126 SOCIAL SCIENTIST culture, not political economy. But Said, by ignoring the debate entirely, is left seeing imperialism as divorced from capitalism. His terms of discussion are 'nations' and 'national cultures', without a word on class. In fact. Said thinks imperialism may have emerged out of, was caused by, the will to dominate behind the 'national cultures' of Europe (cf. pp. 8, 15, 61). Said is so confused on the causes and functioning of imperialism that he fears his argument that imperialism was 'integrative' may represent a 'vast system building or totalistic theory' (p. 4). He need not worry, the argument is merely a platitude; it is not even a theory. Said is unable to see the relationship between exploitation within Europe, (which in the nineteenth century was more brutal than many people recognise now,) and imperial exploitation. If literature should be connected to its political context then this would apply to Said's own text. What are his own worldly affiliations? Said would like to position himself in the middle, reading both European and non-European writers with a mixture of admiration and criticism. In the 'loud antagonisms of the polarized debate of pro- and anti-imperialists, 'he would like to be the sober-headed individual calling for tolerance, peaceful interchange and calm dialogue (p. 29). Said's general principle is to denounce cultural and national'chauvinisms, whether they arise in Europe or in the mid-East, and to demand that we be self-critical and vigilant against our own self-pride turning into chauvinism. While Said's generous attitude is admirable, it is also ethereal. Said wants to speak in the name of all humanity and avoid taking any sides. In a particularly bizarre passage he argues that 'the organization of political passions . . . lead[s] inevitably to mass slaughter, and if not to literal mass slaughter then certainly to rhetorical slaughter.' (p. 28). Said says political organization leads inevitably to mass murder, then contradicts himself that the process may not be inevitable and then invents a perfectly meaningless concept 'rhetorical slaughter'. Such confusing passages litter the entire book. Said, as a literary critic, is preoccupied with books and intellectuals and has great difficulty presenting a clear political position. By the end of the book he is posing 'homeless wanderers, nomads, vagrants* (p. 403), those living on the margins of the world's nation-state system, as the basis of a new politics of liberation. And he is posing a new breed of intellectuals, deconstructivists, post-modernists, as those 'distilling then articulating the predicaments . . . [of] mass deportation, imprisonment;"population transfer, collective dispossession, and forced immigrations.' (p. 403) Said sees all of these problems as stemming from nationalism and imperialism. I would certainly agree with Said that we need to find a new internationalist politics but the liberation