ABSTRACT
Wherever you live, it is probably Egypt. Michael Walzer, Exodus & Revolution
The place from which one speaks can matter more than what one has to say. On one hand, geography is the gritty, groundlevel fact of life, the object of territorial ambition and political lust. A socio-political class can be such a “place,” and so can a political movement. Gramsci considered like-minded groups as territories that had to be won in a war of position; Said pursued the conquest of blocs of thought and people. As a boy, Said skidded among three locations. He was taken repeatedly from Cairo to Jerusalem to Beirut. Exactly where he grew up became an issue; an investigator egged on by Commentary magazine and an Israeli foundation, loudly proclaimed that Said had not grown up where he claimed.1
