Jeanne Morefield’s Unsettling the World: Edward Said and Political Theory extends her already impressive body of work on the nature and function of empire and imperialism into a radical turning point. In Said she has found a kindred soul not just to interpret the world, as Marx had urged, but to change it. With this master stroke Morefield relocates us in “the middle of a raging cyclone” as she puts it which is Said’s way of recasting the world not despite but against empire. The result however is not just rereading Said against the grain of the current imperial meltdown. She borrows from Said to build a whole new moral and imaginative citadel from which not just to reimagine but rebuild the world. In Said, Morefield detects and praises what she performs with uncommon verve and vitality for a whole new generation of critical thinking.

Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University, author of On Said: Remembrance of Things Past

Unsettling the World advances a riveting and revelatory account of Edward Said’s political thought. Probing the complexity, contradictions, and polemics that have led other commentators to misjudge Said’s anticolonial humanism, Morefield situates Said’s work in the company of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and C. L. R. James and demonstrates why political theorists cannot afford to neglect Said’s profound analysis of the entanglements of race, empire, and modern political ideals.

Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia

Jeanne Morefield’s Unsettling the World is an original and outstanding interpretation of Edward Said’s work and of its contribution and importance to the field of political theory.

James Tully, Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria