in the U.S. (27); that in any case those who became theorists were only marginally involved in political movements (66); and that on college campuses African American students were normalized and drained of energy for anything but identitarian politics (89). The gravity of Ahm ad’s accusation requires the most careful supporting documentation. But he offers no substantiation for these claims, preferring instead to build his argument through suggestive juxtapositions and to persuade by sheer repetition. This is particularly troubling in a work which emphasizes the need to document the material conditions which enable the produc­ tion of scholarship. When Ahmad does try to substantiate his claims, he turns not to the material conditions which he says are the authorizing force of his book, but to texts. The shortcomings of the 118 S u m m e r 1994 B ook R ev iew s politics engaged by African Americans are measured through shifts in anthologies (331, n4). A condemnation of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses foregoes any consideration of extra-literary conditions, such as the...

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