By way of acknowledgment, a few notes on the circumstances of the writing of the essays that follow. the first chapter was originally delivered at "tRACes," a conference held at the University of California, irvine, and organized by David theo Goldberg and Dragan Kujundzic. i remain grateful for their invitation and for the opportunity to engage with the intense group of scholars they had gathered. the papers and discussions enabled me to learn much on the notion of race and to reflect on the

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... mites, the category i had left out of The Jew, the Arab, and one that could at once undo and buttress (all too hermetically, i feared) the argument i proposed there. the restricted form of the chapter devoted to edward said, "secularism" (chapter ), is due to the fact that it was written as a homage to said. As i write this, the essay is about to be published by Critical Inquiry thanks to the encouraging reading of W. J. t. mitchell. i very much hope that the chapter, reproduced here by kind permission, retains the traces of its early intent. With it i mean to propose a reading of said that highlights and reflects on his contribution to the "secularization" debate and to discussions on the rise of "religion" in democracy, in America and elsewhere, within the persistent context of Orientalism. the larger significance, whether or not i have succeeded in conveying it, resides in said's life and work. Chapter 3 has now been published in Comparative Literature Studies for a special issue on bilingualism edited by Rey Chow and Reda Bensmaïa, whom i very much thank for including me in the special issue of that journal. the chapter is reproduced here by kind permission. inspired in part by Paul de man's reflections on literature and modernity, the essay was presented at the Jewish studies seminar organized by su-