Despite all its merits, the vast majority of critical attention devoted to colonialist literature restricts itself by severely bracketing the political context of culture and history. This typical facet of humanistic closure requires the critic systematically to avoid an analysis of the domination, manipulation, exploitation, and disfranchisement that are inevitably involved in the construction of any cultural artifact or relationship. I can best illustrate such closures in the field of colonialist discourse with two brief examples. In her book The Colonial Encounter, which contrasts the colonial representations of three European and three non-European writers, MM Mahood skirts the political issue quite explicitly by arguing that she chose those authors precisely because they are" innocent of emotional exploitation of the colonial scene" and are" distanced" from the politics of domination.'

We find a more interesting example of this closure in Homi Bhabha's criticism. While otherwise provocative and illuminating, his work rests on two assumptions-the unity of the" colonial subject" and the" ambivalence" of colonial discourse-that are inadequately problematized and, I feel, finally unwarranted and unacceptable. In rejecting Edward Said's" suggestion that colonial power and discourse is possessed entirely by the coloniser," Bhabha asserts, without providing any explanation, the unity of the" colonial subject (both coloniser and colonised)." 2 I do not wish to rule out, a priori, the possibility that at some rarefied theoretical level the varied material and discursive antagonisms between conquerors and natives can be reduced to the workings of a single" subject"; but