Perhaps we are too quick to dismiss the attainments of the good Mr. Bhabha. True, his work is just a down-market parroting, in English translation, of the lexicon used by his French mentors: Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, (and distantly, Barthes), etc. However, it is no mean feat for anyone to have mastered this obscure vocabulary (and he gets extra points if he’s read all the ‘texts’ in the original French), tortured mindscape, and the prose style that results. This much is true.

The problem I find with the mercifully small sampling of Mr. B.’s work that I’ve read is that amidst all the free-floating verbiage there is no there there. As a student of the Frenchies in the great long-ago, and as nutsy as many of them were up-close in real life, persistence with their tangled prose often yields a wealth of unique ideas and systems. Such effort is ill rewarded in the Bhabha oeuvre that I’ve glanced at. What ideas can be extracted remain like wisps of seaweed on the great tide of words — coherence, as R.K. has pointed out, is not a predominant characteristic. What ideas can be discerned are but borrowed castoffs from the wardrobe of Mr. Said with some added froufrou from the glittering geegaw boxes of the French contingent. So much for the ‘reality’.

What we must admire, however, is the great edifice of academic success that Mr. B. has spun from such disparate bits. He has shown great acuity and enterprise by correctly identifying and taking advantage of the supreme twin turn-ons for American academia: masochistic self-loathing, and instant swoon for the impenetrable lexicon of their French betters. This is his genius turn, and the motor of his success. Marketing is everything! Hats off!