A Brief Response FREDRIC JAMESON | can understand many of Aijaz Ahmad’s reactions to my essay without, nally, losing the felng that was worth doing and that these things were worth saying. The ‘essay was imended as an intervention invo a “frs-word” literary and critical srua- ‘on, in which t seemed important to/me to stress the loss of certain literary functions and intellectual commitments in the conterporary American scene. It seemed useful to dramatize that loss by showing the constitutive presence of those things—what | called narrative allegory (namely the coincidence ofthe personal story and the “tale of the tribe,” a8 still in Spenser) and also the politcal role of the cultural intellecrual—in other parts ofthe worl, Tobe sure, one then returns to show thar US literature also includes its own “third-world” cultures (which escape the categories in which one describes hegemonic culare); and equally clearly, the classical cultures of the East (fr example) are no more robe thought of as third-world culares than the English Renaissance is to be thought of asa frst-world one. [As for such categories, they are meant to stimulate the perception of diferent by imposing comparisons and comparative operations that do not always suggest themselves automatically in our present academic division of labor, where Lu Xun belongs to Chinese departments and Ousmane (if to anything) to French depart rents. I believe that we have every interes in developing a kind of comparative ‘cultural study (on the model, say, of Barrington Moore's comparative sociology) in which such disparate texts are juxtaposed, not to turn both into “the same thing.” ‘but rather with a view towards establishing radical stuational difference in cularal production and meanings. ‘The methodological problem is that such differences can only be established within some larger preestablished identity: if thee is nothing in common between ‘wo cultural situations then clearly the establishment of difference is both pointes and given in advance. What this means i that if denity and Difference are fixed and ctemal opposites, we have either a ceasekss altemation, oF 2 set of intolerable choices: presumably there would be no great advantage gained by junking the ca sory of “third world” ifthe results that North America then becomes “the same” #8 the subcontinent, say. But nothing isto be done with sheer random difference eth which either leaves us back in Boasian anthropology or in the empircise history “one damned thing afer another.” The claim ofthe dialectic as a distince mode of ‘thought isto set categorie like those of Identity and Difference in motion, so thatResponse 7 table staring point is lkimatelytransfommed beyond recognition; whether this ‘an be honored cannot, of course, be decided in advance. "A great many other important issues are raised in this paper, which I can early touch on now, let alone answer. The concept of “national allegory,” for ple, was not meant as an endorsement of nationalism, although I belive that a in ptionalism doesnot always play an exclusively negative and harmful role in Hone socialist revolutions. fas forthe term “rst world,” Uhope it is aot necessary o say that the priority ie implies isnot a socal one (the burden of my paper was to argue virtually the opposite {position), nor is it an intellectual one (particalarly given our Roman eclectiism— “Carrendy expanding, 'm happy to say, to include a keen interest in contemporary Indian theory), nor is i eves, God kmows, a matter of production: itis base, far ‘more even than military power, onthe fac that American bankers hold the levels of the wodd system. As for one's fein cht this system, late capitalism, is he supreme tnifyng fore of contemporary history, such abeliefwhich hasbeen characterized 18 “monotheism” by some—coafiems the descriptions ofthe Grundrise and does seem to me to correspond oa fact of life. dor, however, see how my argument can be taken for an endorsement ofthis gravitasonal force, which it would be well, however, to take into account if one plans to try to resist ie 1 think T can detect some final implication here that “theory” i, inthe very ature ofthe beast, represtve and an exercist of power—slthough I can't be sure whether Aijaz Ahmad would endorse the fll “theoretical” form of this particular poston about theory. My own feling is that sch anxiety is particularly misplaced ina simation in which the “role” ofthe intellectual and the very category iself) has never been less influential and in which anc-inellecsalism is deeply ingrained inthe very spit ofthe culture. Ic seems to me mach more productive to insist, ashe also docs, on the way in which we are all situated and determined socially and ideologi- cally by our mulple class postons—somethng I hope I never szmed to deny. But «ven speaking from that postion (a I ould net but do), I il think my intervention was positive and progressive one, whose implications (on any number of levels) include: the necessity for teaching third-wodd leratures; the recognition of the challenge they pose to even the most advanced contemporary theory; the need for a relational way of thinking global culture (sich that we cannot henceforth think “fst-world”lverature in isolation from that of oxer global spaces); the proposal for 4 comparative snidy of cultural situations (which T have been clearer about here, Perhaps, bu for which my cade word, in the estayin question, was the slogan,“ node of production”) and Gaal, the suggestion (which Ahmad seems to endorse) that ‘when we get done with all that we may want entertain the possibilty that we also ‘eed a (new) theory of secord-world culture es well yar