Said’s work instantiates every major phase Ahmad traces in literary theory.

Evidence

Chapter 5, on the work of Edward Said, is the lengthiest in the book, for obvious reasons. This is not the place to indicate the complexity of the thematics of that chapter, but it is worth emphasizing that within the trends I examine in this book, Said’s reuvre is by far the most magisterial, the most influential but also possibly the most ridden with ambivalence and inner contradictionin particular texts, between one text and another, and between the earlier and later phases of his work. So his work exemplifies, very starkly, virtually all the main moments in the evolution of literary theory which I trace in the book as a whole. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 68