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EMPIRE BURLESQUE
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NEW AMERICANISTS
A Series Edited by Donald E. Pease

EMPIRE BURLESQUE
The Fate of Critical Culture in Global America ≥ Daniel T. O’Hara
duke university press ≥ durham & london 2003
555555555555555555555555555
∫ 2003 Duke University Press All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper !
Designed by Rebecca M. Giménez Typeset in Adobe Minion
by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-
in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.
CONTENTS
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Preface, vii
Acknowledgments, xiii
Introduction: We Welcoming Others, or What’s
Wrong with the Global Point of View?, 1
I. Reading as a Vanishing Act

1. Edward W. Said and the Fate of Critical Culture, 29
2. Why Foucault No Longer Matters, 43
3. Lentricchia’s Frankness and the Place of Literature, 62
II. Globalizing Literary Studies

4. Redesigning the Lessons of Literature, 95
5. The Return to Ethics and the Specter of Reading, 114
6. Class in a Global Light: The Two Professions, 136
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III. Analyzing Global America
7. Transference and Abjection: An Analytic Parable, 163
8. Ghostwork: An Uncanny Prospect for New Americanists, 183
9. Specter of Theory: The Bad Conscience of
American Criticism, 220
IV. Reading Worlds

10. Empire Baroque: Becoming Other in Henry James, 237
11. Planet Buyer and the Catmaster: A Critical Future
for Transference, 301
Notes, 339
Bibliography, 357
Index, 365
P R E FA C E
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Five of the eleven chapters of this book were written during a
study leave in 2000. Four of the remaining chapters were sub-
stantially revised since their original journal publication in the
1990s. And the other two previously published book chapters have been
significantly revised so that they may better articulate this book’s critical
argument. This process was a painfully protracted gestation. Two de-
velopments contributed to this fact. The first, more personal one was
becoming chair of my department for four years (1995–1999). Some of
those experiences find their way into this book as object lessons. The
other, more impersonal development was the final collapse of the Cold
War national-security welfare state and its so-called liberal ideology and
the sudden emergence, still in process, of a global horizon for the United
States and its institutions. One consequence of such events for this book
was that its extended writing became virtually a process of divination,
that is, a quest to read ‘‘the signs of the times’’ in order to discover a
possible future for liberal American culture and the profession of literary
studies. In other words, I read ‘‘events’’ as they interacted in the last
decade as if they were what Harold Bloom first called, with reference to
the experience of poetry, ‘‘scenes of instruction,’’ from which we may
learn the history of the imagination to come. Will it survive, and how?
Such is the question still informing all the chapters of this book. If this
sounds as though I still hope to believe in the prophetic function of
literature and criticism, this is a correct judgment.
Such a focus explains the occasional origins of several chapters. Writ-
ing about Frank Lentricchia’s decision in the mid-1990s to give up crit-
icism and become a writer of memoir and fiction, or about Freud after a
controversial Library of Congress exhibition in 1997, or about Henry
James for the 150th anniversary celebration in 1993 of his birth at New
York University—such occasions and their aftermaths a√orded me van-
tage points on the emergence of the processes we now term ‘‘globalizing
literary studies,’’ in the context of this prophetic hope.
This book works analytically on several di√erent levels at once. It is a
description of the debilitating e√ects of globalization on the university in
general and the field of literary studies in particular. It is a critique of
literary studies’ embrace of globalization theory in the name of a blind
and vacant modernization. It is a meditation on the ways in which critical
reading (and writing) can facilitate an ethical alternative to such institu-
tionalized practices of modernization. More specifically, it is a psychoan-
alytic diagnosis of the globalization of American studies in terms of the
New Americanists’ abjection and transference, their habitual moderniz-
ing ‘‘bandwagon’’ mentality, regardless of consequences. Consequently,
this book is as much a critical parody of globalization as an analysis of it.
In this respect, Empire Burlesque resembles my last book, Radical Parody:
American Culture and Critical Agency after Foucault (1992). The term
‘‘radical parody’’ describes the position or style that the parodist shares
with others by virtue of a network of professional and cultural identifica-
tions, conscious and otherwise. Empire Burlesque thus targets aspects of
the critic’s own mode of scholarly production. This book, in short, is
‘‘ungrounded,’’ as it supplements comically the culture and profession it
takes as its immediate conditions of possibility. Such a radical contin-
gency of reading, for better or worse, is this book’s critical practice.
The critical history and cultural theory informing Empire Burlesque, as
the introduction elaborates, argue that in the field of American studies, it
was the transference from the Cold War national focus to an international
global framework that resulted in the Americanists’ self-abjection. This
double movement of de-identification and displacement from one’s cul-
tural locale completed the process of abjection of academic Americanists
viii ≤≤≤ Preface

begun by the challenges from within of multiculturalism. Globalization
entails a transition from a heavily invested national narrative to quasi-
anonymous tales of displacement and departure without returns, the
literary critical simulacra of the geopolitically and economically driven
migrations around the world. Every element of the Cold War national
security state and its liberal welfare culture underwent negative transfor-
mation. This book terms the ironic imperial outcome of these complex
di√erential processes ‘‘global America.’’ Global America names the totaliz-
ing fetish whose claims to unity are predicated on denying the di√erences
that it cannot subsume under its logics of representation, cultural and
professional. As the global marketplace outsourced the military-industrial
complex to more profitable locales, the manufacturing and professional
meritocratic bases of upward mobility for the ethnic hierarchies of former
immigrant populations su√ered downgrading and displacements by new
technologies and the new workforces being groomed for them here and,
especially, abroad. The globalization of the academy—its new canon of
texts, its hot topics for discussion at conferences and for publication, its
targeted audiences, its slicker international means of production and
distribution—has positioned the literary scholar within a space for which
the American empire serves as the horizon of future possibilities. In
cultivating a renewed taste for critical reading within such a new cultural
space, this book represents a comprehensive attempt to check the flights
from the professional and cultural situation characteristic of the contem-
porary scene. The turn to ethics this book envisions arises precisely in this
context when the critic, in the contingency of reading, has to recognize his
or her education by the text being read as the text’s aporias are themselves
recognized. The critic’s work of reading thereby creates an ethical figure
that has not been accommodated to empire but is the shadowy alterity at
the heart of its globalizing order, its bad conscience, so to speak.
In its reading of canonical and uncanonical writers and cultural fig-
ures, whether Henry James, Freud, Said, Mankind (aka Mick Foley, a
former professional wrestler with a literary bent), or Cordwainer Smith
(a classic sci-fi writer of the 1950s and early 1960s whose real name was
Paul Linebarger and whose real job, besides being a professor of Asian
studies at Johns Hopkins, was working in the Far East for Army Intel-
ligence), Empire Burlesque provides examples of the kind of aesthetico-
ethical criticism that globalization would appear to have superseded. This
Preface ≤≤≤ ix
book thereby enacts a desire to construct an ethos that would resist this
mode of critical performance. That an ironic Cold War sci-fi writer so
perfectly anticipates the mind-set of globalization is a scene of instruc-
tion to reckon with, as this book attempts to turn the profession toward
the spectacle of its own self-burlesque, so as to shock it back into its sense
of ethical responsibility.
The deconstructive theories of Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man find
their analytic place here at this point in the book’s argument. The cata-
chrestic figure of ‘‘global America’’ is at once the American empire and its
spectral double. Beyond the global processes of displacement and abjec-
tion, radical parody and self-burlesque, this book uses de Man’s late work
on a material sublime (on how ‘‘to see as the poets see’’) to critique the
representational aesthetics of modernity. Derrida’s recent Levinasian-
inflected work on justice and human rights, in combination with his
Benjaminian speculations on Marxism’s ‘‘messianic promise,’’ clears the
ground for an imagination of a di√erent future for American studies,
one other than the return in reality of what has been symbolically fore-
closed. This di√erent future, more generally for U.S. literary and cultural
studies, is in particular to be hospitable to all the others, with their
futures, who would still have been arriving right now, including the
others in ourselves.
The chapters in part 1, ‘‘Reading as a Vanishing Act,’’ look at the fate of
reading as a critical practice in recent criticism. They argue that under the
reigning New Historicist dogmas of multiculturalist identity politics, its
greatest proponent (Edward W. Said) fails to understand its academic
successes (chapter 1, ‘‘Edward W. Said and the Fate of Critical Culture’’);
its theoretical model gets seriously mistaken (chapter 2, ‘‘Why Foucault
No Longer Matters’’); and its bad-faith, self-congratulatory academic
politics have driven Frank Lentricchia, arguably the leading literary critic
of his generation, out of the business of criticism and into writing not
only caustic memoir but also savage fiction (chapter 3, ‘‘Lentricchia’s
Frankness and the Place of Literature’’).
Part 2, ‘‘Globalizing Literary Studies,’’ examines the theoretical, ethi-
cal, and institutional e√ects of the transformation of American critical
identity under the impact of recent geopolitical, ideological, and eco-
nomic developments. Unless and until U.S. criticism learns to read itself
as potentially innovative, it will become, more than it ever was before,
x ≤≤≤ Preface
subject to marginalization, to a kind of social death (chapter 4, ‘‘Re-
designing the Lessons of Literature’’). Even when critics have attempted
to argue for an ethical basis underlying the aesthetics of critical reading
(as chapter 5, ‘‘The Return to Ethics and the Specter of Reading,’’ shows),
they have too often substituted slogans and sound bites for close analysis
of texts. As chapter 6, ‘‘Class in a Global Light: The Two Professions,’’
spells out in some detail, the profession can ill a√ord the luxury of its
moral and political posturings. It is already a self-divided profession,
radically split along class lines, and unless it changes its ways, it will su√er
reduction entirely to the service function of instructing the o√spring of
global elites in the niceties of communication.
To further this goal of self-critique, the chapters in part 3, ‘‘Analyzing
Global America,’’ propose, first, to experiment with the language of Der-
rida’s recent Levinasian-inflected work on a deconstructive ethics (chap-
ter 7, ‘‘Transference and Abjection: An Analytic Parable’’). Chapter 8,
‘‘Ghostwork: An Uncanny Prospect for New Americanists,’’ then pro-
poses to envision a thought experiment, to stage an uncanny encounter
between Freud’s late theories of the cultural superego and a deconstruc-
tive reading of the New Americanist project. The ultimate ‘‘bad con-
science’’ par excellence of New Historicist orthodoxy is, of course, Paul
de Man, and in chapter 9, ‘‘Specter of Theory,’’ it is to his critical theory,
especially in its late manifestations, that I urge us now to turn, a spectral
turning already begun in the previous two chapters.
The last part of this book, ‘‘Reading Worlds,’’ consists of two long
chapters. The first of these, ‘‘Empire Baroque: Becoming Other in Henry
James,’’ was originally written in the winter of 1992–1993 for two events
scheduled for June 1993, the two-week-long 150th birthday celebration
for Henry James at New York University, and the twentieth anniversary
‘‘New Americanist’’ conference for the international journal of literature
and culture boundary 2 at Dartmouth College. Portions of this text were
read at both events. It has been much revised, updated, and expanded
since then, especially with respect to the New Historicist turn in James
studies and a recently proposed New Americanist pedagogy for teaching
‘‘the other Henry James,’’ that is, the multicultural Henry James. In many
respects, chapter 10 most fully puts into practice my theoretical analysis
of reading as an ethics of and for criticism.
The final chapter, ‘‘Planet Buyer and the Catmaster: A Critical Future
Preface ≤≤≤ xi
for Transference’’ explores two short tales and one short novel. The first
tale, ‘‘Minor Heroism: Something about My Father,’’ is by Allan Gurga-
nus. As read, it represents the ambiguous—and ambivalent—triumph (or
what I call ‘‘abject felicity’’) of multiculturalism avant le lettre, indeed,
virtually its apotheosis, as foreseen, ironically, by Gurganus in 1973. Simi-
larly, the second tale, ‘‘The Burning of the Brain,’’ and the novel, Nostrilia,
science fictions by Cordwainer Smith, published in 1958 and 1966, respec-
tively, envision a critical future for transference phenomena that is apoca-
lyptic in its excruciating intensities and cosmic in its prophetic scope.
That Gurganus is a Left-oriented gay writer and Smith a Cold War critical
humanist and Army Intelligence operative only makes their unexpected
agreement on multicultural identity politics in their then emergent in-
stitutional forms all the more important, I think, as scenes of instruction
for us today.
Finally, I need here to take note formally of the conceptual and discur-
sive intermixing in this book. Just as Foucault and Derrida, Jon Elster and
Lacan, Marx and Levinas, and so on interpenetrate the theoretical space
of the book in improvised, hybrid associations, so too, at the level of style
and genre, Empire Burlesque, in deploying essay, analysis, memoir, par-
ody, parable, allegory, and, of course, burlesque, more than lives up to its
name. Whether this is a weakness or a strength of mine, or of the cultural
moment, is a critical judgment I must leave for others to make as they
read the book.
xii ≤≤≤ Preface

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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All or substantial portions of chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10 have
appeared in earlier versions in Reconstructing Foucault: Essays
in the Wake of the 80s, ed. Ricardo Miguel-Alonso and Silvia
Caporale-Bizzini (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994); boundary 2, Annals of
Scholarship, Critical Terms for Literary Study, 2d ed., ed. Frank Lentricchia
and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995);
and Narrative Turns and Minor Genres in Postmodernism, ed. Theo
D’haen and Haris Bertens (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995). I am grateful to
the publishers and editors of these publications for permission to reprint
these now revised essays in their new context.
I want to thank the two readers of the manuscript from Duke Univer-
sity Press. Their constructive criticisms and helpful suggestions, I trust,
have made this a much better book. I must also thank Donald E. Pease Jr.,
the editor of Duke’s ‘‘New Americanists’’ series, and the press’s executive
editor, J. Reynolds Smith. Their invaluable work has made this book
possible in its present form in every way. The critical history and cultural
theory that I discuss here in my own way is largely indebted to Pease’s
published and unpublished work. I really cannot express my gratitude
well enough. For an example of his most important recently published
work, see Donald E. Pease, ‘‘C. L. R. James’s Mariners, Renegades, and
Castaways and the World We Live In,’’ which serves as the introduction to
C. L. R. James’s Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman
Melville and the World We Live In (Hanover: University Press of New
England, 2001).
Finally, I o√er this book as my memorial to the spirit of my father,
Daniel J. O’Hara, who died in July 1996.
xiv ≤≤≤ Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION
We Welcoming Others, or What’s
Wrong with the Global Point of View?
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Suppose someone said to you, ‘‘empire burlesque’’; what would
you think? Perhaps the first thing to come into your mind would
not be ‘‘the fate of critical culture in global America.’’ In the
following pages, I will try to justify why you should make the connection
between this book’s title and its subtitle.
I admit that ‘‘empire burlesque’’ in itself is a curious phrase. On its
face, it consists of two nouns. Given the usual expectations of standard
English syntax, the first noun in any such phrase functions automatically
as an adjectival modifier. ‘‘Empire burlesque’’ would then mean a kind of
burlesque, as if there could be a ‘‘republic’’ or ‘‘democracy’’ burlesque,
too, or if it could be an analogue of a furniture style.
‘‘Burlesque’’ is a term, however, that could refer to a place, as well as to
a type of show. ‘‘Empire burlesque’’ could then be construed as the name
of a theater where, presumably, a ‘‘higher,’’ grander, more sophisticated,
more international style of show would occur. This potential meaning
would be inherently ironic, not to say paradoxical, since ‘‘burlesque,’’ as
one recent edition of a literary handbook puts it, is traditionally consid-
ered a ‘‘low’’ form of comedy ‘‘characterized by ridiculous exaggeration
and distortion,’’ in which ‘‘the sublime may be made absurd, honest
emotions may be turned to sentimentality, and a serious subject may be
treated frivolously or a frivolous subject seriously.’’∞ As the handbook
goes on to say, ‘‘the essential quality that makes for burlesque is the often
raucous discrepancy between subject matter and style’’ (72). The nonsen-
sical and the dignified in content and form are repeatedly mismatched
with each other to the point of total confusion. One may think of the
classic radio comedy bit, for example, Abbott and Costello’s ‘‘Who’s On
First?’’, which has its origins in burlesque in which a passionate earnest-
ness and a routine self-evidence get all mixed up with increasingly hi-
larious consequences.
Whether ‘‘burlesque’’ is taken in a broad fashion as a potential varia-
tion of meaning haunting literature and the other arts at every turn
depending on the dubious adequacy of form and content to each other,
or in a more restricted sense as a popular form of entertainment in which
comedians tell risqué jokes and perform outrageous, often topical skits
while big-bosomed women strip o√ their fetishistic outfits slowly to a
honky-tonk bump-and-grind beat, burlesque is clearly related to parody
and travesty. Parody is usually restricted to making fun of a particular
work or style. Travesty is often what burlesque does to the pompous but
secretly abject subject, such as the supposed sacredness of womanhood or
the idealized purity of di√erences—class, gender, racial, or whatever. But
burlesque actually takes in entire worlds or epochs for its objects of fun,
with great comic e√ect when lampooning the social and moral and rhe-
torical contradictions and hypocrisies of some upper-class model or
form of life. The English music hall tradition of comedy as it morphs into
Monty Python in the team’s send-up of the life of Christ in their great
film Life of Brian is the best recent example of what I have in mind.
However, there are ‘‘high’’ or elite literary examples, as well. ‘‘Book
Ninth’’ of Henry James’s novel The Wings of the Dove (1902) opens with its
male protagonist, Merton Densher, sitting in his Venice rooms as if in ‘‘his
own theatre, in his single person,’’ repeatedly rehearsing the fresh details of
his sexual conquest of his manipulative lover, Kate Croy.≤ The terms of this
rehearsal, a renewed ‘‘hallucination of intimacy’’ between lovers, with a
‘‘perpetual orchestra . . . playing low and slow,’’ ‘‘the fiddlers’’ underscored
in his fantasy, all suggest the gross vulgarity of a solitary act that undercuts
Densher’s sense of relational potency and so calls into question the fragile
presumptions of his social world (400). Similarly, the class doubleness in
2 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

which ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ cultures shadow each other is the specter of
burlesque haunting the global order now emerging.
This is why, in ‘‘empire burlesque,’’ we can also hear, if we listen hard
enough, with su≈ciently ironic a spirit, the parodic echo of a Miltonic
inversion, as if what the title travestied were an imperial world to be
submitted to the burlesque treatment in more detail, or perhaps even an
empire in the process of burlesquing itself, wittingly or not. (That Bob
Dylan titles his 1985 album Empire Burlesque might underscore such a
possibility.) In any event, what I mean by it is that newly emerged global
scene of instruction in which American critical identity, informed (and
misinformed) by ideas, theories, literatures, cultures, and other realities
‘‘elsewhere’’ (as well as ‘‘here’’), is now being (re)formed and performed
with a growing frequency and influence as if it were the ultimate horizon
of experience. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the massacre in Tia-
nanmen Square, both events of 1989, the profession of American criti-
cism in the widest sense—including academia, journalism, and the other
media and policy-shaping institutions—has shifted its focus from a
largely internal (internal to these professions) multicultural ethos in a
New Historicist mode to the economic, political, and cultural processes
of globalization. In the global perspective of these national and interna-
tional institutions (of the university, the media, and intellectual and hu-
manitarian foundations), American critical identity is enacting itself, as
in a place or theater, as part of a traveling show (of conferences, theories,
readings, memoirs, and publishing ventures), in which all the would-be
emperors have, progressively, no clothes.
‘‘Empire,’’ of course, is a term that refers to a political reality, a set of
political institutions and organizations of life, an imperial world system.
Does empire in this sense exist literally now? Even according to its most
systematic theorists, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, in their book
Empire, its political manifestations or materializations are at best nascent
and intermittent at the moment, largely limited to administrative, police,
and humanitarian operations. While not nothing, these realizations of
empire are not yet empire in the traditional sense. Given the power of the
telecommunications industry, the rise of the Internet, and the emergence
of the new tech-based economy, the postmodern form of empire may
perhaps remain mostly virtual, except for projects and operations, scenes
Introduction ≤≤≤ 3
of instruction and events of entertainment. However that may be, em-
pire, whether virtual or not, whether ‘‘straight’’ or ‘‘burlesque,’’ ap-
pears to be the economic and cultural horizon of our lives to come on
the planet.≥
My theoretical take on the formation and operation of this global
perspective on American critical identity as ‘‘empire burlesque’’ derives
largely from Jacques Derrida’s later work, especially Specters of Marx and
related texts. In Aporias, for one example, Derrida demonstrates in a
careful reading of Heidegger’s ‘‘being-toward-death,’’ the keystone of his
existential analysis in Being and Time, that any attempt to found empiri-
cal and historical disciplines of knowledge on a priori foundations by
means of establishing secure and inviolate borders, is doomed to failure.
This is so even as all empirical and historical disciplines or knowledges
presuppose one or another ontological pre-understanding that neces-
sarily informs the nature and scope of their investigations, no matter how
much they feign ignorance (or the self-evidence), for disciplinary pur-
poses, of all such transcendental speculations: ‘‘While the richest or most
necessary [anthropological knowledge] cannot found itself in any other
way than on presuppositions that do not belong to [such knowledge or its
competence] . . . conversely, this fundamental [system of presuppositions
or ontology] cannot protect itself from a hidden [anthropological] con-
tamination.’’∂ This deconstructive version of the hermeneutic circle is
more radical than any existential one, since the intermixing between the
realms of transcendental presupposition and that of empirical field
‘‘data’’ founds both realms on uncertain, not to say undecidable, bases.
In this ironic way, theory does direct practice, even as practice always
already—that is, in an a priori manner—infiltrates any theory’s core. Such
structural indetermination, which promotes a radical overdetermina-
tion, is the ultimate aporia or impasse of intellectual work, which can
only be su√ered or survived, lived on from repeatedly.
Although the wordplay in the last paragraph may sound like the philo-
sophical equivalent of a burlesque comic’s routine, it does have a serious
point. Derrida is conceptualizing the limits of any structure in terms of
its finitude, when facing the always imminent prospect of death. Struc-
tural finitude is an analogy for and an instance of human finitude. Any
structure of thinking, including that inherent in material and cultural
institutions and discourses, possesses a ‘‘ground-and-supplement’’ orga-

nization in which, at certain points or moments, the di√erences between
this division or partition or borderline blur into one another, intermix-
ing. These places of structural ‘‘mortality’’ (or entropy) are sites where a
potentially infinite reflection on itself haunts the structure. This is the so-
called mise en abîme e√ect. ‘‘Empire burlesque’’ is my name for this e√ect
as it haunts, comically, the emerging structure of global American litera-
ture and culture. The low-life vulgarity that shadows Morton Densher’s
fantasy space is class and sexually specific, but those contingent dimen-
sions depend on this structural peculiarity that transforms even James’s
empire baroque into our empire burlesque.
One of the explicit consequences of such a condition is that every
concept, trope, or figure, every argument or system, gives o√ the traces of
what it would exclude, what it must attempt to exclude, in order to order
itself. Spectral lineaments of all these ‘‘others’’ haunt our most ‘‘positive’’
constructions. Our conceptual and rhetorical entities are thus never able
to be ‘‘identical to themselves, hence no longer simply identifiable, and to
that extent no longer determinable. Such totalities [can] therefore no
longer authorize simple inclusions of a part in the whole’’ (7). Nation-
states, even would-be global empires, share with intellectual entities this
indeterminable and radically intermixed quality or conditionality, neces-
sarily transgressing their own self-declared borders. Deconstruction, in
this sense, is the rhetoric of such phantom excess, of such excessive
spectral expenditure; it is, in this way, the ironic rhetoric of empire,
empire’s self-divided shadow, since empire would expend itself exces-
sively, totally, if it could do so, in every moment, since exceeding all
borders defines the principle of its paradoxical order, what Derrida calls
its principle of self-ruin.∑
In other words, that is, in my own words once again, empire is a priori
its own burlesque; it is itself and its self-travestying double or alter ego or
spectral other. We can see this phenomenon in the way American profes-
sions, with their celebrity mystique, and service industries, with their
proletarian professionalism, are joining hands as if they are their own
mirror images. We can also see it in the abjection of everyday American
life simultaneously appearing with the transference of wealth and value
to the diverse processes of globalization. This critical transference gets
played out in the brutal low-life antics of popular culture, particularly in
the latest form of ‘‘bread and circuses,’’ professional wrestling, or in the
passions of the memoir genre and other kinds of self-writing and the
tacky self-revelations of the Jerry Springer–type talk show.
Shadowed by its spectral other (and double), by its alter ego, as it were,
an intellectual entity, whether concept, trope, or law, both defines a field,
a figure, or a domain and transgresses its own limits, trespassing on the
spectral thresholds of other such entities, locales, or ‘‘places.’’ The now
notorious global flows of high finance and cultural representations are
just two of the latest (and best) examples of this strangely ubiquitous
‘‘immaterializing’’ work, this ‘‘ghost’’ work.∏
So when I speak of intellectual entities such as ‘‘American critical
identity’’ or ‘‘a global perspective,’’ I am aware of the inherent paradoxical
limitations of such generalizing phrases. They are at once too determi-
nate and also overdetermined, contradictorily open to a plurality of dif-
ferences. Nonetheless, conceptual, rhetorical, and institutional realities
make it necessary for a critic to form one identity, one perspective, even if
it is not intended to be taken as the only one possible. Such moments of
identity formation (and reformation) define critical generations in a
profession.
Of course, literary studies, or more broadly English studies, whether
amalgamated o≈cially or not with comparative literature or cultural
studies, and whether associated closely with contemporary media or not,
in short, ‘‘our profession’’ (broadly speaking), appears not to be doing
too well in reproducing itself from one generation to another without
su√ering traumatic deprofessionalizing changes a√ecting the processes of
institutional renewal.π I do not wish to recite here the vicissitudes of our
profession; you will hear enough of that in the pages to follow, although
far less than in previous books of mine.∫ Owing, in large part, to Derrida’s
later work, I have learned to begin (with) welcoming others.
If Derrida is right and every intellectual entity, including geopolitical
representations, hosts its double/other, playing host to, and being the
guest of, this guest, even its hostage, then what? Then, a spectral trace
disseminates and haunts with its invisible but palpable mark every text,
archive, or topology. Such haunting is virtually what Derrida names, after
a usage of Hélène Cixous, the arrivant. This arrivant is the absolute other
ever to come. Death, ‘‘my death,’’ as the impossible possibility totally
mine, paradoxically embodies this specter of the arrivant.Ω The ‘‘death’’
or ‘‘passing’’ of every entity of representation is then inscribed at the core

of each word as the spectral trace of radical alterity. The figure of the
absolute arrivant, the ever first and last comer, is what Derrida sees in the
immigrant, the émigré, the political exile, the migrant worker (we may
also say, with justice, ‘‘the gypsy scholar’’). This is why Odysseus, the
Wandering Jew, and various other errant figures of nomadic hybridity
haunt the following passage (from Aporias) as avatars of this ‘‘messianic-
ity without messianism’’:∞≠
No, I am talking about the absolute arrivant, who is not even a guest.
He who surprises the host—who is not yet a host or an inviting power
—enough to call into question, to the point of annihilating or render-
ing indeterminate, all the distinctive signs of a prior identity, begin-
ning with the very border that delineated home and assured lineage,
names and language, nations, families and genealogies. The absolute
arrivant does not yet have a name or an identity. It is not an invader or
an occupier, nor is it a colonizer, even if it can also become one. It is
not even a foreigner identified as a member of a foreign, determined
community. Since the arrivant does not have any identity yet, its place
of arrival is also de-identified: one does not yet know or one no longer
knows which is the country, the place, the nation, the family, the
language, and the home in general that welcomes the absolute arriv-
ant. This absolute arrivant as such is, however, not an intruder, an
invader, or a colonizer, because invasion presupposes some self-
identity for the aggressor and for the victim. Nor is the arrivant a
legislator or the discoverer of a promised land. (33–34)
An amazing, if somewhat mystifying, passage. So many echoes and traces

shimmer and pass here that one does not know quite what to comment
on. What appears next in the passage, however, is clearly the ghost of the
infant messiah:
As disarmed as a newly born child, [the absolute arrivant ] no more

commands than is commanded by the memory of some originary
event when the archaic is bound with the final extremity, with the
finality par excellence of the telos or of the escathaton. It even exceeds
the Border of any determinable promise. . . . this border [where one
cannot discriminate] among the figures of the arrivant, the deal, and
the revenant (the ghost, he, she, or that which returns). (34–35)
A monstrous birth for this spectral messiah, one probably occurring in a
dressing room of the empire burlesque? Thinking of the future, in(to)
futurity, appears to take such a rough form.
Derrida’s far-from-mystical but openly visionary point is that an
order constitutes itself by excluding what appear to be radically hetero-
geneous elements, which nonetheless also continue to exist both within
and without the order, on both sides of its borders, in vestigial forms of
emergent traces of what is really not present there now or at any other
moment yet promising ever to come still. Such a structural order of
spectral traces surviving, living on, is a decentered and decentering order.
It is significantly marginal, even as it is self-exceeding, multiple and yet
empirelike, a kind of ersatz counterimperial simulacrum haunting every
material project of empire with its burlesque mirror image. This shadowy
alterity at the heart of any positive order is what Derrida calls the absolute
arrivant and what I am calling, with respect to American critical identity
in a global perspective, ‘‘empire burlesque.’’
Let me give two examples, one scientific and the other geopolitical. It
is now a commonplace of modern physics to discuss quantum mechanics
as a supplement of classical Newtonian and Einsteinian physics that has
special applications to the realm of subatomic particles. This develop-
ment would suggest that classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are
the ground and supplement, respectively, in the organization of the theo-
retical structure of modern physics. But we also now know that the laws
operating at the subatomic level and those at the cosmic scale intermix at
high energies, so that the neat division between realms breaks down, as in
our experiments we must take into account both the subatomic e√ects of
our own instruments on transformation and detection and the classical
features, such as gravity, in our increasingly radical experiments. This
‘‘deconstructive moment’’ in modern physics is signaled by the special
mathematical formalization used to manage the infinities that would
otherwise ensue as we calculate the results of these experiments. Both
Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle and Niels Bohr’s equally fa-
mous complementary principle are just two further signs of the opera-
tion of this deconstructive moment. Ordinary logic no longer works.
My other example comes from the new realities of life on the border
between Mexico and the United States. What has emerged, especially
since nafta passed in 1993, is a zone existing on both sides of the border

that exhibits the permeability of structures, the intermixing of elements
within and between structures, and the disjunctive temporality of the
resulting cultural space between and within structures. What ‘‘time’’ is it
there, on the border? What historical conjuncture, what mode of exis-
tence, is it of the past or the future? Who can tell? When asked whether
they feel themselves to be Mexicans living in the United States or Ameri-
cans working in Mexico, the respective populations of service and high-
tech workers respond that they feel their first loyalty is to this border zone
itself, whether identified with the place of work or of home or even of
shopping! Often they speak of their hectic ‘‘commute’’ between home
and work as the self-identifying sign of their time. Without specifically
reading too much into this, we could fairly say, I think, that on the
border, the specter of America’s global future is arriving virtually at every
moment.
This spectral moment, which is also a spatial structure interrupting all
centered structure, is anachronistic, anarchic, radically anterior and fu-
tural alike, which is why Derrida figures it as the absolute arrivant (the
absolutely ‘‘arriving’’ one, ‘‘the newcomer,’’ or ‘‘the arrival’’). It is the
messiah moment ever coming. Does this coming-messiah moment of
apocalyptic di√erentiation and de-identification form the principal
‘‘apocalyptic’’ interest of global capital? Or given my empire burlesque
frame, does it mean that the global scene of instruction for American
critics should await the arrival of Nathan Lane from The Bird Cage
dressed as Jesus in drag? The messiah moment is more discrete and
secretive than that, even ‘‘here and now.’’
We can also approach this moment via a more domestic scene, in-
volving my admittedly precocious nineteen-month-old granddaughter,
Maria. This scene, I confess, struck me as being so like the famous one of
Freud’s grandson, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, playing with the spool
of ribbon that it felt truly uncanny when I experienced it.
My daughter, Maria’s mother, Jessica, leaves for school each evening at
five o’clock and returns after ten o’clock, long after Maria has gone to
bed. As I was watching her, one day, soon after her mother left for school,
Maria picked up one of her baby books, said to me, ‘‘Bye-bye’’ and ‘‘I miss
you,’’ ran to a corner of the room next to the door, paused for a long
moment, then turned around quickly, a sharp volte-face, rushed toward
me, calling out, ‘‘I’m back, I’m back,’’ and fell into my opening arms. This
play was then performed repeatedly, ritualistically, for the next twenty or
so minutes. The game of return, it appears, would be repeated again and
yet again, at other times.
The open secret of Maria’s performance of this unconscious fantasy,
her acting it out, in which she spontaneously impersonated the mother
she wished to see return—Maria going to the wall herself and then return-
ing as other—lay not in the driven desire completing its imaginary circuit,
or in her adoption of the active part in the symbolic scenario, both of
which processes are, of course, significant in other contexts. No, what I
found most fascinating here was the moment when Maria paused in the
corner by the door, with her face to the place where the walls at the front
of the house converged. In that ‘‘borderline’’ space of the real, she paused
only for an apparently blank moment, a pregnant pause; it was always the
same moment, the same virgin interval again, and took as long each time
no matter how excited and raucous the game of return got. This ‘‘pure’’
moment between the going out and the coming back was not only where
her unconscious wish received its formal ‘‘appearance’’ and yet remained
in hiding, inapparent. It was also that wish openly, if spectrally, incar-
nated. William Blake called this imaginatively receptive moment welcom-
ing the creative response of the future ‘‘the fugitive moment,’’ which
Satan’s Watch-Fiends—all the dark emanations of Church, Nation, Mill,
and School—could not capture or pervert to their rationalized, instru-
mental, profit-making ends. What I am calling Derrida’s messiah mo-
ment embodies this uncanny structure of visionary fantasy in its most
welcoming creative response to otherness, in oneself most of all, as an
innovative repetition, just as Maria’s game of return introduced for her
the new role of student performance artist of desire. Derrida’s messiah
moment may thus be the mother of all moments. Besides, if there is an
empire, can a messiah be far behind, whether burlesque in mode or not?
We might think of such a messiah moment not in terms of the moth-
er’s actual or remembered return but in light of the expectation, the
hope, of a new coming increasingly disjoined from the habitual traces of
the return. This openness of systems to the future, disconnected from any
master narrative prefiguring the course of events, this radical contin-
gency, is what I read from my granddaughter’s drama. It is what can be
read from the living-on-the-border I have alluded to; it is what experi-
mental physicists read from their instruments every day. When enough of

these moments arise, who knows but that the new world order’s apoc-
alypse may be at hand? At the very least, a substantive transformation in
U.S. institutions, especially those of education, could be forthcoming.
Going Global!
As an editor of boundary 2: an international journal of literature and

culture, I have been exposed in a variety of ways to the global point of
view for some time now. My editorial colleagues and I have discussed it
repeatedly, in person, over the phone, in conference calls, via e-mail, by
means of the formal reports done on essays and reviews submitted, and
so on. We have seen it both as the latest threat to critical thinking and as a
unique opportunity for provoking its radical renewal. These discussions
have occurred not only in the United States but around the world, in
Tunisia, Bermuda, Berlin, and elsewhere; and privy to these discussions
have been the local and specific intellectuals of the host locations.
In 1998 I coedited with Alan Singer, a Temple University colleague, a
special issue of boundary 2 entitled ‘‘Thinking through Art: Aesthetic
Agency and Global Modernity.’’∞∞ Neither this professional exposure nor
my intellectual participation in the global phenomenon overtaking liter-
ary and cultural studies has lessened my skepticism about it as a critical
point of view, however much I may intend to make use of it. The reason
for my continued skepticism and growing fascination for it was clarified
recently for me by some research I conducted outside the field of literary
and cultural criticism.∞≤
But before discussing some of the results of that research, I need to say
something about the subject within my field. The January 2001 issue of
PMLA was devoted almost entirely to the special topic ‘‘Globalizing Liter-
ary Studies.’’∞≥ Coordinated by Giles Gunn, this issue contains nine arti-
cles by Paul Jay, Stephen Greenblatt, Arhiro Anas, Basem L. Ra’ad, David
Chioni Moore, William Slaymaker, Robert Eric Livingston, Ian Baucom,
and Wai Chee Dimoc. It also includes two talks on the topic given at the
Modern Language Association Convention in 1999 by Edward W. Said,
then president of the mla, and by Rey Chow. Two things are noteworthy
about the issue. The first is the absence of any ‘‘expert’’ governmental
participants or consultants. Because there was considerable scholarship
on display, this can only mean that such ‘‘expert’’ knowledge of the
foreign policy institutions was deliberately being excluded as ideologi-
cally questionable, even tainted by its entanglements with the American
empire. The second thing of note, besides this ideological purity on the
part of the American empire’s literary and cultural critics, was their basic
acceptance of the current and foreseeable status quo in their—and my—
field, as signaled in one of Said’s final comments: ‘‘The politics of identity
and nationally grounded system of education remain at the core of what
most of us do, despite changed boundaries and objects of research’’ in the
profession of literary studies (68). I note these two features of this institu-
tionally sanctioned special issue of PMLA—its ideological purity and its
professional self-satisfaction—because they are the two this book most
contests. Writing about globalization and not making use of all of what
social sciences, government agencies, and the new media may have to
o√er on the topic is as silly as writing an essay on Shakespeare without
checking out all of the relevant scholarship. More significantly, discussing
globalization without recognizing its potentially revolutionary e√ects on
any and all politics of identity, its possibly utopian subversion of the
culture of representation itself, not to mention the structure of literary
studies, is not a position that this book hopes to occupy.
Like my boundary 2 colleagues, I have assumed that whether one was
critical of it or not, with respect to the global point of view, its adoption
meant that one presumed, in some sense, what Bruce Robbins, one of our
associated editors and an editor of Social Text, refers to as the unprece-
dented global ‘‘hegemony’’ of the United States of America.∞∂ That is, the
global point of view assumes the existence and power of the American
empire, whether conceived in terms of military might, economic and
political influence, or cultural domination; and whether condemned or
used against itself in alliance with its critical others here and abroad,
America, global America, in any or all of these dimensions, is the great
imperial shadow haunting the global point of view.∞∑
The global point of view looks at a rapidly modernizing, so-called
developing rest of the world outside of Europe and North America and
can read into this process of modernization a necessary Westernization,
and into this Westernization, it can read in turn an inescapable Ameri-
canization. Modernization, Westernization, and Americanization are the
trinity of global capitalism driving the forces of globalization. And these
forces are leveling and homogenizing all the di√erences in the world,

disciplining them by destroying everywhere local customs, national cul-
tures and traditions, and entire ways of life of ancient civilizations. At the
same time, however, the global point of view also assumes that the global-
ization of technological change, especially in telecommunications, of po-
litical, financial, and social institutions, and of cultural representations
has made possible new chances for, and new instruments of, substantial
collaboration among America’s critics, within and without. Of course,
the network of spy satellites known as Echelon, which can easily trace all
e-mail messages and tap any phone conversation in the world, may put a
damper on these critics as they organize their various forms of resistance.
. . . But that is another more problematic story.∞∏
At the very least, critics of the presumed overwhelming American
hegemony may do their work on the thousands or so ‘‘businessmen,
bankers, government o≈cials, intellectuals, and journalists from scores
of countries’’ who meet each year at the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland, by lobbying these representatives of the ‘‘Davos cult,’’
as it has been called, to use their influence and power in support of
institutions and policies fostering international recognition and enforce-
ment of human rights and other worthy causes of a new, socially demo-
cratic vision of the world.∞π Some of the critics of these critics, I must say,
are even more skeptical than I am. Judith Butler, for one significant
example, is cited by Bruce Robbins in his book Feeling Global: Interna-
tionalism in Distress, as claiming that the ‘‘Davos cult’’ and its critical
proponents are following, wittingly or not, a barely disguised American
agenda to make well-placed representatives of global cultural capital feel
better about their elite roles in administering empire.∞∫ A therapeutic
smart bomb, as it were.
However that may be, what’s wrong with the global point of view, no
matter who adopts it or for what purposes, is that it overestimates power.
Despite all the hoopla and lamentation, American power after the Cold
War has lessened, not grown. By all measures—military, economic, polit-
ical, cultural—America has lost ground vis-à-vis the rest of the world. It is
true that the spectacle of American power, especially in its military as-
pect, has become greater, but like a Hollywood action blockbuster, the
special e√ects of American presence in the world may be sublime, even
though our cinematic hero is just another robotic, muscle-bound goon
who su√ers from a bad heart from steroid abuse. In short, America may
not ‘‘be back,’’ after all. The events of September 11, 2001, tragically con-
firm this point.
Samuel P. Huntington, no apologist for America’s critics, to say the
least, founder and coeditor of Foreign Policy, among other considerable
distinctions, persuasively argues the pessimistic view of American and
Western power in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order.∞Ω With startling blurbs of praise from Francis Fukuyama, writing
in the Wall Street Journal (‘‘The book is dazzling in its scope and grasp
of the intricacies of contemporary global politics’’), and from Richard
Bernstein, writing in the New York Times (‘‘A benchmark for informed
speculation . . . [and] a searching reflection on our global state’’), and
from Wang Gungwa, writing in The National Interest (‘‘This is what is so
stunning [about this book]: It is not just about the future but may actu-
ally help to shape it’’), and from both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew
Brzezinski (but I’ll spare you their unsponsored, if even more extrava-
gant, praise), Huntington’s book, often critical of these very figures, is an
immediate disciplinary classic and an international best-seller. Here is
its thesis:
Culture and cultural identities . . . civilization identities, are shaping

the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post–Cold
War world.
For the first time in history global politics is both multipolar and
multicivilizational; modernization is distinct from Westernization
and is producing neither a universal civilization in any meaningful
sense nor the Westernization of non-Western societies.
The balance of power among civilizations is shifting: the West is
declining in relative influence; Asian civilizations are expanding their
economic, military, and political strength; Islam is exploding demo-
graphically with destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and
their neighbors; and non-Western civilizations generally are rea≈rm-
ing the value of their own cultures.
The West’s universalist pretensions increasingly bring it into con-
flict with other civilization, most seriously with Islam and China;
at the local level fault line wars largely between Muslims and non-
Muslims, generate ‘‘kin-country rallying,’’ the threat of broader escala-
tion, and hence e√orts by core states to halt these wars.

The survival of the West depends on Americans rea≈rming their
Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique
not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges
from non-Western societies. Avoidance of a global war of civilization
depends on . . . accepting . . . global politics. (20–21)
One can see in this last point Huntington’s domestic political agenda, of
course: a kind of realistic, hardheaded, pragmatic exposure to multi-
culturalism, so as to better rea≈rm and defend Western civilization.
Nonetheless the facts and figures, graphs and tables, and authoritative
national and international archival materials, not to mention the praise
of his critical opponents as well as his friends, make Huntington, the
Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, where he is
also the director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and
the chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Stud-
ies, an authority to be reckoned with, however lamentable or comforting
that may be. And of course, in my field of literary and cultural studies, no
one writing about or from the global point of view bothers even to
mention Huntington’s considerable achievement.≤≠ No one, that is, ex-
cept Edward W. Said, in a previously unpublished essay collected in his
Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Said attacks the original 1992 For-
eign Policy essay by Huntington that became his 1996 book, but one of the
things disabling Said’s polemical critique is that in twenty-five pages, he
quotes Huntington’s essay only once, and that a single sentence. (For
more on this, see chapter 1 in this volume.)
Let me make it clear that, first of all, Huntington does not argue for the
lessening of American and Western power as a desirable goal. Nor, sec-
ondly, does he argue that the emerging world order of civilization—
identity politics at large, as it were—including Sinic, Japanese, Hindu,
Islamic, Orthodox, Western, Latin American, and African constituents
and all of their panoply of core states, member states, lone countries, torn
states, and cleft states, resembles some United States of the World, an
actual global America, with liberal pluralistic values and institutions. In
fact, for Huntington (and this is my third point), the driving force for this
‘‘new world order’’ is not so much globalization as such as the resurgence
of indigenization, that is, the resurgence of so-called reactionary cultural
identities based largely on the global religious revival, and not global
capital, a ‘‘fundamentalist’’ religious revival operative within the United
States, too, all of which is a virtually universal response to the discontents,
dislocations, and alienations that inevitably accompany modernization
everywhere it occurs, whether in explicitly Western guise or not. Hun-
tington, in other words, argues for a realpolitik position that recognizes
the role of so-called unreason or feeling in compensating imaginatively
for, and so ameliorating to some degree, the worst e√ects of the modern
rationalization of the world. Once again, the tragedy of September 11,
2001, in New York City confirms this thesis strikingly.
I agree with this much of Huntington’s thesis, and I want to suggest
that given such a revised global point of view, one can read the multi-
cultural identity politics within the United States and Western countries
generally as the new civic religion of social democracy pervading the new
internationalism.
Another way of putting all this is to say that the two comparatively
monolithic ideologies of the Cold War—Americanism and Communism
—have been displaced by several competing civilizational visions of iden-
tity in di√erence based less purely on geopolitical strategies than on long-
standing albeit very ‘‘messy’’ cultural a≈nities and identifications, mostly
religious in nature. And this transference or displacement within ‘‘the
new world order,’’ and to this vision of that order, often feels like the
(admittedly necessary) abjection of the previous forms of life. Rather
than two grand narratives structuring the horizon of the entire world
there is now a postmodern plurality of possible story germs, most of
them avowedly religious in nature, and all clearly mythopoeic in their
lineaments.
If one wanted to play devil’s advocate at this point, one could suggest
that Huntington’s ‘‘realistic’’ position in fact repeats, ironically enough,
the metanarrative theory of romanticism as the emancipated resurgence
of apparently outmoded cultural traditions in compensatory reaction to
the Enlightenment’s instrumental reason. In Europe and America, ac-
cording to this grand narrative, one position of the bourgeois avant-
garde stands in opposition to another. Or one moment in the making of a
broad middle-class society opposes another moment. Could it be that
Huntington’s realistically displaced romantic vision is actually a mecha-
nism through which global capital ensures itself a more (rather than less)
heterogeneous and di√erential world?

One of the myths of critical theory, of course, perhaps derived from
Marcuse or the Frankfurt school more generally, is the idea that capital-
ism requires a leveling and homogeneous ‘‘one-dimensional’’ playing
field to operate in. In fact, as we see from the way the conditions of
production and consumption in di√erent locales are played o√ against
each other, capitalism thrives best when cost and price margins between
and among various regions, states, or hemispheres keep the cycle of
investment, production, consumption, relocation, renewed investment,
and so on, flowing freely. A multicivilizational world order, as opposed to
a one-world or even a simplistically split or halved world order, makes for
better opportunities to maximize the potential chances for greater dif-
ferential profits.
It is important to see that this vision of a complex, heterogeneous,
di√erentially interrelated world should not be identified with any one
actual state or civilization or cultural institution (such as ‘‘literature’’),
not to mention any one political or financial institution such as the
United Nations or the World Bank. Nonetheless, I believe that it is impor-
tant to keep this vision as such in circulation as both the valued represen-
tation of alterity and di√érance, opposed to all utopian and dystopian
single visions, and the preferred model of existence of capital in this
epoch of its global manifestation. I will christen it, as a figure of the
ultimate power in our moment of existence, after Emerson’s ‘‘new ideal
America in the West’’ and call it ‘‘global America.’’ I will use this term here
to designate the complex imaginative phenomenon of globalization. But
I want to underscore the point that the name ‘‘global America’’ refers to
no mode or style of existence of any other entity than itself. No person(s),
no class, no people, no organization, no institution is singularly in-
tended, nothing other than the otherwise anonymous, impersonal, and
unnameable thing and agency, global capital.
What’s wrong with the global point of view? In my sense, nothing—
so long as one recognizes in its critical or exculpatory versions that
‘‘global America’’ (or any of its avatars) is another uncanny phantom or
specter, just like any other would-be unifying and totalizing represen-
tation of cultural (or other) identity, a fantasmatic fetish of identity.
What really exists, of course, as we all know, is the realm of virtual life
(or death), the undead dimension of capital, which is the sole kingdom
at hand.≤∞
Between Marx and ‘‘Mankind’’
In a special issue of boundary 2 entitled ‘‘The University,’’ its editor,

Paul A. Bové, in his opening note, sounds the theme of the issue (and
indeed of much recent criticism) when he makes it clear that ‘‘the issues
of education within globalization a√ect regions of the world unevenly
but with repeated demands that the systemic e√ects and intents of global-
ization be analyzed everywhere they appear—and as such, that is, not
merely as local instances of traditional problems or as instances of ‘impe-
rialism’ on an old nationalist model.’’≤≤ Bové has put his finger on what is
at once the opportunity and the problem that the term ‘‘globalization’’
poses for understanding the changes transforming the university, disci-
plines and professions generally, the nation-state as a political institution,
and ‘‘globally’’ the future of life on the planet. What does this ‘‘globaliza-
tion, as such,’’ attitude imply? As ‘‘an object of analysis,’’ what is it that
one is to analyze? Bové cites Henry Adams from his Education as his
authority when he remarks that it was ‘‘Karl Marx, who alone, after 1848,
foresaw radical change’’ in such global terms (1). What is it that we,
following Marx (or Adams), can now see?
What these questions point to and underscore is the power of ‘‘global-
ization’’ as a new master term for criticism. Like ‘‘culture,’’ ‘‘power,’’
‘‘gender,’’ ‘‘structure,’’ ‘‘presence,’’ or ‘‘form,’’ ‘‘globalization’’ implies spe-
cific realities that everyone at the moment already knows (or is presumed
to know) and yet sounds suggestively vague enough to hold for a while
a mysterious resonance. This is the opportunity and the problem of
the term.
The specific realities everyone is presumed to already know when
‘‘globalization’’ is deployed are these: With the end of the Cold War,
capitalism is no longer tied necessarily to the political and cultural forms
of the nation-state, to the social institutions of any one civilization, or to
the current or traditional lifestyles and customs of particular peoples.
Large multi- and transnational corporations can now rationalize in their
best interests without much restraint the production, distribution, adver-
tising, and sale of the commodities they o√er, wherever and whenever they
can get the best deal. If it makes more sense to the bottom line to manufac-
ture clothes in China, centralize distribution in Memphis, Tennessee,
advertise out of New York City, and stimulate and feed the markets of the

Pacific Rim or of Russia, then so be it, no matter what consequences for
others—economic, political and social, ethical and so on—may follow.
Consequently we can see how ‘‘globalization’’ refers specifically to this
free-floating quality, this di√erential sense of the freedom to move any-
where, at any time, from one locale to another around the world, to take
advantage of the latest and immediately foreseeable opportunities while
leaving the problems behind. Capitalism thrives best, it is presumed, when
all of its options remain open, even if this results in the destruction of the
environment, the dislocation and migration of millions of people, the
transformation of traditional ways of life beyond recognition, the aliena-
tion and abjection, not to mention the violent resistances, of the dis-
possessed and the displaced, the resurgence of ethnic and religious identi-
ties and conflicts across borders and within regions—and the list goes on.
Capitalism’s power to penetrate at will into, and to withdraw from, any
place (or time) in the world is what ‘‘globalization’’ (like ‘‘empire,’’ or any
other ‘‘god term’’) can ultimately mean.
Of course, put like this, ‘‘globalization’’ takes on mythical proportions.
A Zeus or a Satan comes to mind. But what lies behind such unavoidable
mythopoeia is indeed real enough, all too real, in fact: the ubiquitous
substitution of provisional associations for permanent communities, as-
sociations based on comparatively immediate material interests or gains,
the ‘‘cash-nexus,’’ as Marx would have said, versus the connections based
on immemorial ways of life.
With fewer and fewer internal or external checks on capitalism and
with its obvious appeal to immediate material self-interest, nothing ap-
pears able to withstand its corrosive power to dissolve all bonds, personal,
professional, whatever. Within the modern American university system
to which Bové alludes, this has meant (1) the division of the faculty into a
small and ever shrinking class of professionals with tenure (or at least
with its possibility) and a growing class of part-timers, gypsy scholars,
higher education’s migrant workers, without any possibility of tenure,
who are willing and able to teach anywhere, at a moment’s notice, as
administrators decree; (2) the dismantling of the tenure system, some-
times as outright abolition by a certain date, other times via the gradual
proletarianization, the deprofessionalization, of working conditions—via
modern corporate e≈ciency measures, including the perfunctory and
lame displays of administrators inviting faculty ‘‘input’’ or ‘‘feedback’’;
(3) the shift from public support for research and publication to private
foundational support or market-based, for-profit-only sources; (4) the
adoption of a multicultural ethical imperative and its ‘‘politically correct’’
manifestations, which facilitates the assimilation of university personnel
—administrators, faculty, sta√, and students—to the diverse demands of
global capital’s various markets. And on and on it could go.
To put in a nutshell what globalization as such can mean for the
university or any other institution, here or abroad, I will use a hypotheti-
cal scene and its bluntly allegorical interpretation that has become a
popular touchstone in the circles of international journalists, policy
makers, and global critics, who have given ‘‘globalization’’ its original
cachet:
Think of a stretch limo in the pot-holed streets of New York City,

where homeless beggars live. Inside the limo are the air-conditioned
post-industrial regions of North America, Europe, the emerging Pa-
cific Rim, and a few other isolated places with their trade summitry
and computer-information highways. Outside is the rest of mankind,
going in a completely di√erent direction.≤≥
Of course, any institution, people, or individual who reads this scene, an

admittedly fabulous and obviously impossible fantasy scene of instruc-
tion, would want to be, it is also presumed, within global capital’s stretch
limo (if only to escape various sorts of ‘‘heat’’) no matter what one’s
critical, even revolutionary, motives and radical contentions might be.
Marx, after all, did some of his best work of analysis and theory in the
British Museum, in London’s Bloomsbury neighborhood.
Some people, I am sure, when reading this global scene of instruction
or when thinking about the di√erent aspects of globalization, will want to
o√er alternative takes on the term or its aspects. Especially troublesome
may be the diminishment of individual and collective agency my story of
‘‘globalization, as such’’ appears to imply. As Marx himself remarks, how-
ever, men—and women, too, of course—make their histories, but not as
they think. Let me lay my cards all out on the table, then. Whatever the
reality may be with respect to this question of agency, the rhetoric of
‘‘globalization, as such,’’ in the texts of policy makers or their critics,
regardless of anyone’s intentions in the matter, assumes a tactical or at
most a strategic choice among options predefined as possible by present

circumstances. No person or group, however ingenious in resistance or
passionate (or ‘‘anarchic’’ or ‘‘multitudinous’’) in revolutionary aspira-
tion, can abolish these present circumstances and choose the impossible
fantasy, whatever it could be, that is, choose as certain the messianic
future that is always coming, the utopian future of the work of universal
liberation. I don’t think it is a capitulation to a pandemic cynicism or
‘‘weak’’ neopragmatism to share such an assumption, at least for now.
One consequence of this global perspective is that all calls for re-
sistance and revolution—especially the calls coming from other riders in
the air-conditioned stretch limo, even from the newest riders, those best
and brightest from ‘‘outside,’’ from ‘‘the rest of mankind,’’ here and
abroad, who have hitched a ride, as it were—ring not so much false or
hollow as something more troubling because something less classifiable
and more ambiguous, unstable, mixed in its motive, something decidedly
undecidable, what I will call ‘‘the authentic gimmick.’’
Now, by ‘‘the authentic gimmick,’’ I mean not just to invoke the spe-
cious simulacrum, the postmodern decoy of the supposed ‘‘real thing,’’
the copy of a copy of a copy of some explicitly fabricated norm, some
designed makeshift model or improvised property. I also, and even more
so, mean to suggest the specific move or technique, constitutive of a
rhetorical practice, of a professional or political agenda or program, and
of a subject position, identity, persona, or ‘‘personality’’ that permits
the cultural work in question—whatever it may be—to be envisioned at
all, in however abject a form or mode. As a practice, program, and
subject position, ‘‘the authentic gimmick’’ can best be demonstrated by
(and in) the ‘‘field’’ or the ‘‘arena,’’ ‘‘the discipline’’ or the ‘‘culture,’’ the
‘‘lifestyle,’’ associated with the sort of labor performed in the American
‘‘catch-as-catch-can’’ profession of pro wrestling, especially in its latest
‘‘hard-core’’ style.
In pro wrestling, ‘‘the gimmick’’ is the term used openly by everyone
concerned—promoters, wrestlers, commentators, fans—to refer to what
the wrestler says, does, and represents at the moment in his or her career.
It is the ‘‘commodity-theme.’’ Pro wrestling today is a knowing parody, a
witting travesty, of global capital—the best, most developed example of
empire burlesque. Wrestlers come from every part of the world and
assume identities that span various time periods (past, present, and
future)—‘‘the Road Warriors’’ have been a famous tag team for over
fifteen years now—and various cultures, nations, peoples, all the living
and even the undead! (‘‘The Undertaker’’ from ‘‘Death Valley’’ is a case in
point of the latter.) The only thing that matters is the survival and en-
hancement of the now multinational ‘‘federation’’ or transnational com-
munications and entertainment conglomerate that sells the matches and
wrestlers, the T-shirts, the videos, the computer games, the children’s toys
(‘‘Bone-Crunchin’ Buddies’’), the collectable cards, and so on to interna-
tional audiences of proles and elites around the world. In disclosing and,
most recently, reflecting rather analytically on its representative status as
a self-conscious parody of global capital, as in the text of the pro wrestler
Mick Foley’s best-selling memoir Mankind: Have a Nice Day! A Tale of
Blood and Sweatsocks, American pro wrestling is becoming a radical par-
ody of ‘‘globalization, as such.’’≤∂ To put it in terms of our stretch limo
global scene of instruction, in pro wrestling, the ‘‘inside’’ and the ‘‘out-
side’’ of the business are coming out and slipping in virtually all the time.
Consider Foley’s original ‘‘authentic gimmick.’’ As ‘‘Cactus Jack Man-
son,’’ from ‘‘Truth or Consequences, New Mexico,’’ Foley was a sado-
masochistic outlaw messiah type, a kind of Clint Eastwood pale rider on
angel dust. He talked crazy, fought in barbed-wire matches, and Japanese
death matches, with C-4 explosives, the object of which was to survive
slamming your opponent onto a board, the back of which was rigged
with the plastique, and getting the pin fall. Foley as Cactus Jack did
amazing stunts, took extraordinary risks, and endured a great amount of
punishment. Unexpectedly, as this bizarro ‘‘heel,’’ he won fan approval
vis-à-vis the ‘‘pretty-faced heroes.’’ Cast as the pure embodiment of dia-
bolical madness, Cactus Jack, to the fan, felt more ‘‘authentic’’ in his
gimmick. Could this neopragmatist genuine fictionality be what Harold
Bloom meant by entitling his book about ‘‘the American di√erence’’
Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism? However that may be, Foley’s
authentic gimmick was solid and stable enough that he had a recogniz-
able commodity-identity and a habitus flexible enough to adapt to
changing circumstances. As a practice, as a performance, and as (self-)
promotion, it worked. Such is professional wrestling’s not so strange
identity politics, with a vengeance. Under late capitalism, within the
American university, method, position, polemic, and critical personality
make up criticism’s authentic gimmickry.
Let’s look a bit more closely at this notion of the authentic gimmick.

Mick Foley, reflecting on ‘‘the best gimmicks in wrestling,’’ claims that
they are ‘‘actually extensions of a real-life personality.’’ By this, Foley
means a professional dramatization of one’s familiar ‘‘habits of mind’’
(488). Foley notes that the proof or test of such a gimmick is whether it
catches on with the audience, and if it does so, it is because the gimmick
has been authenticated in and by ‘‘blood.’’ As everyone knows, and as
even the wrestlers now readily admit, the outcomes of the matches are
predetermined. But how these preset conclusions are reached, that is,
how the scripts are improvised on, with little or no special rehearsal for
specific matches—all of that is left to the wrestlers themselves to work
out, in ‘‘the act,’’ as it were.
This is one reason that Foley, in his personae of Cactus Jack, Mankind,
and Dude Love (the latter two being, respectively, the heavy metal dog-
muzzled menace and the sixties nerdy would-be Dead Head), has suf-
fered eight concussions, broken his nose twice and his jaw once, had four
front teeth knocked out, and his right ear ripped o√, received over 325
stitches, and at the age of thirty-four, after fifteen years in the business,
been forced by his condition to retire for his own good. I could have listed
more of his injuries, and have not bothered to mention all the indignities
and (self-) humiliations he endured, but I think I have made my point,
which is that it is the amount of pain incurred and sacrifice made, in
deploying and executing the authentic gimmick, that marks it as such.
The spectral riders in that global stretch limo should bleed a little, bear
(and bare) scars, wring a bit of pathos out of their professional situations,
sing somewhat of their su√erings—hence the glut of memoirs coming
from American professionals nowadays, perhaps.
In any event, it is clearly the case that pro wrestling and pro lit crit,
American style, are not the same thing in every particular, to say the least,
even in a global perspective. At least, not yet. The former is more honest
about its authentic gimmickry, for one thing.
But I can easily imagine a tag team death match between . . . Oh, well,
perhaps, I’d better not say, after all.
Of course, we teachers and scholars of the English language and its
literatures and cultures really have no direct way of authenticating our
gimmicks. We have our ‘‘agons’’ and festive contests and preset rituals,
but no blood gets spilled, no bones are broken, no lives are cut short.
Thank God, I guess. But I think it is for this reason that our profession
hates itself, even as its state of abjection is generally more disdained than
even pro wrestling by other American professionals, and our profession’s
leading members seek gratuitous connections with groups and causes,
here and globally, in which the threat or promise of violence and blood-
shed, of real revolution—for the highest moral purposes, naturally—
looms over the horizon.
Empire and Identity
The chapters of this book thus trace the emergence over the last
decade or so of a new global scene of instruction for the formation of
critical identity in America. Each generation of critics, no matter how
technically or professionally focused, bears the date mark of its moment
of formation. It rehearses the traumatic experience of its ritual inscrip-
tion by that moment in the cultural history of the institution via the
performance and conceptualization of an identity theme. And it ex-
presses this theme repeatedly in its most representative allegorical inter-
pretations of texts, figures, careers, theories, and contexts. The god that
failed of Marxism, the Cold War, the counterculture, the rise of profes-
sionalization—these moments have been subsumed by globalization. It
represents the horizon of possibility within which critical work now is
practiced.
Central to this development of a new global scene of instruction for
American critical identity is a di√erent experience of work and time, of
borders and subjectivity. The new technologies of communications make
every corner of the globe available for presentation at any moment of the
day or night. They also open up every moment to the demands and
imperatives of work, so much so that it appears increasingly to be the case
that people are virtually dreaming, submerged in a semiautomatic pre-
conscious state, almost all the time, under the threat of producing more
and more production, of whatever sort it may be. The lives we are living
now are progressively less and less our own. And this phenomenon of
possessed dispossession is systematically becoming the common global
experience: for individuals and entire peoples alike. Another way of
‘‘plotting’’ it, following all the signs, such as robotics, genetic engineering,
the Internet revolution, virtuality unbound, the pervasiveness of sci-fi
culture, is that a new form of life is emerging, simultaneously, all over the

world. Global capital, that spectral phantom, is materializing itself. In a
fundamental sense, the subject of this book is this process of materializa-
tion in the critical field.
John le Carré, famous for his stylish and erudite spy fiction, has writ-
ten his own portrait of global capital in his 1999 novel Single and Single.≤∑
No one person or group or people can incarnate this new form of life,
global capital, for very long, but where any one does, the impersonation
makes one resemble some ‘‘Prince of Shimmer,’’ both ‘‘clumsy bu√oon’’
and ‘‘nimble god’’ (33). Tiger Single and his son, Oliver, lawyers and
international bankers, are each invested in turn with this quality of global
capital, as are the Russian mobsters, the Orlov brothers, and ultimately
their diabolic henchman, Alix Hoban. This ceaseless circulation of sites
of manifestation, of scenes of instruction, from character to charac-
ter, country to country, moment to moment, is like vapor-trails tracing
the instantaneous passages of subatomic particles stringing the universe
together.
The postmodern sense of identity, of being split into multiple selves,
with no one identity theme being able to incorporate all the parts into a
single synoptic story, now coincides with a new pervasive experience of
agency—a nonhuman yet rational agency that occupies and drives hu-
man beings both selectively and repeatedly; opportunistically, pragmati-
cally, and provisionally; and expectantly and anxiously. Le Carré’s pro-
tagonist, Oliver Single, puts it nicely to himself, about himself, in the
third person: ‘‘He was nobody, doing everybody’s bidding. He was an
understudy who hadn’t learned his lines’’ (287). This sense of being in
many parts, both seriatim and at times all at once, without really know-
ing what they are, and having nonetheless to improvise, even as the
pressures of living up to the imperative expectations of these unknown
roles keep mounting, in short, of being lived by an alien force—this
experience of becoming momentarily but repeatedly the global subject
haunts le Carré’s novel, which deserves the kind of complete analysis that
is beyond my limited scope here. I simply wanted to use it to express, as
succinctly as I can in this brief introduction, the general nature of the
experience of this new form of life that, for want of any better term, we
can indeed call, for now, the global subject.
In the terror of the discipline that such scenes of instruction can exact,
under the continuous sentence of possible death, what can one do but get
busy ‘‘transposing [oneself ] to other places’’ (9)? . . . This ‘‘Prince of
Shimmer’’ is out of here!
Stepping forward . . . he felt his feet being kicked from under him. His
head flew over his feet, and the next thing he knew he was lying on his
back on the floor and a steel-hand heel was being driven so viciously
into his stomach that the lights went out and he thought he was dead.
But he wasn’t, because when the lights came on again, the man who
had kicked him was lying on the ground clutching his groin and
groaning, and he had been put there, as Oliver quickly deduced, by
Aggie, brandishing a submachine gun and wearing a panther suit and
Apache war paint. (385)
Le Carré’s ‘‘hero,’’ rescued by his ‘‘heroine,’’ might not have recognized

her ‘‘had it not been for her rich Glaswegian accent’’ as she delivered, with
‘‘schoolmarmish emphasis,’’ the novel’s final words: ‘‘Oliver, on your feet,
please, stand up, Oliver, now! ’’ (385).

PA RT O N E
5555555555555
Reading as a Vanishing Act
1
Edward W. Said and the Fate of Critical Culture
555555555555555555555555555
I have read Edward W. Said’s Reflections on Exile and Other
Essays with mixed emotions.∞ The essays collected in the volume
cover thirty-five years and are, to a large extent, the summation
of a career, and not just any career. Said’s career, from the mid-1960s until
the present moment, has been enormously influential. In fact, it has been
formative of the intellectual and imaginative lives of many critics, par-
ticularly of my generation, in literary and cultural studies. Moreover,
before his recent severe illness, during the Reagan and first Bush presi-
dencies, Said had become a media figure, speaking eloquently, with rea-
sonableness and passion, on behalf of political positions at the time
representative of millions of people around the world. With the collec-
tion of these essays, it seems not only has a book been assembled but also
one has been closed. No doubt Said’s chronic leukemia makes this sense
of closure more poignantly urgent than does his simply being a sixty-six-
year-old public critic. In short, my sense of grateful indebtedness to Said’s
work and example is tainted with the sense of imminent loss, a loss both
of the man and, even more selfishly, of the figure as it has performed its
role in the critical culture of my generation. American criticism, to put it
starkly, does not currently possess any comparable figure of intelligence,
achievement, passion, or genius. Admittedly, this mixture of feelings on
my part betrays a human, all-too-human, perspective, a selfish sorrow. I
just cannot envision any literary or cultural critic in the future achieving
a similar professional and public stature.
Beyond these self-involved considerations, another cause of my mixed
feelings is the historical sense associated with these essays. By this I mean
not their critical approach but their strangely dated quality, especially
and paradoxically the two newest, previously unpublished ones: the
book’s introduction, ‘‘Criticism and Exile,’’ and its final chapter, ‘‘The
Clash of Definitions: On Samuel Huntington.’’ This last essay serves as the
book’s de facto conclusion. Together, these two new pieces aspire to cover
professional and geopolitical history from the Cold War to the new mil-
lennium, even as they frame a volume composed entirely of old work,
none of which has been significantly updated. To be fair, several of these
critical essays have become classics in literary and cultural studies and
have received prestigious awards. Nonetheless, added to my personal
ambivalence, is an intellectual conflict of a more impersonal sort.
I find ‘‘Criticism and Exile,’’ the new introduction to the volume,
anachronistic. As it outlines the current scene in criticism, it presents that
scene as still being haunted by what things were like in 1978 when Said’s
third book, Orientalism, appeared. (His first two books, of course, were
Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography [1966] and Beginnings:
Intention and Method [1975].) That is, Said sees criticism today as still a
contest between an emerging discourse of historical critique and political
liberation performed by feminists, African Americanists, ethnic studies
critics, postcolonialists, and so on, all of whom, at the margins of the
profession, stand in opposition to the orthodoxy and hegemony of what
he terms ‘‘the formalist consensus’’ (xx), which consists in New Criticism
aligned to, and revised or refined by, deconstruction. Naturally, Said takes
note of some of the progress of the multicultural critics in their challenge
to the formalist consensus, but nowhere does he reflect on the obvious
fact that he and his allies have won the contest, have in fact been en-
sconced for some time at the center of the profession. Said himself is a
recent past president of the Modern Language Association. Instead, he
suggests that the grip of the formalist consensus on the levers of institu-
tional power is still tight: ‘‘Signs [of a strikingly di√erent approach to
formalism] emerging in the study of literature are strongly evident’’ in
the various critical movements previously mentioned (xx), all of which,

Said contends, base their approach, unlike their opponents, on the pri-
macy and priority of experience over form. The historical irony of Said’s
remark, the featured contributor to the special issue of PMLA entitled
‘‘Globalizing Literary Studies’’ (January 2001) discussed in the introduc-
tion, strikes one like a truck.≤ What it testifies to is the need, the drive, on
Said’s part to continue the rebellions of his critical youth long past the
time when that response is decently appropriate.
Beginning in 1970 with Geo√rey Hartman’s famous collection Beyond
Formalism, American literary study has repeatedly been staging a radical
break with formalism under the aegis of one newer criticism or other.
And long ago this break was e√ected. Between traditional thematic ap-
proaches and the New Historicist approaches of identity politics, formal-
ism has been swept away. To his immense credit, Said is often at his best
when decoding the formal structures of literary and other texts, but he
has nevertheless always argued for a contrapuntal reading of texts that
submits formal analysis to the standard of historical experience as the
final arbiter of critical judgment. As he discusses at length in ‘‘The Politics
of Knowledge’’ (372–85) and demonstrates brilliantly in his essay on
Moby Dick (356–71), however, contrapuntal criticism of a subtle and
e√ective kind is a hard act for critical disciples to follow. The wavering
balance in the interval between critical modes is an impossible place to
occupy for very long.
The contemporary critical scene is dominated by an antiformalist,
antitheoretical, and antiaesthetic orthodoxy, an institutional hegemony,
every bit as repressive and exclusionary as any political regime or ideolog-
ical state apparatus. By saying this, I don’t mean to suggest that I think
hegemony in any situation is ever completely uncontested. What I do
mean to suggest is that within the profession of literary and cultural
studies, the levers of power are in the hands of people who at most pay
only lip service to the lessons of theory and the realities of form on their
hasty ways to the simulacra of political critique or utopian vision that
they believe they ought to embrace and promote. And Said’s less-than-
adequate performance here in facing this development helps to allow
such hegemony to continue unchallenged by a voice that could have
made an important di√erence. Admittedly, no one in literary and cultural
studies today in America is executed for a devotion to, say, Paul de Man’s
work. But the ironic title of a recent publication, Material Events: Paul
Said and the Fate of Critical Culture ≤≤≤ 31

de Man and the Afterlife of Theory, tells the whole sad tale. To make
de Man acceptable now, he must appear to be at least vaguely ‘‘materialis-
tic,’’ even as he is recognized as a rather pathetic ghost persisting in the
fading twilight of theory’s heyday.
Nearly a third of the essays collected in Reflections on Exile and Other
Essays, which contains forty-seven chapters, rehearse this story of the-
ory’s demise. Essays such as ‘‘Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and
Community’’ (1982), ‘‘Michel Foucault, 1927–1984’’ (1984), ‘‘Michel
Foucault and the Imagination of Power’’ (1986), ‘‘The Politics of Knowl-
edge’’ (1991), ‘‘Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the
Traveler’’ (1991), ‘‘On Lost Causes’’ (1997), and the celebrated title essay,
‘‘Reflections on Exile’’ (1984), among others, track at once the supreme
achievement of a critical career and the unmaking of any critical culture
based intellectually on the principles of formalism and theory. What Said
proposes as the highest principle of criticism is the existential foundation
of experience—an admittedly problematic foundation indeed. The ear-
liest essay in the collection, ‘‘Labyrinths of Incarnations: The Essays of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty,’’ originally published in a 1967 issue of The Ken-
yon Review, uncannily foretells Said’s selection of critical foundations. I
choose a passage as a case in point, virtually at random, from his intro-
duction ‘‘Criticism and Exile’’:
The study of literature is not abstract but is set irrecusably and

unarguably within a culture whose history influences, if it does not
determine, a great deal of what we say and do. I have been using the
phrase ‘‘historical experience’’ throughout because the words are nei-
ther technical nor esoteric but suggest an opening away from the
formal and technical toward the lived, the contested, and the immedi-
ate, which in these essays I keep returning to again and again. . . . The
point here, however, is that at present the study of literature has gone in
two opposed and in my opinion ridiculously tendentious directions:
one, into a professionalized and technical jargon that bristles with
strategies, techniques, privileges, and valorizations, many of them sim-
ply verbal or ‘‘postmodern’’ and hence lacking in engagement with the
world, or two, into a lackluster, ostrich-like, and unreflective pseudo-
healthiness that calls itself ‘‘traditional scholarship.’’ Historical experi-
ence, and in particular the experience of dislocation, exile, migration,

and empire, therefore opens both of these approaches to the invigorat-
ing presence of a banished or forgotten reality which in the past two
hundred years has dominated human existence in an enormous variety
of ways. It is this general and particular experience that my own kind of
criticism and scholarship in this book are trying to reclaim, under-
stand, and situate. (xxxi–xxxii)
This is not the occasion to elaborate on the problematic nature of

experience as a basis for criticism, especially as Said puts it here. Su≈ce it
to say, experience in an individual or a collective sense is as much the
playing field of fantasy as it is the theater of historical reality. But this
portrait of the current scene in American criticism—the simple opposi-
tion between tepid traditionalism and terroristic theory—caricatures the
situation in 1978 much better than it describes that of today. Could it be
that Said is out of touch with the fact that his side in the struggle for
hegemony in the profession has won? Can he not know that his legions—
the partisans of experience, particularly when the experience is of disloca-
tion, alienation, and the exile occasioned by di√erences in identity and the
politics derived therefrom—are in power? The critical establishment is
Said’s, certainly not Paul de Man’s, not really ever R. P. Blackmur’s, even if
here Said treats de Man in passing with respect and Blackmur at some
length with reverence and critical discrimination (246–67). How could
this situation not in large part be the result of Said’s own work? But any
contest between theory and experience, formalism and history, is never a
real contest at all, when these are the terms of the contest. Who would
willingly embrace the skeleton of theory with pleasure when the body of
experience so seductively beckons, as does the partially veiled face and
bulging figure of ‘‘Dante in Exile’’ on the cover of Said’s volume? (Said’s
name obscures Dante’s eyes and thus the gaze they would form.) And yet,
do we ever teach experience? In literary and cultural studies, don’t we
teach the linguistic, rhetorical, and cultural codes that constitute the
historical schemata of our experience in the discourses that we use to
speak to ourselves and to each other? And these schemata are never
immediately given to our perception or to our critical reflection; rather,
they must always be formally deduced, conceptualized by theory, so as
then to be critically analyzed in speculative acts of reading that break up
and mediate, for better or worse, the so-called natural flow of experience.

A critical culture that espouses Said and company’s viewpoint on the
foundational nature of experience is bound to lose its object of analysis,
the symbolic order, as it dissolves into the endless mirages of the ersatz
archives of imaginary experiences. This loss of its object of study may
explain why criticism today, especially of Said’s avowedly ‘‘secular’’ sort,
cannot deal with the global resurgence of religion, fundamentalist or
otherwise, which for the peoples and classes largely concerned could
justifiably be seen as ‘‘the greatest single fact’’ of the last quarter of a
century (xiv), and not as Said one-dimensionally puts it, ‘‘the migration
and displacement’’ of millions of people as a consequence of global capi-
tal’s policies. In fact, the resurgence of religion has been the most e√ective
political reaction to the ‘‘development’’ projects of global capital during
this period. Perhaps, for reasons of class identification and professional
advancement, matters of religion and class are just too di≈cult for the
partisans of experience to experience and so critically reflect on. One of
the purposes of my argument in this book is precisely to produce a
critical language and approach better able to register the realities of class
and religion for the critic than that of New Historicist identity politics.
My mixed emotions, then, include not only admiration, respect, grati-
tude, and identification but also an anticipation of grief and an immedi-
ate sense of disappointment. Edward W. Said knows better than he writes
here and has performed criticism better than what this book’s introduc-
tion mounts for initial display. Many of the other essays here set a stan-
dard for criticism that indicts the introduction for its obvious blind spots
and distortions. One wonders what he was thinking when he wrote it, or
what he is thinking as he announces ‘‘a forthcoming book on humanism
in America,’’ in which he plans ‘‘to a≈rm the continued relevance of
humanism for our time’’ (xxxi). Such humanism, as we have seen, would
have to be nontechnical, jargon free, even antiprofessional, worldly or
secular, and politically engaged, based on the overwhelming historical
experience of the last century and a half, ‘‘the vast migration’’ of peoples
into exile because of the emergence of a global economy and culture, with
all the accompanying imperialistic realities and revolutionary prospects
for resistance, liberation, and reconciliation, except those, of course,
which are founded on popular revivals of religious visions. The ultimate
goal of such critical humanism, as Said anticipates it here, would be the
appropriate inclusion of all the world’s peoples ‘‘within the same universe

of discourse inhabited by Western culture’’ (xxvii). And so, what do I find
wrong with this humanistic vision?
It has already come about. Through the telecommunications industry,
virtually the entire world has been included ‘‘within the same universe of
discourse inhabited by Western culture.’’ And more and more, as the
world’s economy becomes a global consumer economy in ways increas-
ingly appropriate to the avowed representations, the identity politics, of
the world’s peoples, such inclusion is becoming progressively more hu-
manistic and secular, worldly. This is precisely why peoples not of the
global class, nor of its faith in Enlightenment rationality, have turned in
massive numbers to the religions of their ancestors for a vision of life
outside ‘‘the same universe of discourse inhabited by Western culture.’’
One of the reasons that many within the profession of literary and cul-
tural studies have been turning to spokespeople for ‘‘the third culture,’’ all
those scientist-intellectuals such as Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose,
and Stephen Jay Gould who discuss the intellectual and spiritual ques-
tions of life, is because they at least do not shy away from confronting
such ultimate metaphysical questions, however they choose to answer
them. My point is that writing an essay entitled ‘‘Jungle Calling’’ in hom-
age to the veritable pagan mystique of Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan, as
Said does here (327–36), is clearly not going to do the trick of satisfying
the demand that a critic look candidly at his own present class status or
religious bias. This piece, by the way, appears as creditable an enthusiastic
performance as Adrian Leverkuhn singing with Harry Carrey ‘‘Take Me
Out to the Old Ball Game.’’ As Seamus Deane puts it in his review of
Said’s 1999 memoir Out of Place, ‘‘one of the strange e√ects of colonialism
is often to defer an individual’s recognition of natal culture and set in its
place a simulacrum of both the natal and the imperial cultures that
thereafter remains foundational, no matter how much it is exposed to a
later critique.’’≥ Coming to terms, in some depth, with the rich spiritual
(as opposed to purely intellectual) legacies of Islam is not something that
Said, originally a Christian Arab, has ever thought to do in public: too
much of the people, too much risk of otherworldly thinking, perhaps? Or
just too intimate?
The other realities that Said not so much ignores as he is outright
hostile to are indeed religious and popular in nature. Throughout these
essays, whenever he speaks of religion and its dogmatic institutions and

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Pakolaiskuningas
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Title: Pakolaiskuningas
Romaani Ranskan vallankumouksesta
Author: Alexandre Dumas
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Release date: June 24, 2024 [eBook #73907]
Language: Finnish
Original publication: Hämeenlinna: Arvi A. Karisto Oy, 1924
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PAKOLAISKUNINGAS ***
PAKOLAISKUNINGAS
Romaani Ranskan vallankumouksesta
Kirj.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
Ranskankielestä suomentanut
Urho Kivimäki
Hämeenlinnassa, Arvi A. Karisto OSAKEYHTIÖ, 1924.

SISÄLLYS:
I. Mirabeaun sanaleikki
II. Kuningattaren näköinen nainen
III. Tuntemattoman naisen vaikutus alkaa
IV. Mars-kenttä
V. Heinäkuun 14 päivä 1790
VI. Täällä käy karkelo!
VIII. Tapaaminen
IX. Plâtrière-kadun looshi
X. Tilinteko
XI. Vapaus, yhdenvertaisuus, veljeys!
XII. Naiset ja kukat
XIII. Mitä kuningas ja kuningatar sanoivat
XIV. Eläköön Mirabeau!
XV. Paetkaa, paetkaa, paetkaa!
XVI. Hautajaiset
XVII. Lähetti
XVIII. Lupaus
XIX. Selkeänäköisyys
XX. Kesäkuun 20 päivän ilta
XXI. Lähtö
XXII. Hovisääntö velvoittaa
XXIII. Alkutaival
XXIV. Kohtalon oikku
XXV. Kuningas tunnetaan
XXVI. Pahoja enteitä
XXVII. Jean-Baptiste Drouet
XXVIII. Varennesin sillan vahtitorni
XXIX. Prokuraattorin talossa
XXX. Epätoivon neuvo
XXXI. Catherine-parka!
XXXII. Charny
XXXIII. Uusi vihollinen
I
Mirabeaun sanaleikki
Koska Mirabeaun kaupunkiasunto ei ollut vielä kunnossa eikä

hänellä ollut siis omaa talliakaan, lähetettiin palvelija hakemaan
torilta ajuri. [Romaani on suoranaista jatkoa Salaliittolaisille.]
Siihen aikaan merkitsi ajelu Argenteuiliin miltei oikeaa matkaa.

Nykyisin sinne mennään yhdessätoista minuutissa ja kymmenen
vuoden perästä sinne pääsee kenties yhdessätoista sekunnissa.
Miksi Mirabeau oli valinnut Argenteuilin? Koska hänen elämänsä

muistot, kuten hän oli sanonut tohtorille, kiinnittivät häntä tähän
pikku kaupunkiin ja koska ihminen tuntee niin suurta tarvetta
pidentää hänelle suotua lyhyttä elinaikaa, että hän takertuu
voimiensa mukaan menneisyyteen päästäkseen liian nopeasti
joutumasta tulevaisuuden kahleihin.
Argenteuilissa oli hänen isänsä, markiisi de Mirabeau, kuollut

heinäkuun 11 p. 1789, kuten tulikin kuolla todellisen aatelismiehen,
joka ei mielinyt nähdä Bastiljin valtausta.
Argenteuilin sillan päässä Mirabeau pysäytti ajurin.
»Olemmeko perillä?» kysyi tohtori.
»Olemme ja emme. Emme ole vielä saapuneet Marais-linnaan,

joka on puolentoista kilometrin päässä Argenteuilista, mutta, hyvä
tohtori, unohdin sanoa teille, ettemme tänään teekään yksinkertaista
vieraskäyntiä, vaan olemme toivioretkellä, jonka kuluessa
pysähdymme kolmasti.»
»Toivioretkellä!» hymyili Gilbert. »Minkä pyhimyksen haudalle?»
»Pyhän Riquettin haudalle, tohtori hyvä. Sitä pyhimystä ette taida

tunteakaan. Sen pyhimyksen ovat ihmiset julistaneet kanoniseksi.
Totuuden lausuakseni epäilen suuresti, onko Jumala, mikäli hän
ollenkaan piittaa tämän maailmapahaisen pikkuasioista, hyväksynyt
koko kanonisointia. Mutta totta vain on, että täällä on päättänyt
päivänsä Riquetti, markiisi de Mirabeau, Ihmisten ystävä, joka kuoli
marttyyrina arvottoman poikansa, Honoré-Gabriel-Victor Riquettin,
kreivi de Mirabeaun, hillittömän elostelun takia.»
»Ah, se on totta», sanoi Gilbert, »isänne kuoli Argenteuilissa.

Suokaa anteeksi, hyvä kreivi, että unohdin sen seikan.
Puolustuksekseni haluan mainita, että tulin suoraan Amerikasta, kun
minut vangittiin heinäkuun alussa matkalla Havresta Pariisiin. Isänne
kuoleman aikoihin olin siis Bastiljissa. Pääsin vapaaksi heinäkuun
neljäntenätoista seitsemän muun vangin mukana, ja vaikka tämä
tapahtuma olikin sinänsä varsin merkittävä, hävisi se, ellei juuri
pääasiana, niin ainakin sivuseikkana, saman kuukauden muihin
laajakantoisiin tapahtumiin… Entä missä isänne asui?»
Juuri kun Gilbert teki kysymyksensä, pysähtyi Mirabeau
laiturikadun varrella olevan rakennuksen ristikkoportin eteen. Talo oli
vastapäätä jokea, josta sen eroittivat noin kolmesataa askelta leveä
nurmikko ja pensasaita.
Roteva pyrenealaiskoira hyökkäsi muristen portille nähdessään

vieraan miehen seisahtuvan sen eteen, tunki päänsä ristikkorautojen
välistä ulos ja yritti puraista Mirabeauta tai edes kiskaista irti palasen
hänen nutustaan.
»Totisesti, tohtori», sanoi Mirabeau ja väistyi paimenkoiran

valkoisten, uhkaavien hampaitten ulottuvilta, »mikään ei ole
muuttunut ja minut otetaan vastaan samalla tavalla kuin isäni
eläessäkin».
Mutta tällöin ilmestyi portaille muuan nuori mies, vaiensi koiran,

houkutteli sen luoksensa ja meni itse molempia vieraita vastaan.
»Suokaa anteeksi, hyvät herrat», sanoi hän. »Isäntäväki ei ole

mukana siinä vastaanotossa, jonka koira on teille suonut. Varsin
monet kulkijat pysähtyvät tämän talon luo, jossa varemmin asui
markiisi de Mirabeau, eikä Cartouche-parka ymmärrä sitä
historiallista harrastusta, jota osoitetaan sen halvan isäntäväen
asunnolle. Se haukkuu aina. Koppiisi, Cartouche!»
Nuori mies teki uhkaavan liikkeen ja koira meni koppiinsa yhä

muristen. Aukosta se sitten työnsi molemmat etukäpälänsä ulos,
painoi niille pitkän turpansa ja paljasti terävät hampaansa,
veripunaisen kielensä ja tulta tuiskivat silmänsä.
Mirabeau ja Gilbert vaihtoivat sillaikaa pikaisen silmäyksen.

»Hyvät herrat», jatkoi nuorukainen, »nykyisin tämän ristikkoportin
takana ei ole ketään muita kuin talonisäntä, joka on valmis
aukaisemaan sen ja ottamaan teidät vastaan, ellei uteliaisuutenne
rajoitu vain talon ulkoasun tarkasteluun».
Gilbert sysäsi kyynärpäällään Mirabeauta merkiksi, että hän

katsoisi mielellään myöskin talon sisustaa.
Mirabeau ymmärsi merkin. Hän halusi muuten samaa kuin

Gilbertkin.
»Hyvä herra», virkkoi hän nuorukaiselle, »olette lukenut

ajatuksemme. Tiesimme, että tässä talossa on asunut Ihmisten
ystävä, ja uteliaisuudessamme lähdimme sitä katsomaan.»
»Ja teidän uteliaisuutenne tulee vieläkin voimakkaammaksi, hyvät

herrat», vastasi nuori mies, »kun saatte kuulla, että markiisin eläessä
täällä kävi kolme kertaa hänen kuuluisa poikansa, jota, mikäli huhu
kertoo, ei otettu aina vastaan niinkuin hän olisi ansainnut, tai kuten
me ottaisimme hänet vastaan, jos hän teidän laillanne, hyvät herrat,
saisi halun tulla tänne, mitä minä toivon kaikesta sydämestäni.»
Nuori mies kumarsi, aukaisi ristikkoportin vieraille, sulki sen ja lähti

astumaan heidän edellään.
Mutta Cartouche ei tuntunut olevan ensinkään taipuvainen

antamaan heidän nauttia tarjotusta vieraanvaraisuudesta. Se syöksyi
jälleen ulos kopistaan ja haukkui vimmatusti.
Nuori mies asettui koiran ja sen vieraan väliin, jota elikko tuntui
vihaavan katkerimmin.
Mutta Mirabeau työnsi nuorukaisen syrjään.

»Hyvä herra», sanoi hän, »koirat ja ihmiset ovat haukkuneet
minua aina.
Ihmiset ovat toisinaan purreetkin, koirat eivät milloinkaan. Sitäpaitsi
ihmiskatseen väitetään tehoavan elikkoihin vastustamattomalla
voimalla.
Sallikaa minun yrittää koetta, olkaa hyvä.»
»Herra», virkkoi nuorukainen nopeasti, »varokaa, Cartouche on

äkäinen koira».
»Olkoon vain, hyvä herra», vastasi Mirabeau. »Joudun joka päivä

tekemisiin häijyluontoisempien otusten kanssa kuin tuo on ja tänään
pidin kurissa kokonaisen elikkolauman.»
»Niin, mutta sille laumalle te voitte puhua», huomautti Gilbert,

»eikä kukaan kiellä sanojenne voimaa».
»Hyvä tohtori, luulin teidän olevan salatieteitten harrastelijan.»
»Niin olenkin. Entä sitten?»
»Silloin teidän pitäisi tuntea myöskin katseen voima. Sallikaa

minun magnetisoida Cartouche.»
Mirabeau puhui sitä rohkeaa kieltä, joka on ominaista kaikille

muita lahjakkaammille ihmisille.
»Tehkää kokeenne», sanoi Gilbert.
»Ah, herra», varoitti nuorukainen jälleen, »älkää olko varomaton!»
»Olkaa rauhassa», tyynnytti Mirabeau häntä.

Nuori mies kumarsi suostumuksen merkiksi ja väistyi vasempaan
Gilbertin siirtyessä oikealle, kuten todistajat kaksintaistelussa
tekevät, kun vastustaja aikoo ampua heidän toveriaan.
Nuori mies, joka oli noussut pari kolme porrasaskelta, valmistui

pysäyttämään Cartouchen, jos tuntemattoman sana tai katse
osoittautuisi riittämättömäksi.
Koira vilkaisi ensin vasemmalleen ja oikealleen kuin

varmentuakseen, ettei mies, jota vastaan se tuntui vannoneen
heltymätöntä vihaa, saisi mistään apua. Kun se huomasi tämän
seisovan yksin ja aseettomana, ryömi se hitaasti kopistaan,
muistuttaen tällöin enemmän käärmettä kuin nelijalkaista, syöksyi
sitten äkkiä eteenpäin ja pääsi yhdellä loikkauksella kolmanneksen
välimatkasta, joka eroitti sen vastustajastaan.
Mirabeau pani käsivarret ristiin rinnalleen ja katseessa voima, joka

teki hänestä puhujalavalla jyrisevän Jupiterin, hän suuntasi silmänsä
koiraan.
Samalla kaikki hänen jäntevän ruumiinsa kehittämä sähkö tuntui

keskittyneen hänen otsaansa. Hänen hiuksensa nousivat karilleen
kuin leijonanharja ja jos tällöin olisi ollut yö eikä se päivänhetki,
jolloin laskeva aurinko vielä valaisi, olisi varmaankin jokaisen
hiuskarvan nähty kipunoivan.
Koira pysähtyi ja tuijotti häneen.
Mirabeau kumartui ottamaan maasta kourallisen hiekkaa ja viskasi

sen koiran silmille.
Koira ulvahti ja uudella hypyllä se tuli kolmen neljän askelen
päähän vastustajastaan. Mutta silloin tämä astui askelen koiraan
päin.
Elikko oli hetken aikaa liikkumaton kuin metsästäjä Kephaloksen

graniittikoira. Mirabeaun lähestyminen teki sen levottomaksi, se
näytti empivän vihan ja pelon vaiheilla, hampaat ja silmät uhkasivat
yhä, mutta samalla se lyyhistyi takakäpälilleen. Sitten Mirabeau
kohotti kätensä hallitsijan elein, joka oli niin monesti koitunut hänelle
voitoksi puhujalavalla, kun hän sinkosi vihollistensa silmille purevat,
vihlovat, musertavat ivasanansa, ja masennettu koira alkoi väristä
kaikilta jäseniltään ja peräytyi vilkuillen taakseen nähdäkseen, oliko
pakotie esteetön. Äkkiä se sitten pyörsi poispäin ja kapaisi takaisin
koppiinsa.
Mirabeau kohotti päänsä ylpeänä ja haltioissaan kuin joku

Isthmos-kisojen voittaja.
»Ah, herra tohtori», sanoi hän, »vanhempi Mirabeau oli oikeassa

väittäessään, että koirat voivat pyrkiä ihmisyyden edustajiksi. Näitte
tuon äsken röyhkeänä, sitten pelkurina ja nyt se on nöyrä kuin
ihminen.»
Hän antoi kätensä vaipua rentona kupeelle ja sanoi käskevällä

äänellä:
»Tänne, Cartouche, tänne!»
Koira epäröi, mutta käskijän kärsimätön ele sai sen työntämään

päänsä toistamiseen ulos kopista, ryömien jälleen maata pitkin ja
tuijottaen suoraan Mirabeaun silmiin se kulki välimatkan, joka eroitti
sen voittajastaan. Mirabeaun jalkojen edessä se kohotti päänsä
arasti ja hitaasti ja läähättäen nuoli kielensä kärjellä Mirabeaun
sormenpäitä.
»Hyvä on», virkahti Mirabeau, »koppiisi takaisin!»
Hän viittasi kädellään ja koira meni makuulle.
Nuori mies oli kaiken aikaa seisonut portailla pelokkaana ja

mykkänä kummastuksesta.
Mirabeau kääntyi puhuttelemaan Gilbertiä.
»Tiedättekö, hyvä tohtori», sanoi hän, »mitä minä ajattelin

järjestellessäni tätä pikku kohtausta, jonka katselijana saitte
vastikään olla?»
»En tiedä, mutta sanokaa, sillä ette varmaankaan tehnyt sitä

pelkän uhman takia vai kuinka?»
»Minä ajattelin lokakuun viidennen ja kuudennen päivän välistä

kuuluisaa yötä. Tohtori, tohtori, antaisin mielelläni puolet jäljellä
olevista elinpäivistäni, jos kuningas Ludvig kuudestoista olisi nähnyt
tuon koiran syöksyvän kimppuuni, poistuvan koppiinsa ja tulevan
sitten nuolemaan kättäni.»
Sitten hän virkkoi nuorelle miehelle:
»Suottehan anteeksi, hyvä herra, että nöyryytin Cartouchen?

Menkäämme nyt silmäilemään Ihmisten ystävän asuntoa, koska
haluatte näyttää sitä meille.»
Nuorukainen väistyi syrjään ja päästi Mirabeaun ohitseen. Tämä ei

tuntunut tarvitsevan opasta ja näytti tuntevan talon yhtä hyvin kuin
sen vakinainen asukas.
Pohjakerrokseen pysähtymättä hän riensi portaille, joita koristivat

melko sirotekoiset rautakaiteet.
»Tätä tietä, tohtori, tätä tietä!» kehoitti hän.
Hänelle ominaisella, vastustamattomalla tavallaan, tottuneena

kaikissa olosuhteissa hallitsemaan Mirabeau nytkin muuttui
katselijasta toimivaksi henkilöksi, vieraasta isännäksi.
Gilbert seurasi häntä.
Tällä välin nuorukainen kutsui paikalle isänsä, viidenkymmenen tai

viidenkuudetta vuoden ikäisen miehen, ja molemmat sisarensa,
viidentoista, kahdeksantoista ikäiset tytöt, kertoakseen näille, minkä
kummanlaisen vieraan talo oli saanut.
Hänen kuvaillessaan Cartouchen masentamista Mirabeau näytti

Gilbertille markiisivainajan työhuonetta, makuusuojaa ja salonkia, ja
koska jokainen huone, missä he kävivät, herätti hänessä joitakin
muistoja, kertoi hän pikkujutun toisensa perään miellyttävästi ja
innostuneesti, kuten hänen tapansa oli.
Talon omistaja sekä hänen omaisensa kuuntelivat silmät suurina ja

korvat höröllä tätä opasta, joka kertoi juttuja heidän omasta
talostaan.
Kun yläkerroksen huoneet oli tarkastettu ja kun Argenteuilin

kirkonkello löi seitsemän, pelkäsi Mirabeau, ettei hän kenties
ehtisikään tehdä kaikkea mitä oli aikonut, minkä vuoksi hän kehoitti
Gilbertiä lähtemään alas ja näytti itse hyvää esimerkkiä harpaten
nopeasti portaitten neljä ylintä askelta.
»Hyvä herra», virkkoi silloin talon isäntä, »koska te tiedätte noin
monta juttua markiisi de Mirabeausta ja hänen kuuluisasta
pojastaan, voisitte kenties kertoa jotakin myös näistä neljästä
porrasaskelmasta, jutun, joka ei suinkaan olisi aikaisempia
tarinoitanne huonompi.»
Mirabeau pysähtyi ja hymyili.
»Tosiaankin!» huudahti hän. »Mutta sen minä aioin sivuuttaa

vaitiololla.»
»Miksi, kreivi?» kysyi tohtori.
»Hitossa, saatte itse päätellä. Päästyään pois Vincennesin

vankilasta, missä oli virunut puolitoista vuotta, oli Mirabeau, joka oli
kaksi kertaa niin vanha kuin tuhlaajapoika, saanut päähänsä tulla
vaatimaan perintöosuuttaan. Hän ei suinkaan odottanut, että hänen
paluunsa kunniaksi olisi teurastettu juottovasikkaa. Oli näet kaksikin
syytä, miksei Mirabeauta otettu isänkodissa suosiollisesti vastaan.
Ensiksi, hän tuli Vincennesistä vastoin markiisin tahtoa, ja toiseksi,
hän tuli taloon tiukkaamaan rahaa. Siitä johtui, että markiisi, joka
paraikaa viimeisteli jotakin ihmisystävällistä työtä, nousi tuolilta heti
kun näki poikansa, sieppasi kepin kuultuaan pojan ensimmäiset
sanat ja syöksyi hänen kimppuunsa niin pian kun kuuli sanan rahaa.
Kreivi tunsi isänsä vanhastaan, mutta toivoi silti, että hänen
seitsemänneljättä ikävuottansa pelastaisi hänet siitä ojennuksesta,
joka nyt uhkasi häntä. Kreivi huomasi erehdyksensä tuntiessaan
olkapäillään kepiniskujen raekuuron.»
»Mitä, kepiniskuja?» sanoi Gilbert.

»Niin juuri, ja aimo iskuja ne olivat, ei sellaisia, joita sivalletaan
Comédie Françaisen esittäessä Molièren kappaleita, vaan rehellisiä
kepiniskuja, jotka voivat murskata kallon ja katkaista käsivarren.»
»Entä mitä teki kreivi de Mirabeau?» kysyi Gilbert.
»Lempo, hän teki samaa mitä Horatius ensimmäisessä

taistelussaan, hän turvautui pakoon. Valitettavasti hänellä ei ollut,
kuten Horatiuksella, kilpeä. Lydian laulajan lailla hän ei olisi
viskannut sitä menemään, vaan olisi suojellut sillä itseään
kepiniskuilta. Mutta koska hänellä ei ollut kilpeä, kapaisi hän alas
näiden portaitten neljä ylintä askelmaa, kuten minä vastikään tein,
kenties hieman nopeamminkin. Siihen hän sitten pysähtyi, kääntyi,
kohotti keppinsä hänkin ja sanoi: 'Seis, hyvä herra! Neljän asteen
alapuolella ei ole enää sukulaisia!' Se oli aika kehno sanaleikki, mutta
se pysäytti kelpo markiisin paremmin kuin maailman tepsivin
järkisyy. 'Ah, mikä vahinko', sanoi hän, 'että isäni on kuollut, olisin
kirjoittanut hänelle tämän'. Mirabeau», jatkoi kertoja, »oli liian
taitava strategikko jättääkseen käyttämättä hyväkseen tätä
pakotilaisuutta. Hän livisti jäljellä olevat portaat alas melkein yhtä
nopeasti kuin oli harpannut ylimmätkin askelmat eikä valitettavasti
sen koommin käväissyt enää isänsä talossa. Kreivi de Mirabeau onkin
aika heittiö vai mitä te arvelette, tohtori?»
»Oh, hyvä herra», virkkoi nuorukainen lähestyessään kädet ristissä

Mirabeauta ikäänkuin pyytääkseen vieraaltansa anteeksi, kun uskalsi
olla toista mieltä, »sanokaa pikemminkin, hyvin suuri mies!»
Mirabeau silmäili nuorukaista tutkivasti.
»Vai niin», sanoi hän, »onko siis maailmassa ihmisiä, jotka

ajattelevat
Mirabeausta tuontapaistakin?»
»On kyllä, hyvä herra», vastasi nuori mies, »ja silläkin uhalla, että
pahoitan mielenne, sanon, että minä ennen muita ajattelen hänestä
sitä.»
»Mutta, nuori mies», naurahti Mirabeau, »älkää sanoko sitä

ääneen tässä talossa, sillä seinät voivat sen johdosta luhistua
päällenne».
Sitten hän kumarsi kunnioittavasti vanhukselle ja kohteliaasti

molemmille nuorille tytöille ja poistui puutarhaan. Hän heilautti
kädellään ystävällisen tervehdyksen myöskin Cartouchelle, joka
vastasi siihen murahduksella, mihin sisältyi sekä kapinallisuutta että
alistumista.
Gilbert seurasi Mirabeauta, joka käski ajurin suunnata matkan

kaupunkiin ja pysähtyä kirkon eteen.
Mutta jo ensimmäisessä kadunkulmassa hän komensi seis, otti

taskustaan käyntikortin ja sanoi palvelijalleen:
»Teisch, viekää tämä kortti sille nuorelle miehelle, joka on herra de

Mirabeausta toista mieltä kuin minä.»
Sitten hän huoahti ja virkkoi:
»Ah, tohtori, hän ei ole vielä lukenut 'kreivi de Mirabeaun suurta

petosta'!»
Teisch palasi.
Nuorukainen tuli hänen mukanaan.

»Voi, herra kreivi», sanoi hän pettämättömän ihailevasti, »suokaa
minulle sama kunnia, minkä soitte Cartouchellekin, sallikaa minun
suudella kättänne».
Mirabeau levitti sylinsä ja puristi nuorukaisen rintaansa vasten.
»Herra kreivi», lisäsi nuori mies, »nimeni on Mornais. Jos milloin

tarvitsette henkilöä, joka on valmis kuolemaan puolestanne,
muistakaa silloin minua.»
Mirabeaun silmät kyyneltyivät.
»Tohtori», sanoi hän, »tuollaisia ihmisiä tulee jälkeemme. Kunniani

kautta minä luulen, että he ovat meitä parempia!»
II
Kuningattaren näköinen nainen
Vaunut pysähtyivät Argenteuilin kirkon eteen.
»Sanoin äsken, etten ole käynyt Argenteuilissa sen päivän jälkeen,

jolloin isäni karkoitti minut kepiniskuin. Erehdyin, käväisin täällä
päivänä, jolloin saatoin hänen ruumiinsa tähän kirkkoon.»
Mirabeau hyppäsi vaunuista, otti hatun käteensä ja astui kirkkoon

paljain päin, verkkaisin ja juhlallisin askelin.
Tässä omituisessa miehessä oli niin kosolti vastakkaisia mielialoja,

että hän oli toisinaan uskonnollinen, aikana, jolloin kaikki olivat
ajattelijoita ja jolloin eräitten filosofia oli kehittynyt ateismiksi.
Gilbert seurasi häntä parin askeleen päässä. Hän näki Mirabeaun

astelevan halki koko kirkon neitsyt Maarian alttarille saakka ja sitten
pysähtyvän nojaamaan erästä jyhkeää pylvästä vasten, jonka
romanilaisessa kapitelissa näkyi vuosiluku 12. vuosisadalta.
Pää kumarassa hän tuijotti mustaan kivipaateen, joka oli upotettu

keskelle kappelin permantoa.
Tohtori kummasteli, mikä se noin oli vallannut Mirabeaun
ajatukset; hänen katseensa seurasi kreivin katseen suuntaa ja
pysähtyi seuraavaan hautakirjoitukseen:
»Tässä lepää
Françoise de Castellane, markiisitar de Mirabeau, hurskauden ja

hyveen esikuva, onnellinen puoliso, onnellinen äiti.
Syntynyt Dauphinéssa 1685, kuollut Pariisissa 1769. Haudattu

ensin Saint-Sulpiceen ja siirretty sitten tänne samaan hautaan kuin
hänen arvoisa poikansakin, Victor de Riquetti, markiisi de Mirabeau,
lisä nimeltään Ihmisten ystävä.
Syntynyt Provencen Pertuisissa lokakuun 4 p. 1715, kuollut

Argenteuilissa heinäkuun 11 p. 1789. Rukoilkaa Jumalaa heidän
sielujensa puolesta! Kuoleman läheisyys vaikuttaa niin voimakkaasti,
että tohtori Gilbertkin painoi hetkeksi päänsä alas ja haki muististaan
jotakin rukousta noudattaakseen kehoitusta, jonka hautakivi lausui
jokaiselle kristitylle.
Mutta jos Gilbert joskus nuoruudessaan, mitä voi epäillä, olikin

osannut puhua nöyryyden ja uskon kieltä, oli epäily, tuo viime
vuosisadan syöpätauti, jäytänyt viimeisenkin rivin tästä
elämänkirjasta ja filosofia oli kirjoittanut tilalle saivartelujaan ja
paradoksejaan.
Havaittuaan sydämensä kuivaksi ja suunsa mykäksi hän kohotti

päänsä ja näki pari kyyneltä Mirabeaun voimakkailla kasvoilla, jotka
intohimoinen elämä oli uurtanut niinkuin laava tulivuoren kupeet.
Nämä pari kyyneltä liikuttivat oudosti Gilbertin mieltä. Hän meni
puristamaan Mirabeaun kättä.
Mirabeau ymmärsi.
Jos hän olisi vuodattanut kyyneliä sen isän muistoksi, joka oli
kiduttanut, kiusannut häntä ja toimittanut hänet vankilaan, olisivat
ne kyyneleet tuntuneet käsittämättömiltä ja arkipäiväisiltä.
Hän kiiruhti siis selittämään Gilbertille tunneherkkyytensä

todellisen syyn.
»Tämä Françoise de Castellane, isoäitini», sanoi hän, »oli

kunnioitettava nainen. Kun kaikki muut pitivät minua inhoittavana,
tyytyi hän sanomaan minua vain rumaksi. Kaikkien muiden vihatessa
minua hän miltei rakasti minua. Mutta voimakkaimmin hän sentään
rakasti poikaansa. Ja, kuten huomaatte, hyvä tohtori, minä olen
yhdistänyt heidät samaan hautaan. Mihin minut liitetään? Kenen luut
lepäävät minun vieressäni? Minulla ei ole edes koiraa minua
rakastamassa!»
Ja hän naurahti sydäntäviiltävästi.
»Hyvä herra», virkkoi muuan kuivakiskoinen, moittiva ääni,

jommoinen on ominainen ulkokultaisille henkilöille, »kirkossa ei ole
tapana nauraa!»
Mirabeau käänsi kyynelehtivät kasvonsa suunnalle, josta tämä ääni

kuului, ja huomasi pappismiehen.
»Herra», vastasi hän ystävällisesti, »oletteko tämän kirkon

pappeja?»
»Olen… entä sitten?»
»Onko seurakunnassanne paljon köyhiä?»
»Enemmän kuin niitä, jotka antavat almuja…»
»Tunnette kai sentään jonkun armeliaan sydämen, jonkun

ihmisystävällisen henkilön?»
Pappi alkoi nauraa.
»Hyvä herra», huomautti Mirabeau, »luulen kuulleeni teidän äsken

sanovan, ettei kirkoissa ole tapana nauraa…»
»Herra», keskeytti pappi loukkaantuneena, »aiotteko pitää minulle

nuhdesaarnan?»
»En, herra, aion vain todistaa teille, että henkilöitä, jotka pitävät
velvollisuutenaan rientää kärsivien lähimmäistensä avuksi, ei ole niin
vähän kuin te luulette. Minusta tulee todennäköisesti Marais-linnan
asukas. No niin, kaikki työttömät saavat sieltä työtä ja kunnollisen
palkan. Kaikki nälkää kärsivät vanhukset saavat sieltä leipää. Kaikki
sairaat, kuulukootpa mihin tahansa valtiolliseen puolueeseen tai
uskonlahkoon, saavat siellä hoidon. Tästä päivästä alkaen, herra
pastori, annan teille siihen tarkoitukseen tuhannen frangia
kuukausittain.»
Hän repäisi muistikirjastaan lehden ja kirjoitti siihen lyijykynällä

seuraavan määräyksen:
»Kahdentoistatuhannen frangin maksumääräys, jonka nojalla

Argenteuilin herra pastori saa minulta kuukausittain tuhannen
frangia. Ne rahat hän käyttäköön hyväntekeväisyystarkoituksiin
siitä päivästä alkaen, jolloin olen muuttanut asumaan Marais-
linnaan.
Kirjoitettu Argenteuilin kirkossa ja varmennettu

nimikirjoituksellani neitsyt Maarian alttarin ääressä.
Mirabeau vanhempi.»
Mirabeau oli tosiaankin kirjoittanut tämän maksumääräyksen ja

varmentanut sen neitsyt Maarian alttarilla.
Maksumääräyksen kirjoitettuaan hän ojensi sen pastorille, joka

hämmästyi luettuaan nimikirjoituksen ja hämmästyi vieläkin
enemmän luettuaan koko paperin.
Sitten Mirabeau lähti kirkosta ja viittasi Gilbertiä seuraamaan

mukana.
He nousivat jälleen vaunuihin.
Vaikka Mirabeau oli vain tuokioksi poikennut Argenteuiliin, ehti hän

jättää jälkeensä kaksi muistoa, jotka myöhempien sukupolvien
silmissä näyttivät kerrassaan suurenmoisilta.
Eräillä luonteilla on ominaisuus herättää huomiota kaikkialla,

minne he jalallaan astuvatkin.
Niinkuin Kadmos, joka kylvi sotamiehiä Theban maaperälle.
Niinkuin Herakles, joka siroitteli kaksitoista urotekoansa maailman

kasvoille.
Vielä tänä päivänä — Mirabeau on ollut vainaja jo

seitsemättäkymmentä vuotta — vielä tänä päivänä käydessänne
Argenteuilissa voitte pysähtyä samoissa paikoissa, missä
Mirabeaukin, mikäli talo ei ole asumaton ja kirkko hylätty, ja te
tapaatte kyllä jonkun, joka kertoo teille yksityiskohtaisesti ja kuin
eilispäivän tapahtumasta kaikki, mitä mekin olemme kertoneet.
Vaunut ajoivat ison kadun päähän asti. Sitten ne poikkesivat

Argenteuilista Besonsin tielle. He olivat kulkeneet tätä tietä tuskin
sataakaan askelta, kun Mirabeau näki oikealla kädellä erään puiston
tuuheat puut, joiden seasta pistivät esiin linnan ja sen
sivurakennusten liuskakivikatot.
Se oli Marais.
Tien oikealla laidalla, ennenkuin poiketaan linnan rautaportille

johtavalle kujalle, oli muuan kurjannäköinen hökkeli.
Tämän hökkelin kynnyksellä istui vaimo puurahilla tuuditellen

sylissään laihaa, kalpeaa, kuumeen jäytämää lapsukaista.
Puolikuollutta pienokaistaan tyynnyttelevä äiti-rukka tuijotti itkien

ylös taivaaseen.
Hän haki apua sieltä, mistä sitä haetaan, kun ihmisavusta ei enää
ole toivoa.
Mirabeau huomasi jo kaukaa tämän surullisen kohtauksen.
»Tohtori», sanoi hän, »minä olen taikauskoinen kuin entisajan

ihminen. Jos tuo lapsi kuolee, en muuta Marais-palatsiin. Tuumikaa
asiaa, se koskee teitä.»
Hän pysäytti vaunut hökkelin edustalle.

»Tohtori», jatkoi hän, »koska minulla on vain parikymmentä
minuuttia aikaa tarkastelukseni linnaa päivänvalossa, jätän teidät
tähän. Tulkaa myöhemmin kertomaan minulle, onko toivoa lapsen
pelastamisesta.»
Sitten hän sanoi lapsen äidille:
»Kunnon vaimo, tämä herra tässä on hyvin taitava lääkäri.

Kiittäkää kaitselmusta, joka on lähettänyt hänet teidän luoksenne.
Hän koettaa parantaa lapsenne.»
Vaimo ei tiennyt, oliko tämä unta. Hän nousi rahiltaan, lapsi

sylissä, ja sopersi kiitossanoja.
Gilbert astui vaunuista.
Ajoneuvot jatkoivat matkaansa. Viittä minuuttia myöhemmin

Teisch soitti linnan ovikelloa.
Kesti vähän aikaa, ennenkuin ketään tuli esille. Lopulta muuan

mies, joka puvustaan päätellen oli puutarhuri, tuli avaamaan.
Mirabeau tiedusteli ensiksikin, minkälaisessa kunnossa linna oli.
Puutarhuri vastasi, että linna oli täysin asuttavassa kunnossa,

minkä muuten ensi näkemältä huomasikin.
Se oli osa Saint-Denisin apottikunnan tiluksista, Argenteuilin

priorin pääasunto, ja nyt myytävänä kirkon omaisuutta koskevan
asetuksen johdosta.
Kuten on sanottu, tunsi Mirabeau linnan jo ennestään, mutta hän

ei ollut milloinkaan päässyt tarkastamaan sitä niin läheltä kuin nyt
tässä tilaisuudessa oli laita.
Kun portti oli aukaistu, tultiin ensimmäiseen, miltei

neliönmuotoiseen pihaan. Oikealla oli sivurakennus, ilmeisesti
puutarhurin asunto, vasemmalla toinen sivurakennus, jonka sirosti
koristeltu ulkoasu pani hetkeksi epäilemään, ettei se ollut edellisen
sisarrakennus.
Se oli silti edellisen sisarrakennus, mutta yksinkertainen

sivurakennus oli koristelun mukana saanut miltei ylhäisen leiman.
Suunnattomat, runsaskukkaiset ruusupensaat vaatettivat sitä
monikirjavalla peitteellään, viiniköynnösten kiertäessä sitä vihreänä
vyönä. Jokaista ikkunaa peittivät kuin uutimina neilikat, heliotropit ja
fuksiat, joiden tuuheat oksat ja auenneet kukinnot estivät aurinkoa
ja ihmiskatsetta kurkistamasta sisälle. Pieni kukkatarha, täynnä
liljoja, kaktuksia ja narsisseja, oikea kukkaismatto, jota kaukaa
katsellen olisi voinut luulla Penelopen kirjailemaksi, oli ihan
rakennuksen edessä ja ulottui pitkin pihaa sen toiseen laitaan asti,
missä kasvoi suunnaton kyynelpaju ja ryhmä upeita lehmuksia.
Tiedämme, että Mirabeau piti kukista intohimoisesti. Nähdessään

tuon ruusuihin hukkumaisillaan olevan paviljongin, tuon ihanan
kukkatarhan, joka oli kuin osa Flora-jumalattaren asunnosta, hän
huudahti ilosta ja sanoi puutarhurille:
»Hyvä ystävä, onko tuo paviljonki vuokrattavana tai myytävänä?»
»Onpa vainen, herra», vastasi mies, »sillä se kuuluu linnaan ja

linna on vuokrattavana tai myytävänä. Se on tosin nyt vuokrattu,
mutta koska asukkaan kanssa ei ole tehty vuokrasopimusta, voi
hänet sieltä häätää, jos herra aikoo ottaa linnan haltuunsa.»
»Entä kuka on se asukas?»
»Muuan nainen.»
»Nuori?»
»Kolmenkymmenen tai viidenneljättä ikäinen.»
»Kaunis?»
»Hyvin kaunis.»
»Hyvä on», sanoi Mirabeau. »Saammehan nähdä. Kaunis

naapuritar ei ole haitaksi. Olkaa hyvä ja näyttäkää minulle nyt itse
linna.»
Puutarhuri meni Mirabeaun edellä ja he tulivat pian sillalle, joka

yhdisti ensimmäisen pihan toiseen ja jonka alla solisi pikku puro.
Puutarhuri pysähtyi.
»Jos herra», sanoi hän, »haluaa antaa paviljongissa asuvan naisen

elää kaikessa rauhassa, käy se sitäkin helpommin päinsä, kun tämä
pikku puro eristää täydellisesti paviljonkiin kuuluvan puisto-osan
muusta puutarhasta. Hän olisi omalla puolellaan ja herra
omallaan…»
»Hyvä, hyvä, sittenhän nähdään», sanoi Mirabeau.

»Silmäilkäämme nyt linnaa.»
Ja hän nousi ketterästi ulkoportaat.
Puutarhuri aukaisi pääoven.

Tästä ovesta pääsi stukkomaalauksin somistettuun eteiseen, jonka
seinäsyvennyksissä oli kuvapatsaita ja pylväsjalustoilla maljakkoja,
kuten sen ajan kuosi vaati.
Eteisen perällä, vastapäätä isoa ovea, oli toinen ovi, josta pääsi
puutarhaan.
Oikealla olivat biljardihuone ja ruokasali.
Vasemmalla oli kaksi salonkia, iso ja pieni.
Alakerros miellytti Mirabeauta aika lailla, mutta hän näytti

hajamieliseltä ja kärsimättömältä.
He nousivat yläkerrokseen.
Yläkerroksessa oli iso sali, joka tuntui sopivan mainiosti

työhuoneeksi, ja kolme neljä makuusuojaa.
Salin ja makuusuojien ikkunat olivat kiinni.
Mirabeau itse meni avaamaan yhden.
Puutarhuri aikoi avata muut.
Mutta Mirabeau viittasi kädellään ja puutarhuri herkesi

yrityksestään.
Mirabeaun aukaiseman ikkunan alla, ison kyynelpajun katveessa

loikoili muuan nainen kirjaa lukien. Parin askeleen päässä hänestä
viiden tai kuuden vuoden ikäinen poika leikki nurmikolla kukkien
seassa.
Mirabeau oivalsi, että tämä nainen oli paviljongin asukas.

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The Fate of Critical Culture in Global America ≥ Daniel T. O’Hara

duke university press ≥ durham & london 2003

I. Reading as a Vanishing Act

II. Globalizing Literary Studies

IV. Reading Worlds

viii ≤≤≤ Preface

xii ≤≤≤ Preface

xiv ≤≤≤ Acknowledgments

We Welcoming Others, or What’s

Wrong with the Global Point of View?

2 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

4 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

6 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

An amazing, if somewhat mystifying, passage. So many echoes and traces

As disarmed as a newly born child, [the absolute arrivant ] no more

8 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

10 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

As an editor of boundary 2: an international journal of literature and

12 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

Culture and cultural identities . . . civilization identities, are shaping

14 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

16 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

In a special issue of boundary 2 entitled ‘‘The University,’’ its editor,

18 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

Think of a stretch limo in the pot-holed streets of New York City,

Of course, any institution, people, or individual who reads this scene, an

20 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

22 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

Empire and Identity

24 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

Le Carré’s ‘‘hero,’’ rescued by his ‘‘heroine,’’ might not have recognized

26 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

30 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

Said and the Fate of Critical Culture ≤≤≤ 31

The study of literature is not abstract but is set irrecusably and

32 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

This is not the occasion to elaborate on the problematic nature of

Said and the Fate of Critical Culture ≤≤≤ 33

34 ≤≤≤ Empire Burlesque

Said and the Fate of Critical Culture ≤≤≤ 35

Author: Alexandre Dumas

Translator: Urho Kivimäki

Release date: June 24, 2024 [eBook #73907]

Original publication: Hämeenlinna: Arvi A. Karisto Oy, 1924

Credits: Juhani Kärkkäinen and Tapio Riikonen

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

Romaani Ranskan vallankumouksesta

Hämeenlinnassa, Arvi A. Karisto OSAKEYHTIÖ, 1924.