What Was Postcolonialism?

Author(s): Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge Reviewed work(s): Source: New Literary History, Vol. 36, No. 3, Critical and Historical Essays (Summer, 2005), pp. 375-402 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057902 . Accessed: 04/11/2011 15:45
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What

Was

Postcolonialism?* and Bob Hodge

Vijay Mishra

I. Introduction
WE WISH the THIS WERE tale. NOT We A MATTER wish we OF RETURN, were not of of a past

repetition,

twice-told

witnessing

moment come back always Jacques Derrida's totally other," the "only as principle,
do move on, and

it. And we wish the repetition didn't by repeating to itself (which it does) as if, with Sigmund Freud (in we were always "haunted by something reading), "other" that always comes back, like the pleasure that which has not truly come back."1 Yet things also
as we look again at the paradoxical as usually was marginals."2 a situation of

postcolonialism
not many come other

we are moved
the have

above
"end been of

all to insist on its pastness. We

postcolonialism," announced, the in vain. ends Still

have
of so less

to announce movements

do we want
afterword consciousness

to deny
to his of

the value of what Edward

work minorities, Orientalism, and

Said declared,
"revolution

in the 1994
in the Said

magisterial women,

Although

said nothing about postcolonialism work nevertheless scholars provided

address and interpret both Orientalist,

in his original 1979 edition, the to with many registers with which
self-serving, colonial discourses

a European to confine the (within which are embedded compulsion and the highly indeed agonistic, discourses of adventurous, other) anticolonial In the 1994 afterword, Said also located struggles. though, in the past (to a point) Ella postcolonialism by approvingly quoting concerns Shohat's that postcolonialism itself with "continu suggestion
ities and discontinuities practices" and ... not on on a the new modes Said and noted, forms of the old let us colonialist "beyond."3 correctly

the links between and postcolonialism, but was postmodernism to point out that in the hands of the early postcolonial scholars quick C. L. R. James, and Frantz Fanon among and artists (Chinua Achebe, or a grand narrative of them) the historical imperative, postcolonial add,
regeneration and completion, is always present. History is not some

contingent,
* This paper

endlessly
is for our

deferred,
Stephen

and nonfoundational
Slemon, postcolonial scholar.

language

game;

it

friend

New Literary History, 2005, 36: 375-402

376
has real, foundational value in the lives of the

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

recently

emancipated.

sense has been too The trouble is that the historical invoked sweepingly even in postcolonial where very often "pedagogical theory, expediency" (after Masao Miyoshi) triumphs over localized and rigorous "political
and economic scrutiny."4 present locked We indeed into an argue that in Said's ever more a postcolonialism, that have been recognition own project, onerous task, of the pastness of releases to maintain energies and

extend
other

its scope,
terms.

in a present

and

future

increasingly

constituted

in

The mode of interrogation, its discursive form, signaled in the title of our paper and implicit in Said, has an older history. WTien Immanuel Kant posed his famous question "what is Enlightenment?" his influential to the Question: letter to the editor Answer WTiat Is Enlighten ("An the generic register as well as the form that such an established ment?")
argument may The own be seen key present." should as our to Foucault's Before take.5 own Michel point response discussing of Foucault's response to Kant's proposal departure.6 is the necessity how Kant's

of reflection

responding on the

to

"one's is

present

different, handled.
certain era

Foucault First,
of the

summarizes "present
world."

the

how the present may be represented

"the present as writes a may

had been hitherto as belonging to a

be interrogated in

Second,

an attempt
Third, the "the dawning

to decipher
may present of a new

in it the heralding
also world." be analysed "Now,"

signs of a forthcoming
point of transition "the way Foucault,

event."
toward Kant

poses
era

the question
to which one

of Aufkl?rungis
belongs, nor an

entirely
event

different:
signs an

it is neither
are perceived,

a world
nor

whose

the dawning
release

of an accomplishment"
is man's release

(97).

It is instead
exit, a

a departure,
way out, a way

("Enlightenment

..."),

of considering the difference "today introduces with respect to yester an Put in this fashion, introduced may be deemed the difference day." attitude of modernity.
We take Kant's essay and Foucault's response together as a guide to

redefine introduces
premodern,

postcolonialism a difference
and defines

itself as an attitude of modernity. to yesterday, but with respect

the modern attitude as a largely sense

It implicitly the ignores

European

historical
the pastness

event
of

(which

the Enlightenment
incorporates

itself was). Our

also our

affirmation
of its more

of

postcolonialism

uses. Via Karl Marx (rather than Kant) we insist on the fresh productive of historical examination those postcolonialism has opened archives, and those to which it has been blind. We need from Marx a comprehen
sive framework in are which always forms grounded of culture in material and life consciousness processes, while of we postcolonialism

also depart

from Marx's

"materialist"

legacy by finding

ways

in which

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

377
challenging the closures of modern

premodern ism, Marxism,

life-worlds and

continue, postcolonialism.

II. In the Beginning

Was

the Word

its other substantive forms, (hereafter, "Post(-) colonialism" including a hyphen) is a slippery term, whether viewed up close, from without that is barely twenty-five years old, or from a within a field it names it seems to have existed the field it is so omnipresent distance. Within difficult to define, pivoting as it does around forever, yet it is notoriously that potent Indeed, Terry Eagleton hyphen.7 secret handbook for post-colonial critics," which
somewhere in the gaudy supermarket.8 But

called for "a frantically he felt must surely exist

for many theorists, the

is crucial to the power of postcolonialism ambiguity we have outlined to which the and locates it in a much larger field of critical thinking, is crucial. It is that attitude of modernity attitude of modernity that leads It Stuart Hall to declare, "So, postcolonial is not the end of colonisation. is after a certain kind of colonialism, after a certain moment of high the wake of it, in the shadow of imperialism and colonial occupation?in else has happened it, inflected by it?it is what it is because something new."9 And Simon Gikandi, too, in his before, but it is also something a of "Englishness," considers postcolonialism reading highly intelligent in which the culture of colonialism "code for the state of undecidability
continues mobile who to resonate in what was metaphor, discovers value postcolonialism it a "locomotive, as a mode of supposed is best to be summed its up negation."10 by Emily As Apter, with for a

in

portmanteau cultural analysis

transnational

quality,"11 suited singularly

the analysis
this "cultural

of literary/cultural
m?tissage."12 \et

diversity, what John

it may be symptomatic

Erickson
that Apter's at into

has called
center

is located

in urgent

issues
and terms, its status

in her present,
context, the as rather postcolonial past.

for which
than being survives

postcolonialism
the the center present of

a provides perspective In our her attention. precisely because of

We exilic

functions

illustrate the way the set of terms around "postcolonial(ism)" in current critical discourse from a typical text, a book on film critic Hamid and diasporic filmmaking by Iranian-American It has

in the index: postcolonial entries the following and cinema, countries, identity filmmakers, postcolonial postcolonial filmmakers (not to be confused displacement, postcolonial postcolonial and identity filmmakers), with postcolonial postcolonialism, postcolonial strategy, postcolonial theory. We went back to the text to follow up these Naficy.13
terms and establish a corpus. On this basis we make two observations,

378
which
more

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

would
terms

"postcolonial "postcolonial" equivalence). dependency

marginalized, as often the

texts in this field. apply " to many other is rarely used on its own. It normally (ism)
that overlap and support each other:

First, the term is one of two or

most commonly

a loose "third world" or "postmodern" (establishing the term itself is losing its force through semantic Second, itwith another word) ; it isweakened, (the need to collocate and
and adjective. as a theoretical formation used only one-tenth as

to is a neologism "Postcolonialism" that grew out of older elements a moment in world history, a configuration of capture seemingly unique and insights, hopes and dreams arising from a hitherto experiences
silenced for part of the world, to the alternatives taking discourses advantage of the of new colonial conditions era,"14 to "search an creating

altogether future. That transnational

name. The

different

the past and the vantage point has termed "a situation?what (after James Clifford) Apter a fact of interdisciplinary life"15?demanded everyday
name it Embedded claimed in was it is of "postcolonial," course the "culture" and of hence "colonial

from which

to review

"postcolonialism."

ism"

itself, which
here comes

we
the via

argue may
word French "colony." from

be
the

recovered
Latin colonia

from
and

the root words

themselves, "Colony"

colonus,

farmer,

from
company

col?re, to cultivate,
of or the people country, colonies

dwell. Webster's
from subject

1905 dictionary
their to mother the jurisdiction

defined
of the

it as "A

transplanted remaining of America."16

country

to a remote parent

province state: as,

The
and

ideology
source, and of

embedded
too obvious the

in the entry
to need As Webster colo, which,

is unsurprising,
comment. notes, Less "colony" is also

given
obvious comes the

the date
is from source the a of

strangeness rich and

etymology. root,

important

surprisingly,

in the modern meanings of could all this hang together For an answer we turn to WTiite and Riddle's Latin dictionary "colony"? (1876). They report that it is akin to the Sanskrit root kshi (class 2 and 6 also in Latin: ksheti, kshiyati), "to dwell," its base meaning Parasmaipada: to inhabit it."17 From this meaning it "to abide, dwell, stay (in a place), a set of related meanings: to work (the earth), to cultivate it developed to work the mind or soul, and to worship the and hence metaphorically "culture." How
gods. These are world, diverse premodern meanings in which these for a modern were mindset, formed, but there in is the an terms

intrinsic connection between the land, and living in a place, working its gods, the spirits of the land. honoring so its Colonus, one who is the subject of col, derived from this complex, an inhabitant or farmer. From this usage it drifted was primary meaning
to refer to a settler in a foreign place, a "colonist" in the modern sense.

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

379

are Yet this drift was not innocent, and in the Latin the other meanings still active, part of the ideological work it did to justify and legitimate a new land, different modalities of invasion: living in (and dominating) new gods?all it by work, and bringing that "improving" strategies in the five hundred powers employed years of European European
colonization.

This hundred
European settlements,

over the course of fifteen contradictory legacy then underwent shift in the stock of words of modern years an amnesiac
languages. not to "Colony" a neutral came "dwelling." to refer It also primarily its lost to deep invasive roots in

premodern
elements

ways of life, especially

are still present in

religion. We will argue

forms of

that all these

in

contemporary

colonization,

both its classic (colonial), and postmodern forms. The (postcolonial) realities have not changed, but meaning has slowly seeped out of the term over two millennia. to the It is now less rich, less adequate as well as the past, of the present complexities missing surprising
connections and contradictions that are still current.

"Postcolonialism" emerges from this complex history with two potent to an adjectival form in "-al". The affixes attached in front and behind is relatively easy to understand, prefix "post-" though still with complex effects. In all its compounds it gestures toward a time just after some main that defines its existence, of which it is the shadow. But how is that shadow, whose form and meaning is only strong long the now-past originary form? "Post" has marginality and guaranteed by built in. "Postcolonialism" obsolescence is not immune to this fate. and
"-Ism" is harder to track. The three suffixes "-ism," "-ist," and "-ize" all

event

derive from the Greek to is added to a noun or adjective -izein, which a related action. The trouble is that this very make it a verb, describing set of morphemes have been applied over two thousand productive to form a bewildering years variety of words in many languages, Greek
and set Latin of words, as well "-ist" as modern usually European languages. to a kind refers of agent In this who heterogeneous makes whatever

it is happen. But itmatters what kind ofthing ismade to happen: a thing a colony) or an adjective a So "colonists" make (like (like colonial). what "colonialists" whereas reflect the colony happen by they do, qualities of a colony, the attributes and attitudes associated with one.
"-Ism" still has a reference, obvious or latent, to actions or behaviors,

habitual meaning
there are

actions
two

performed on depends qualities

strands of meaning

in relation of
of

to its headword.
relevant to

As with

"-ist," its English

the headword.
"-ism"

In modern

"postcolonalism."

One

to the kinds of in a general sense, referring "postcolonial" done in a postcolonial situation. The other strand has a things typically long tradition, attested at least as early as 1680 in the OED, in which the takes

380
headword
appearance These two

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

refers
this strands

to a doctrine,
usage always coexist, of had their a

theory,
negative differences

or

practice.
sense. unstated

From
and in

its first

tension, and and

in contemporary around confusion

usages

the word.

"postcolonialism," Does it refer

to

creating the inexhaustibly

ambivalence open

rich set of possible actions and states that can flourish Or is it the militant (after) colonialism? tendency
"postcolonial (theory)," an "-ism" as in "dogmatism,"

in the shadow of from stemming

notable more for

energy than subtlety on behalf imagined) "Postcolonialism" thought, looking following at its object

or originality, a rhetoric calling for action (real or tenets are not to be questioned? of a cause whose the in this sense is postcolonial thought without not as theory but as dogma, theory postcolonial through dangerous blinkers.

III. The

Marginalization

of

"Postcolonialism"

also The past fifty years, the scene of the triumph of "postcolonialism," is its and semantic which of the marginalization seepage signs To track this we begin with the OED, arguably the condition. present at the high in the world, produced for any language finest dictionary Sir James of the formidable of imperialism under the editorship point than any other the imperialist better This text exemplifies Murray.18 reason (evident in the subtext of many citations), logic of instrumental with participants who seem well aware of the link between language and the imperialist project. of "colonial" and "colo We cite here parts of the OED's definitions show
nialism," "alleged." {spec.) noting Colonial: British the use "Of, of or qualifications to, or such belonging . . . Now freq. "frequently" to a relating colony, Colonialism: as and or "The

colonies.

derogatory."

sense of colonial system or principle. Now freq. used in the derogatory an alleged policy of exploitation of backward or weak peoples by a large the hostility on the part of the colonized (As if to underline power." 'Colonial OED cites, "1957 Listener 1 Aug. 159/1: backward classes the
ism' is the commonest term of abuse nowadays throughout more than

half An tions,

the world.") ideology but at of instrumental least the two reason terms

to govern these defini continues such luck with No get defined. which does not appear in the second edition of the "postcolonialism," the "-ism" you need to go to the prefix OED (1989). To locate itwithout
"post-," as the word does not occur as a headword! Even so you need to

of this class of hyphenated the definition (after Al.a), where go to Bl.b word is given as follows: "With adj. Or formed from post + a L. or Gr. sb.

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

381
Many of these are self-explaining,
Also . . . as

with
formed

an adjectival
for ; and get personal many by way

ending.
others of

esp.

those

names with definition,

given] all you

follow]. [examples obvious meaning, because

[examples That is post-colonial." To is "obvious." the meaning

of words with the prefix "post" citations of the first occurrences research skills. You the headword (under "post-") requires advanced need to go through the examples given under Bl.d (which gives textual citations of all the words given under Bl.a, b, and c) to find citations that that we get the definition. It is here form the basis of the OED's *Post-colonial. 1959 Daily Tel. 12 Dec 6/2. 'It "1934 WEBSTER following: was probably that India, in the first flush of postcolonial inevitable find of that period sensitivity, should fear that association with the America in troubles which were little to do with involve her unnecessarily might 15 Sept p. i/5 'Behind the imposing Asia.' 1969 Times (Uganda Suppl.) as one of the is a mind that has been described physical presence shrewdest
'If there's

in post-colonial
one thing worse

Africa.'
than

1974
. . .

'G. Black' Golden Cockatrice iii.57:

colonialism . . . it's post

rampant

colonial dictatorship.'" the Peter Cook/Dudley

Dud. I like the rancid they're one sort

Somewhat flippantly, Moore sketch:

who throws herself

this last entry reminds

us of

of woman

on

you

and

tears

your to

clothes

off with Pete. Yes,

sensuality. quite will do. good, Of aren't they? the I think you're referring is that "rampant tear

sensuality." Dud. Either clothes

course,

important

thing

they

your

off.19

Like Dud,
between

G. Black
"colonialism"

knows what
and

he

doesn't process,
as of

like, and
under

all differences
this certainty.

"post-colonial" to

collapse "their" terms

Behind
have The already been

this is the sign of an interesting

handed no 1974) over longer describe the colonized, this pair else's accept someone

whereby
words, for about

the two terms

not "ours." They

colonizers (by

themselves. some

history,

no-longer

or nameable colonial the power. The OED recognizable registers out from under "postcolonial" at the metropolitan semantic tide going center. "Postcolonialism" (by 1989 at any rate) never made it even that far. It may seem perverse for us to track this word at the colonial center, and neglect adding However,
"postcolonialism,"

other that this

us,

(as our friend Stephen Slemon pointed out to are 228,000 Google hits for "postcolonial").20 reference has only hits for 27,900 postmodern there
ten percent of the hits for "postmodernism," at

sources

at 2,650,000 274,000. Both of these are dwarfed by "globalization," Hits on Google and citations from the OED are crude indicators,

hits. but,

382

NEW

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HISTORY

drawing on other evidence, we feel that the picture they give is basically sound. "Postcolonialism" has not disappeared, but lags well behind its
dominant partner, "postmodernism." "Postcolonial," the humble adjec

tive on which
competes with

it is based,
"globalization"

has
as

far more
the cover

currency.
term for

But
both

none
areas.

of

them

Outside

the imperial pages of the OED, in new media like the Internet, words in profusion, flourish and in this sea of words still "postcolonial" still has meaning, but is withering. circulates, "postcolonialism" set is still useable, still part (though small) of a common "Postcolonial" to think with." "Postcolonialism" of "goods has already nearly gone, and
hardly anyone notices it.

IV. The
Rather than stay with

Specter
words in

of "Hybridity"
lexicons we want to move on to

ideas as they function in texts, in what we will complexes call the contemporary archive. Our discussion will focus on postcolonial a small number of texts from this archive, sufficiently diverse to do some to use as signs justice to the diversity of the field, sufficiently important of words and of their times, our times. We begin with Homi Bhabha (already present in the critical discourses of Hall, Gikandi, Apter, and Robert Young),
because his work is central to an understanding of current idioms of postcolonialism.

The
writings, from repeat

semantic
where this the being old

slippage
it has a

of "postcolonialism"
into the alliance, sphere the

is far advanced
of

in Bhabha's
Far come in which to

drifted

productive relation between

colonizers

"postmodernism." has relationship and colonized,

"postcolonialism" politan term and last refuge

is appropriated itsmetropolitan

to legitimate and exploited the metro theorists. "Postcolonial thought is the

of postmodernism," Alex Callinicos says, from his Marxist on Bhabha's work.21 We would not in a critique focused standpoint or all forms of as severely as dismiss either Bhabha postmodernism we feel that in current theory a trinity of "posts" has Callinicos does, yet and enclosed the open space of "afterness," each colonized effectively into the others in an endless play of almost sameness, closing morphing around a single theme and a single version of history in the name of plurality. of this move, with Callinicos takes the work of Bhabha as emblematic reason we feel, given Bhabha's hallowed position in the dominant good school of postcolonialism. Bhabha rejects foundationalist (postmodern) on the grounds that the postcolonial (with its present historiographies In the flows and hybrid identity politics) finds them attenuating. global

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

383
by Bhabha,
an original

new historiography
tice repeats, with

fashioned
a difference,

anticolonial
metropolitan

nationalist
nationalism.

prac

Theorists happens. struggle

repeated the same, since it is invested with the same bureaucratic and semiotically it is a says, because juridical systems. This is a little uncanny, as Bhabha a compulsive kind of return of the repressed, but one to repetition in the (il) logic of having been which one desires to return to participate there
narrative

this often agree struggle would is the only model of nationalist a metropolitan nationalism in the domain of anticolonialism: a difference but within a space that is with (an ambivalence)

of bourgeois For Bhabha

anticolonial it seems this

before.
of

The
the

colonized
struggle

subject

is thus bound
a prior

to mimic

(the
grand

presupposes

metropolitan

narrative) in doing
script"

and can only exist so it undermines,

in a condition in Neil

of ambivalent words,

Lazarus's

hybridity. But the "colonialist

itself.22

This

move

iswhat he calls it), the colonized's equal in its various registers: when asked what he thought of proficiency the Mahatma is reputed to have replied, "I think it Western civilization would be a very good idea." At the level of the aesthetic the decisive
writer was of course V. S. Naipaul, whose early social comedies discur

postcolonialism and, hence, suggestively indeed parodically (slymimicry

is fundamentally colonial deprives

in that Bhabha's textualist, style of discourse of its singularity and power undercuts its dominance by demonstrating,

sively mimicked metropolitan colonial elites who function

domination exiles and and migrants whose who current are

English stylists. Bhabha's subjects are the around the edges of the colonial frame of
avatars at once are here the and of people elsewhere the diaspora, and whose

of the nation. For Bhabha, then, presence disrupts received definitions as the the hybrid, mobile of diaspora?"the transnational subject
translational"23?is the exemplary postcolonial who stands ambivalently

against atavistic nationalism. Writes Bhabha: way to the vox populi: to a relatively unspoken
the pagus?colonials, postcolonials, migrants,

"At this point I must give tradition of the people of

minorities?wandering

peoples
culture

who
and

will

not

be

contained
discourse,

within
but are

the Heim
themselves

of

the national
of a

its unisonant

the marks

shifting boundary term "hybrid" Bhabha's

postcolonial theory, where

that alienates has

the frontiers become

as

of the modern nation."24 recent the mantra of much

an archeseme, a redemptive

it functions

sign that affirms

further

the agency

of the postcolonial
more so than

subject, without
in those nation

need

of

exemplification,

nowhere

states

where the postcolonial is also a diasporic has conquered the field so effortlessly,
sterile.

subject. It is strange this word since in biology hybrids are

384
Bhabha's postcolonial

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

as migrant of color), (ideally the migrant and ex exilic, often profoundly dispossessed, schizophrenic, unhappy under capitalism, into a powerful gets transformed ploited subject of His history of "cultural displacement it is] [whether (post) modernity. the 'middle passage'
However, of

of slavery and
the this experience, is also culture,

indenture,
of which

the

'voyage out'

of the

civilizing discourses." the

mission,"

becomes

substance

transnationality

"contemporary postcolonial Bhabha declares signifies because it "translational," compli

of culture itself.25 Our difficulty with these proposi in postcolonial (often used uncritically theory) is that the transfor a particular mation takes place only inside discourse, specialist discourse at that. The illusion of power (in a new translational cultural episteme) from power as it operates in a wide is achieved by a radical separation of discourses and practices, the postcolonial theorist in range leaving In effect Bhabha's the end as sole beneficiary. is often argument so that it is not divergent from the "sign of postcoloniality," mounted tions
historical experiences that require narration in postcolonialism but a

cates

the definition

particular
culture from

epistemological
an epistemological to

stance

(although
function

he

shifts

the

"subject
practice"26)

of

to an

enunciative

that arises out of the initial project

Lazarus's references the

of bourgeois
of

anticolonial
historical

nationalism.
offer a

materiality as

memory

further

critical

corrective
of

to Bhabha.

Historical
bearing

experiences
social effects"27

(the Marxist
) are materi

understanding

"consciousness

of postcolonial sociality. This is not a matter of relating ally constitutive but of seeing in terms of lived experiences, life-worlds life-worlds as and exclu of a systemic process of imperialist domination being part
sion. It therefore becomes important for postcolonialism to bear witness

to the distinctions
so that one can see,

between
with

imperialist
that

and anti-imperialist
anticolonial

movements
nationalism

Fanon,

bourgeois

invariably

effected

"neocolonial

nonbourgeois the future of Fanon,

"soaa/(ist)"

anticolonialism

consolidation" that leads to decolonization into question" is one project

class

capitalism the postcolonial

demand for

radically national
a

(78). A proper, in fact "brings as for (79), because, that is built around a
rather than a

"fundamental

transformation

mere

social order" (79). It is on this point of the prevailing restructuring own widely circulated Fanon" dis that Bhabha's essay "Remembering
Fanon 's world revolutionary order, in commitment favor of a reading to a that radically locates altered him as a

avows postcolonial

theorist
for Fanon,

of the "subversive
as Bhabha

slippage

of identity
him, the

and authority,"
is always

because
an unre

(mis)reads

"'social'

solved power
surveillance

of antagonistic ensemble and poverty, knowledge

and subversion."28

interlocutions and oppression,

Bhabha's

between history
intense

of positions and fantasy,

misses

WTiat

textualism

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

385
of decolonization the past may be as a process that through heralds a new a

is Fanon new nation

's understanding in which state,

redeemed

scansion of literary history seen in the tales of the postcolonial storytell ers (inheritors of the age-old oral tradition) where the "present is no itself but spread out for all to see."29 It is clear longer turned in upon
that Bhabha's theorization cannot address the uneven and discrepant

histories of colonial struggle in many parts of the world, not the struggles of First Nation peoples.

and certainly

V. Recovering Our
Postcolonial

the

"Postcolonial

Subject" Gayatri
from

first

substantive
Reason,50

text of the archive,

themes ranging

Spivak's
the

Critique of
and

develops

subaltern

to the new multinational world order. The work isolates the diaspora silenced figure "foreclosed [woman] native informant" as the absolutely as texts of Europe and in colonial discourses in the master philosophical to her has well. She does this through a deconstructive which reading,
great merit in being "unaccusing, unexcusing, attentive, situationally

productive
meanings

through
otherwise

dismantling"
foreclosed.31

(81),

and

of

value

in delivering

For our argument Spivak's book has value in that it locates its thesis in the heart of the project of the Enlightenment itself and critiques that from a postcolonial the presencing of a difference) perspec legacy (as reason the bourgeois male tive. Against (the subject of instrumental
subject subaltern of imperialism) woman subject, she advances by/in the native informant Insofar as the as the foreclosed history. native

informant has been rejected (the ideology of imperialism was based on this fact of rejection, or at least arrived at the idea of rejection not long to Indophobia, after colonization had set in: the move from Indophilia for instance, is well documented32), remains the un theorized he/she subject of postcolonialism. Spivak hopes to graft the native woman on to (native) informant. sign of the foreclosed She defines the native informant as "that mark of expulsion from the name of Man?a out the impossibility of the ethical mark crossing are significant at work here. First, relation" (6). There compressions "Man" is also the Enlightenment/imperial (as subject, and the native or transformable is the transformed universal potential Man) subject who could then enter history, though only in the terms laid down by this "the impossibility of ethical relation" also presup narrative. Second, a number of things: the impossibility of justice (on the natives' poses
own terms), the absence of foundational absolutes that underpin justice,

the occluded

the absence
be defined,

of social
and so

institutions
on. Third,

through which
the "native

"property" relations
is a discursive

can

informant"

386
construct colonialist no less in supposedly emancipatory

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narratives

than

in classic

forms.

texts of the this she goes on to argue that in the foundational and Marx, "the last Three Wise Men of the G. W. F. Hegel, West?Kant, native infor foreclosed tradition" Continental (111)?the (European) From
mant is necessary for the construction of the European norm: "In Kant

he

as the example for the heteronomy is needed [the native informant] to set off the autonomy of different law] of the determinant, [presence of the reflexive judgment, which allows freedom for the rational will; in
as evidence of the spirit's movement from the unconscious to

Hegel

the bestows normativity in Marx as that which consciousness; upon thus summarized narrative of the modes of production" (6). The moves are not simply a matter of historical they inhabit the periodization; the of labor that distinguish and shadow the new divisions modern North and the South. And the figure of the poorest woman of the South native informant is the "typecase of the foreclosed today" (6). in Kant signifies as well the The implicit necessity of the native Other of her from the category of the sublime, which is a figurative exclusion
trope that draws us to the fundamental laws of reason and morality,

to people who are to justice. The sublime does not come alien to it." Kant writes: "Without development of moral ideas, "naturally itself to man in that which we, prepared by culture, call sublime presents as terrible" (Spivak 12-13). This is the raw [dem rohenMenschen] merely indeed
an exceptionally astute postcolonial reading of Kant, the recognition of

which trace, Kant's

get a

(that

is, the

"raw man")
in Kant,

leads Spivak
which, because

to isolate

an

important
only as a

anthropological

moment

it surfaces

had been considered by Kantian unimportant that men it is necessary rhetorical question "why
parenthesis: "(a question which is not easy to answer

scholars. should
if we

After exist" we
cast our

or the inhabitants of Tierra thoughts by chance on the New Hollanders These examples of absolute rawness, the irredeemable del Fuego)" (26). as figures who cannot be the subject of are presented native Others, or judgment in the third Critique. Being outside culture they are speech The and cannot think the final purpose.33 sublime experience outside
exclusion quences. of Since the the raw man man from is not the sublime "man," he has enormous the conse subject of raw is not

understand and hence legislation morality he is outside also of John Rawls's theory of justice "to be global legislator." and invites Europe Kantian) it criticism doing what analysis here shows deconstructive Spivak's of the the discourses does best: interrupting, up intervening, opening Kant the dominant, restoring plurality and tension. If in her reading of as a subject outside of culture and the law is foreclosed native informant

cannot

and purposes (33); (Rawls is remarkably

WHAT

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POSTCOLONIALISM?

387

sees the native her reading of Hegel informant already texts. Working in his own canonical from the great text of marginalized Hindu high culture, the Bhagavadgita, and Hegel's reading of it, Spivak of reason,
exposes an act of complicity between the two, that is, between the class

own reading of it. The of the Sanskrit classic and Hegel's presumptions is best seen in an Indian nationalist ethos that writes its grand complicity in the shadow of Hegelian narratives history and in so doing excludes as the colonizer had the native subaltern informant quite as dramatically done. Hegel had reserved the sublime specifically for those cultures that had moved of fantastic symbolism. away from the mystical overcodings As the underdeveloped the the native informant again becomes Spirit, absent Other for the essential Occident/Orient binary.
In Spivak's account the native informant is simultaneously crucial but

inWestern does not thought. Yet this part of the exposition uses this discursive move out of the deconstruction. simply grow Spivak to lay claim to this Other, who is her own creation. She presents the or native informant as the diasporic the marginalized subject, migrant indeed the postcolonial. Writes "Let me point beyond the Spivak: to suggest here that an unquestioning of the argument privileging also turn out to be a figure of the effacement of the native migrant may in all her singularity remains informant" (18). The "native informant" outside space and time, hovering in Hegelian space and time, waiting to connect with a new moment of the Geist. Postmodern has ethnography as mediator the idea of the anthropologist and decoder of critiqued foreclosed
cultures, exposing it as a ruse, a "cover story" that does not change anthro

fundamental
of the dominant

power

relations. part,
them to

Spivak has skillfully

"native

folded
informant"

back one part

of

colonialist

discourse?the

pology?into
disrupt does both. not go

another
But outside

its foundational
remains discover internal or

philosophical
to dominant connect with an

texts,
discourses. excluded

to
It

the move

as this "postcolonial reality. In Spivak's celebration, subject" (rethought are actors on the colonized [female] "native informant") and her history a stage of world history as grand as in and just as specious. A Hegel, to disrupt the power of the Fathers becomes tactic that seemingly aimed a trick to it. appropriate

VI. The Ambiguous

Legacy

of Marx

the third European Marx, philosopher Spivak tackles, has a very to postcolonialism. different He is global and political in a relationship the others were not. He has been used so extensively by anticolonial way
revolutionaries that processes of decolonization cannot be read apart

388
from Marxist
commentaries all commentaries,

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thinking.
are footnotes even

It has been
to Plato: the bad ones,

said that in idealist

in the can be same way, seen as in

philosophy

all

postcolonialism to Marx. footnotes

Yet it is also the case that Marxism has found it extremely to difficult account centrally for postcolonial as over have unfolded processes they the last 150 years. Marx himself was remarkably Hegelian in his reading of history and believed in the need for colonized to be peoples "awakened
postcolonialism reconnection

by
with

the
has

force
evolved

of
along (or,

[bourgeois]
lines in that Derrida's

history."34
make terms, a the

Conversely,
connection specters or of

Marxism

Marx35 ) ever more difficult. We believe that this paradox and dilemma are crucial issues for both Marxism and postcolonial theory. Our concern in this essay is with postcolonialism, about which we offer the can reestablish vital links with Marx that unless postcolonialism proposition ism it will not survive nor deserve to survive long into the twenty-first century. The
crucial and

divisions
matter him of

in Marx's
the into native a

legacy should
informant, \et

not be underestimated.
for the instance, necessity Marx for celebrates capital

On
to move,

the
him

makes

revolutionary.

from feudal to capitalist, before the native can become in a larger program of class struggle led Marx to revolutionary the Asiatic Mode write about of Production. There is a Hegelian for cultures
narrative creates at work class here that which difference, Spivak must summarizes be sublated as follows: "Capitalism class-struggle through

to transform

on its way to universal self-determination" the possibil (80). "It produces of the operation of the dialectic that will produce socialism, but left to ity its own resources it is also that which blocks that operation" (83). Marx's Asiatic Mode of Production in the service of (AMP) functions the older imperial narrative of other global capitalism, reconfirming ness detected in Kant and Hegel, in the absence because of a class as Marx had in mind, the AMP can justify the economic struggle exploitation globalization
removed

of the South, especially can be seen as a means

in favor of a boundaryless

by United by which
economic

States. In this respect, a residual AMP may be

order under the sign of

In Spivak the AMP is "a stasis that must be interrupted world capitalism. in its own interest" (97). But the spirit of Marx, we would add, is also elsewhere. It surely makes us conscious of the complicity between ruling classes in both North and South. It sees the native informant take up the (Marx's revolutionary) dam project in India or struggle of demonstrating against the Narmada of rivers by toxic waste produced in sweat shops against the pollution run With Spivak we can ask: could globalization shock by multinationals.
the that nation-state a true and postcolonial thus produce must order precisely work the towards? resistances In this from resistance within are

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

389
the multifaceted
and a

embedded
the linear, narrative,

the tensions
the native and

of the local and the global,

the nationalist, minor monologism.

and
grand

and

narratives

dialogism

VII. The
The imperative

Imperative
holds

of Marxism

the key to the question?"what is addresses. She locates the postcolonialism?"?that Spivak ultimately in the past and answers it in exactly the same way that Foucault question felt Kant did when he answered the question "what is Enlightenment?": she teases over the matter of the difference in that "today introduces of Marxism
respect to yesterday," assurance but not without acknowledging the specters of Marx.

thoroughgoing our

claim
in

for
the

the
next

importance
text (and a

of Marx
text which

is made
has

with

uncommon

already

of Bhabha) from our archive, Neil Lazarus's and engaging Nationalism and Cultural Practice in thePostcolonial scholarly to the serious absence of Marxist World. Referring theory in postcolonial Lazarus writes: "The fact that postcolonial studies should have studies, itself as an arena of scholarly production constituted within which informed critique
Marxism problem occupies for Marxist a very readers marginal and writers, status whose obviously specific poses a investments special and

tend to remain unrecognised and undervalued stockpiles of knowledge in the field" (13). We believe Lazarus is right that postcolonialism, here called postcolonial suffers because it lacks a systematic theory of studies,
this kind. Lazarus's book declares the end of postcolonial theory

because the theory has aestheticized and the aesthetic itself as formations
invoked, or altered. Perhaps only

struggle and emptied from which ideology

in the essays of Benita

both struggle is challenged,

Parry,36 and

others
is

to questions like her, attuned of class, do we get the kinds of with and respect for systematic theory that Lazarus declares engagement
essential in what are currently seen as cognate fields, such as

multicultural, with aspects

Lazarus without to historical

and diaspora studies, but which surely deal postcolonial, of a single complex social, political, and cultural whole.
stresses the of the need for cannot a return redeem to know to historical their one's memory: To a gain past one needs present. past, one's people access well

a sense

memory

tradition,

to be able to (after Adorno) hate it properly and to "mobilize its enough own protocols, and interior logic against it" (7). This past procedures, intellectual investment of an order often missing from post requires colonialism A central them because of its "idealist and dehistoricizing (1). scholarship" as Lazarus reads issue for both Marxism and postcolonialism ismodernity. The belated arrival of the tradition of modernity to

390
the noncapitalist, non-Western (third) world

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needs

to be

acknowledged,

for the right reasons.37 Both acknowledgement and and also disavowed, and both are disavowal are crucial for a postcolonial program, proper outside of the universe of modernity" "unthinkable (4). It is important, out of the resolutely Euro-American to prise modernity bias of though, to break Adorno 's identity between modernity and a classic Marxism, subjectivity, specifically European category of imperialism may be
both Western and non-Western

invoked
selves.

so that for postcolonialism the central as a common for experience

Referring to foundational

theorists such as Fanon and Aim? C?saire and writers such postcolonial as Achebe and Salman Rushdie, Lazarus writes: "WTiat is striking about as these the cultural and critical practice of such writers and intellectuals to the 'philosophical discourse of is their simultaneous commitment their extraordinary command of and to its unique modernity' critique, canon existing humanist the European and respect for (or bourgeois) an equally extraordinary (and critical endorse knowledge alongside social projects, and historical of other cultural works, ment) experi on of which cannot be accomplished ences, the necessary consideration canon" soil of the European the provincial (8). For (or bourgeois)
Lazarus there is a double challenge. Marxism challenges postcolonialism,

should not reject postcolonialism (as Aijaz Ahmad outright for the first has done38 ), but rather engage with it on its own grounds was instituted in the early 1980s. time since the field of postcolonialism but Marxists
Lazarus wants to stop rendering modernity and capitalism as purely

Western
neously terized that we

ideas,
declare

to delink
that since

modernity

from Westernization
systemic which

and
and is not

simulta
charac to say

we by unevenness, are all 'modern^'

is universally capitalism are "all modern subjects, or ones" 'Western (25).

Lazarus uses Ranajit Guha (who read universal capital not simply as an that but as predicated inevitable process of expansion upon limitations to break Marx itself could not overcome) (and modernity) away capital from its European locale both as a circumscribed nineteenth-century and as a hyperreal Western (Foucault) sign of an phenomenon "Europe" (Dipesh Chakrabarty), imperative designated epistemopolitical
to make his own complex case for "Marx's paradigmatic insistence on

the formation" of capitalism as an historical (29). Against to in the Grundisse had referred of globalization (Marx proclamations he critiques the the idea of a "world market" as internal to capitalism) is ultimately idea that the "drive towards universalization incapable of itself on its own terms" (44). In his view the current discourse realizing of the Utopian discourses of postmodernism (and by extension a romanticized upon hybridity) simply predicated postcolonialism the globality

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

391
mode
of

misrecognizes
a social We this order can theme agree while

the complex
that capitalism most with remaining

of operation
critique that

of the global
in of its own

and justifies
interest. on immedi

continues Lazarus's

to create

unconvinced

postcolonialism a return to any

an easy solution. Both form of Marxism provides ately recognizable of what the diversity and unpredictability traditions are challenged by condition."39 This is the third term, David Harvey calls the "postmodern to break the impasse to the other two, which not reducible is needed
between a colonizing Marxism and an overelaborated postcolonialism.

Lazarus's them

and postmodernism of poststructuralism phobia leads him to create an absolute binary interchangeably)

(he uses between

of of the Enlightenment the project (and the incomplete project of histories found in contempo and the radical rereading modernity) rary poststructuralist Lyotard, thought. Both Derrida and Jean-Fran?ois
for instance, are mentioned once each, but only in passing.

The Marxist critique needs to be even more

Lazarus. "late To resist the is to

of postcolonialism and the new global order subtle and systematic than it is in the hands of
resolve (in Harvey's "postmodern" issues "in words" only. sense) Yet Lazarus in favor is of right

term

modernity"

cannot even understand that postcolonialism its own object if it dispar of resistance discourses the and, in so doing, denies ages nationalist heroic past.40 That denial has its ground: relevance of the anticolonial and liberationist bourgeois struggles were both elitist and therefore not susceptible
relevant.41 nialism what

to analysis
But, as Lazarus is Marxism

that would
insists, in the

make
true

the marginalized
context struggle of capitalist

subaltern
is to colo moder

liberationist

"historical

nity" (124). To dispense with history in favor of a postcolonial present marked is to miss the by global flows and hybrid identity politics fundamental lesson of Marxist historiography: the past can be redeemed
only through a radical consciousness of it.

That
current

radical
narratives

consciousness
of either

is not
postcolonialism

to be found

by adherence
It will

to the
emerge

or Marxism.

only out of a struggle solely with preserving difference. Only by postcolonialism

accommodate includes

in which doctrines,

postcolonialism maintaining itself

cannot

be concerned establishing tense may to it needs

premodern

contemplating into still continue

a serious

orthodoxy, in the past the future. The past

with those

engagement

instrumentalism (and countermodern) sys excised under the sign of the rational "man" (whose Other tematically was der roheMensch, colonized Into the Marxism we believe is peoples). we need also to to an understanding of postcolonialism foundational factor those life-worlds of spirits, myths, religions, indeed of poetry, that cannot be explained in totally modern but which are nevertheless terms,

tendencies

that

colonial

392
(as sites of a contramodernity) so essential for

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proper

postcolonial

reconstruction.

VIII. The Challenge

of Premodernity

is a key lived experience, Religion arguably one that touches more than most, especially those forms of religion by which subjects define this with remarkable their identity. A book that examines salience and
scholarly verve is the next text in our archive, Gauri Viswanathan's

Outside theFold}2 Awareness of life-worlds, modes of self-expression that are essentially her book. Religion has been permeates premodern, referred to as an instance of the pathological in culture and hence not a critical practice. Cultural as Viswanathan declares early in her theory, to engage with religion it difficult because of cultural book, finds
theory's investment in the secular and materialist (xiv). Even subaltern

the primacy given to the colonial and the studies, which has questioned has on the whole failed to consider belief systems as legitimate modern, modes of cultural self-empowerment and political intervention. in bringing The difficulty back into culture lies in the religion enlightened
latter modernity was a is seen are

state's separation
as primarily out played a in

of the secular and the religious,

personal the secular activity" affair, while the Where in the great domain. very much

where

the
of

passions once religion vanguard

"knowledge-producing

and

of

social and political change, it is now a transcendental absolute with little in the public the needs of the poor value beyond serving, sphere, and homes of shelter. Meals on Wheels through
Although Viswanathan does not make the claim, we want to suggest

as an its symbolic forms) religion (especially essential component of the incomplete project of modernity. Viswanathan to show its worldly isolates a key symbolic aspect of religion, conversion, social and political function. Seen primarily as acts of incorporation into or Islam, for instance), to Christianity centers of power (converts that her book locates
conversion hidden vert" is often read as an aberration agenda converts of most into an fundamentalist earlier religion. in postcolonial movements has Such moves societies. been to again The "recon locate

once

in the realm of collective and uncritical communal systems of religion as the state itself would have it, as a transcendental belief, defining it, to which voluntary form. What these moves fail to address is the degree the level of the individual, but more conversions (at importantly at the
level or of a movement) were gesturing and are intentional inequities acts of aimed race, at symbolically towards, class, correcting, sex and in

culture.

This

shift

(away from forced

conversions

or conversions

for the

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

393
true as it was) forces us to recall not the

sake

of material

advancement,

"statistic" but
Viswanathan

the underlying
historicizes

social and political

"not only as

resonances
a spiritual

of the act.
but also a

conversion

subversion of secular power (3), in a political activity" (xvii), a conscious and effects of the act. of precise historical moments reading The colonial (instrumental enlightenment) project, aimed at creating or non-Hindu Muslims citizens who were non-Muslim Hindus (5) or
even perhaps non-animist animists, was never an achievable goal,

because

were in Britain, where religious minorities incorporated into the state, in India such a process of absorption did not take place in It raises the questions institutions. such spite of the nation's democratic as why religion has not been a matter to be debated and why its role in unlike
the We nation want has to not take been up examined Viswanathan's more critically. reading of a singular case, the

conversion
Ambedkar,

to Buddhism
father of the

of the dalit Indian

Indian constitution.

politician
Viswanathan

Bhimrao
argues,

Ramji
per

suasively
strong

we

think, Henry
to

that Ambedkar's
to the conversion

conversion
to the earlier

to Buddhism
religion

bears
(Catholi

resemblance

cism)
Newman

by John
turned

Newman

in 1845.

In much

the same way

the

that

pre-Reformation

Catholicism

to recover

founda

tional structure of Englishness, Ambedkar turned to an originating moment in Indian history?the of Buddhism?to reclaim a spread cultural identity, not only for dalits but for all Indians (232). redemptive or harijans) are so anomalous The dalits (the untouchables that they Most cultures work from principles of defy any logical explanation.
social exclusion, but the dalit case is exceptional. They are Hindus, yet

outside

the four varnas that make up the legitimate children of the gods; gods, yet cannot enter Hindu they worship Hindu temples; they are Indian citizens with equal voting rights, yet are kept separate even when the Hindu body upon contact; as they gain high office; they contaminate souls they have no hope of salvation and never move out of the abject
cycle. Other castes too marry among their own kind and live

karmic

skills among themselves socially. But they have mobility; entrepreneurial can take them to the top of the Indian commercial The dalits, hierarchy. castes as they are called, remain at the bottom, condemned to scheduled be carriers of the dead and cleaners of latrines. They are the monstrous Other of the Hindu him self, the latter's own "filthy image," reminding of his own disgraceful past and present. a dalit, converted not to Islam or Christianity Ambedkar, (more common so he returned but to Buddhism. In doing his options) self to an earlier religion of the dalits (and Hindus) from corporeal before Brahmanism reestablished itself. Working toward his conversion (he converted just before his death, after some twenty years of critical

394

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and thinking about Buddhism: the conversion itself was a writing on the day with him), of dalits converted collective act, as thousands to add important Buddhist Ambedkar managed (and hence some would into India's key postcolonial icons: the Buddhist argue dalit) motifs cakra on the Indian flag, the use of the lions on the Ashokan dharma and so on. pillar at Sarnath as the national emblem, asks: what is the political payoff here? This Viswanathan
take: "I shall argue that... his conversion was less a

isViswanathan's
of political

rejection

than a rewriting of Such intervention. political terms [a new demographic more so in terms of creating solutions

into a form of not simply in but distinct from Hinduism] constituency a new mythology around which the political (212). For Gandhi (to whom identity of dalits could be mobilized" Ambedkar had said in 1931, "Mahatmaji, I have no country" [219]) the dalit solution lay in their effortless absorption into a seamless Hinduism. in Buddhism Ambedkar found Indian religion of antiquity) the (an these two, so that dalits would be middle between (madhyamaka) path Indian (Christianity and Islam, he felt, were non-Indian simultaneously religious and cultural change an intervention was important Conversion thus offered "an alternative and ethical for a national foundation community" epistemological act that underlined of the importance (213). This was a performative act as a mode of postcolonial the religious intervention. The incomplete is therefore not simply a matter of working within project of modernity and so on) but protocols (legislative, juridical, economic, emancipatory return to the felt-life forms of the subject as also an intentional religions) but constituted ideologies
Viswanathan's

not Hindu.

modes by premodern to extend full political

thesis and Ambedkar's

of belief. rights"
own

It is the failure of "secular (215) that is at the heart of

return to religion.

in general has recognized postcolonialism Wisely, not: the enduring in culture and its value as a mode force of religion into political laws are transformed rights. His through which moral a historical awareness decision encoded (in 1956) that the postcolonial Ambedkar what
project remains incomplete. This complex instance sustains Viswanathan's

a critical discourse of should unlock thesis: the culture of modernity or postcolonialism, belief. Just as we now speak of critical multiculturalism to liberal cultural that is not opposed there should be critical belief a cultural persistence at the level of lived but exemplifies practice
experience.

IX. The
In our attempt

Incomplete
tense, we find

Project
the

of Modernity
as a matter already present

to relocate

postcolonialism

to us

in the past

idea of an

incomplete

project

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

395
Habermas's
want to introduce

valuable.
"Unfinished

Echoing
Project,"43

J?rgen
we

reading
an

of modernity
alternative space

as an
in the

discourses
project. a deferral We

of the project
use of, a the word trace

of modernity
"alternative" or a

in which
here not

to place
in to

the postcolonialist
to, but modernity. as

within

supplement

opposition reason and

Postcolonialism
and from margins,

has been
an

proactive

and radically
from the

anticolonial
of

theory of
silence and

articulation

position

as we take it back in the and we do not put that in question exclusion, out of which grew the great discourses of social and matrix analytic has to be located in a The pastness of postcolonialism political justice. radical rewrite of the project of (Enlightenment) modernity. A key text with which we wish to explore this theme is the final text in our archive, Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe.^ For Chakrabarty of historicism necessitates the rehistoricizing ("the postcolonialism the of the political" secular-institutional [12]) to blast asunder logic and let newer, generally of a (received) historicism, subaltern, grounds or those life-practices historicities surface, replete with postcolonial
forms, had In collected hitherto this been under the consigned a subaltern performative we to what political against call may the that pedagogic,45 a nonrational nativism. albeit modern

argument

consciousness,

manifest features would nevertheless (since it came with colonization), that echo a contramodernity, since it cannot be explained the prior by historicism. A modernity that does not logic that inheres in (European) cleanse itself of the world of demons, spirits, and gods, that seems not to accept the incommensurability us to think through historical
historicism.

processes

of the rational and the mystical, requires hitherto silenced by (colonial)

look at the Pacific island state of Fiji we find a historical process races rather differently of colonization and that indeed that affected not generalist but discrepant In this multiracial narratives. produced nation Indians (Fiji Indians) appropriated Western historicism and the idea of the transcendental modern subject, but native Fijians defined reason (even of the instrumental postcolonial variety) in very different terms. Any history of Fiji will have to address the varying (and exclusive) of the reception of colonial modes ideology by these two races. We can to the not uncommon way of settling disputes among indigenous forgiveness) Fijians. In an early study the R. R. Nayacakalou cited an argument in the Fijian anthropologist columns of the Fijian weekly Volagauna correspondence (literally, "the in 1957-58, in which a man who had absconded times written down") to the Fiji Stevedores with a large sum of money Union belonging a tabua (a whale's avoided being charged because he presented tooth, follow this with reference (or seeking which when ritualistically presented symbolizes to the general meeting and much else besides) a plea for forgiveness, "and asked for forgive

If we

396
ness."46 The presentation of the tabua is discussed

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LITERARY

HISTORY

at

some

length

in

to Nayacakalou's leadership largely because he wished link traditional Fijian practices with Fijian encounters with modernity. the book carries the ethnographic of Raymond methods Firth Although and eschews dialogic narrative and Bronislaw Malinowski in favor of the
single point text when the of view the of writer the anthropologist, as native informant there are many moments the writer in as dominates

book

on Fijian

academic. centrality
instances?the

In one of the
case

of these moments tabua ceremony

of embezzlement

the installation of a chief are discussed in great detail.

of money and the

and

the In both
of

description

the installation
tiated political

of a chief?premodern
reason permeate modern

practices
colonial

insinuating
culture.

a differen
And, again,

this is part of a critical postcolonialism that would see the ritual of tabua a modern as and would (or expression) political mode of empowerment not dismiss it for being In (and hence antimodern). prepolitical a new historicism (which we read as part of the argument Chakrabarty's to rethink attempt postcolonial should be able to accommodate
means accepting an incommensurable

the incomplete project of modernity) even if it this seeming contradiction,

fracture between the pedagogic

The incomplete and the performative. thus is not project of modernity a matter off completely of breaking with a premodern past, but of as a significant and the latter inhere in modernity making empowering trace (for the subject is ignored in the grand narrative of abstract labor in Marx). For the Fiji Indians, as so manifestly observed by Fiji's most astute political activist and thinker, A. D. Patel, the premodern had to be because it inhibited colonial eradicated ideals of individual altogether
ism and democracy and made them instruments of colonial capitalism.

In this reading a contramodernity thus lay with the indigenous Fijians and not with the Indians.47 a This argument needs to be spelled out as a major tension between
dominant narrative, which Chakrabarty calls the universalist narrative of

and a second narrative that arises out of capital (a totalizing category), life-world knowledges. Marx's (nontotalizing) thought, though under the Enlightenment ideals of citizenship, justice, and Hegelian pinned by in his central category of "abstract labour" how historicism, recognized to extract from peoples "the capitalist mode of production managed a homogeneous and histories that were all different and common unit for measuring
capital's

human

activity"
(50)

(50). Chakrabarty
are always in excess

argues
of

that histories
"abstract labour,"

of

"life-processes"

because
capitalism)

the disciplinary
could sub?ate

processes
neither

of the factory
the master-slave

(the symbol
relationship

of classic
nor those

of being human often "acted out in manners expressive not lend themselves to the production of the logic of capital" forms

that do (66).

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

397

in Marx the insinuation, the logic of finds Chakrabarty against abstract labor, of the possibility of multiple ways of being human. These insert into the logic of global capital an alternative, heterogeneous
history. We would therefore suggest that if the "real" must refer to ways

of being that are linked to nonmaterialist modes (the practice then the translation of gods and spirits in our lives, for instance), agency of a multiplicity of work-forms into an abstract category of labor will also of work
carry with it traces of its own prior corporeality.

Even
created, historicism.

orthodox
and are Writes

Marxism
not some

accepts

that the working

labour

classes
in a

had

to be
of

"transcultural" "If real

Chakrabarty:

subject . . . belongs

universalist to a world

heterogeneity
sign 'history,'

whose

various
it can

temporalities
find a place

cannot
in

be enclosed
narrative

in the
of

. . . then

a historical

commodity
be enclosed,

production
an element

only as a Derridean
that constantly

trace of that which

from within

cannot
capital's

challenges

commodity's?and (92-93). universality"

translating, mode of even production as

and

to unity and by implication history's?claims to stress the importance of This leads Chakrabarty
the colonial to another). enterprise Because is the act transitional of translating (from one existing

the family into abstract labor is not unit) or exchangeable transitional is translational), (but unproblematically to the there is a disruption in the historical narrative. With respect we are confronted with of postcolonialism incomplete narrative/project of a mediating the absence may be by which principle oppositions reduced. Abstract labor is the grand mediating category of Marx. The labor (the artisan,
question cultures of that a heterogeneous category mediating arises history is missing. as a because The act of in non-European as distinct barter

from generalized
labor model is offered of by exchange.48

exchange
Chakrabarty

of commodities
radical

mediated
instance

through
of an

abstract

alternative

It is the insightfulness of this analysis which suggests to us (though as does not say this) a crucial limitation in postcolonialism Chakrabarty on what is a core in its field. The phenom deployed seemingly object enon he is looking at does not make sense from the vantage of the after nor even from the colonial. It is an instance of the (post-) colonial, Other alike: forces and processes narratives, equally elided by now needs to be conscious of of difference, those elided, as Chakrabarty says, in questions including the dominant traditions of Marxism (94), and also those elided in the to the dominant traditions of postcolonialism. It should pay attention an ethics and a of the world underpinned "heterotemporality" by In this heterotemporality, the politics acutely aware of this difference. their competing that is required of postcolonialism on outside that continue both. The critical reading and colonialism

398
moment contingent of the and eternal blurred, clash between colonial sense

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

and of

unable

to make

postcolonial or itself

becomes its context.

Postcolonialism
diverse struggles

has taken the idea of multiplicity

that make up subaltern histories,

of archives
themselves

from
a collec

the this the to

to the homogeneity of the dominant narrative. From tive challenge a discourse to construct it has constructed and site from which sublime object of the postcolonial This is an achievement subject.
celebrate, not to minimize or deny. Yet at the same time we need

to be

the bourgeoisie there is critical vigilance, capital and history. Unless or routinized is likely to be incorporated postcolonialism
grand narrative of historicism. Eternal vigilance always

conscious

of

the

immense

resilience

of

in matters

of

of the project back into the

has a price. In

this case,

that price may

now be postcolonialism

itself.

X.
aims were

Conclusion
and as a to

Chakrabarty's

to understand

past

present

guide

the future, demonstrates historical

to work out the "social purpose of criticism."49 He a specific how a form of postcolonialism, organizing an to produce of could continue practice, analytic and

that holds sincerely to its earlier philosophical postcolonialism legacy. In an echo of Kant's original essay ("What Is Enlightenment?"), Chakrabarty in which univer "a deliberative celebrates (after Iris Young) democracy academics play the role of public intellectuals with sity-based humanities
the do aim not of want furthering to say the that causes this double of social aim?to justice be and true democracy."50 to a historical We and

or valuable, not possible, project of postcolonialism?is philosophical in the present or the past where in all the many situations especially to still use similar methods forms of the old combatants recognizable a the same goals. Yet for many who once found postcolonialism pursue
more become to generate or too less comprehensive the tension great, the energy and framework, between insight that the limitations two there. aims now too have acute Chakrabarty's once was

"Postcolonial,"

if no longer a precise is still alive and useful as a metaphor, too rigid, too the system, has become Postcolonialism, description. to remain afloat. its immediate histories and compromises, burdened by the adjective,
This is a dilemma, because clearly "postmodern" globalization incor

porates
injustice, "information

new
even

forms
when generation,

of

colonization
as

(endemic
"informational and

class

exploitation
capitalism," become the

and
where fun

characterized processing

transmission

damental practices,

of productivity deployed by the usual

sources

and power"51 ), which build on past suspects. The serious study of classic

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

399

in its initial and its "other" ("postcolonialism" colonization European if only to in that context, is still an urgent, unfinished project scope)
remind a us that "imperialism camouflage masks to which and the conceals the nature of its system, rationality' structural 'communicational

[Manuel Castells's
has though to resort."52 there were Yet

'informational
to no fold essential new

capitalism']
forms difference of after

of globalization
colonization all, is a into serious

no longer
the old, as mistake,

which
postcolonial

is compounded
as an

by supposing
category,

that all forms

are also

of Otherness,
the same.

the

ahistorical

essentially

us away from postcolonialism, towards A postcolonial critique turns to the his own contribution concludes the words with which Foucault of the present and the debates begun by Kant: a critical interrogation as necessity of "the labor of diverse inquiries."53 This iswhat the archive,
we have presented and read it, demonstrates clearly. The seeds of

postcolonialism always locked contradictions.

moment) in

itself. It was in the project of modernity does not resolve its and globalization into that premise, To relocate postcolonialism (as theory and as historical were sown
the past does not condemn it as an otiose, worn-out mode

that would allow us to of critical endeavour; rather it energizes we have referred to as the incomplete (what keep its critical antecedent intact. It also forces us to rethink the program of project of modernity) it in ways
postcolonialism, an release, to exit, a see way it as Foucault out, a way of saw Kant's considering essay, the as departure, difference a a that

"today modernity,
queathed

introduces deeply
us. If

in respect influenced
postcolonialism

yesterday." that postcolonialism by Marx,

has indeed made us

of

This

is an

attitude has
of

of be
this

aware

fundamental deployed
to understand

then its insights may be readily fact of critical continuity, to honor and used as a platform from which its achievements
other scenes, in other times, in other paradigms.

Murdoch University of Western

University Sydney

NOTES
1 Derrida, The Post Card: From Press, Socrates to Freud and Beyond, 1994), Said, and 438. trans. Alan Bass

Jacques

of Chicago (Chicago: University Edward W. Said, Orientalism 2 348. 3 Said, Orientalism, 4 Said, historical aesthetic 5 A Reader, Orientalism, experience of sharing 349. Great of and often

195. 1987), (1979; New York: Vintage, texts, writes then revitalize What Arnold, re-formulation"

postcolonial colonialism" and transcendent

"the always reappropriate transform it into "a new in Postmodernism:

Immanuel

to the Question: Kant, "An Answer ed. Patricia Waugh Edward (London:

(351). Is Enlightenment?" 1992), 89-95.

400

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

6 7

Michel See

ter cited

Foucault, in text). our earlier Practice

"What Is Enlightenment," Mishra discussion?Vijay 5 (1991): 399-414?where by suggesting and especially

inWaugh, and we that

Postmodernism, "What

96-108

(hereaf

Bob Hodge,

ism?" Textual the genre of

might

of postcoloniality the novel form" a

as well, anticipate, "beneath post-colonial

Is Post(-) colonial about discussions literature lies the of and its 34 it

(404). For contestation laws, see

with engagement thorough of the "very classifications and Peter Hitchcock,

essentially polyphonic reading" as a site for the dissolution postcoloniality divisions that have of Postcoloniality,"

"Bakhtin's

also

"The Genre

and genre produced" New Literary History 158. Robert 2001) may

(2003): 299-330. 8 Terry Eagleton, book Postcolonialism: "secret 9 See handbook."

Verso, (London: 2003), Figures of Dissent An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell,

J. C. Young's be some such

Stuart Hall's interview with Julie Drew in "Cultural Composition: Stuart Hall on and the Discursive in Race, Rhetoric, and thePostcolonial, ed. Gary A. Olson Turn," Ethnicity and Lynn Worsham of New York Press, 1999), 230. The difficulty (Albany: State University as a difficulty, with postcolonialism in colonialism that a itself) means (already present, us. There model of it will elude is also the vast field of comprehensive explanatory in many ways of some of the key the inspiration literature, postcolonial texts of postcolonialism S?dar (essays and books by Frantz Fanon, Leopold Aim? C?saire, Edouard and others Sartre, Albert Memmi, Glissant, Senghor, Jean-Paul were decisive in the creation of a "third-world" of critical difference from the language Francophone theoretical metropolitan 10 Simon do not take up in this essay. regrettably, (New of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism York: 14. Press, 1996), to Virtual Subjects (Chicago: 11 Emily Apter, Continental Drift: From National Characters of Chicago Press, 1999), 5. University Islam and Postcolonial Narrative 12 John Erickson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 25. center) that we, Gikandi, Maps Columbia University 13 Princeton An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton, Naficy, NJ: Press, 2001). University 14 David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 6. 15 Apter, Continental Drift, 5. 16 Webster's Dictionary, and W. Harris MA: G. & C. Mirriam, ed. N. Porter (Springfield, andj. Riddle, A Latin-English Dictionary (London: Longman, Green, 1876), Hamid

1905), 279. 17 J. White 330.

see 18 For an account of this "imperial dictionary," John Willinsky, Empire of Words: The Press, 1994). NJ: Princeton Reign of the OED (Princeton, University 19 Peter Cook, Tragically I Was an Only Twin, ed. William Cook (London: Century, 2002), 136. Slemon, Stephen personal Alex Callinicos, "Wonders mation! (1995): 98. 21 22 Neil Lazarus, Nationalism 20 communication, 20, 2004. January Taken for Signs: Homi Bhabha's Postcolonialism," and Cultural 134. in Practice in the Postcolonial World

Transfor (Cambridge:

173. 1994), of Culture (London: Routledge, and the Margins of the Modern "DissemiNation: Bhabha, Time, Narrative, Nation," Nation and Narration, ed. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 315. The Location 25 Bhabha, of Culture, 172. 24 26 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 177.

Cambridge 23 Homi

University K. Bhabha,

Press, 1999), The Location

WHAT

WAS

POSTCOLONIALISM?

401

cited in text). 64 (hereafter Lazarus, Nationalism, in Colonial Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition," Bhabha, "Remembering and Laura Chrisman Discourse and Post-Colonial (New Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams York: Harvester 122. Wheatsheaf, 1993), trans. Constance The Wretched 29 Fanon, (London: Penguin, Farrington of the Earth, social and (but not premodern) 1990), 194. Fanon, of course, failed to see that precolonial 27 28 cultural practices by did exploitation, it appears, and what, theory too has only latterly postcolonial was in terms of dominance (that is, experienced preeminently of the subaltern and not via hegemony (the winning extraction) ideological for the colonial is, of course, Ranajit 90]. This [Lazarus, Nationalism, enterprise) of economic in the postcolonial have survived colonial times and continue to exist, albeit encumbered Fanon world. What

practices capitalist not foresee, furthermore, is that colonialism grasped, material support Guha's and

without in his essay "Colonialism in South Asia: A Dominance Hegemony point Its Historiography" without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (in Dominance he creatively reworks in which MA: Harvard Press, 1997], 1-99), University [Cambridge, and dominance. of hegemony Antonio Gramsci's concepts 30 Gayatri Vanishing text). 31 For Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique MA: Harvard Present (Cambridge, of Postcolonial University Reason: Press, Toward a History 1999) (hereafter of the cited in

see Mishra's review in of Spivak's Critique of Postcolonial Reason, reading 14 (2000): 412-21. and British India R. Trautmann, and Los Angeles: 32 See Thomas Aryans (Berkeley of the shift from an initial of California Press, 1997) for a fuller examination University to an (Orientalist) Indophobia. Indophilia is foreclosed from the Heart the native, as raw man, 33 In Joseph Conrad's of Darkness, a fuller Textual Practice nature can name since only those who are cooked by culture meaning the and Mr. Kurtz, not with sublime moment resides with Marlow the elliptical "Mistah Kurtz?he dead." natives, who are given 34 Spurr, Rhetoric of Empire, 100. indices of high sublime: aesthetic the 35 the Work Magnus Discussion ofMourning, and Stephen of Homi and theNew Cullenberg Bhabha's The

The State of the Debt, See Derrida, Specters ofMarx: trans. Peggy Kamuf, introduction International, by Bernd 1994). (New York: Routledge, 36 See especially Benita Parry, "Signs of Our Times: A Location of Culture;" Third Text 28/29 (1994): 5-24. The Black 37 Lazarus influential critiques Paul Gilroy's University Press, 1993)?a book about

Atlantic MA: Harvard (Cambridge, as a two formation?on modernity diasporic as in the West, the presumption of modernity first, by placing blacks "internally" grounds: aWestern on ismaintained and not a global phenomenon and, second, by concentrating over world racial collectivities ("[black] Atlanticism system as the preferred [capitalist] of sociohistorical analysis" [62] ), the fundamental completely marginalized by Gilroy. to emphasize of historical the materiality memory so that effects" [64] ) as being fundamental, slavery (for blacks) or is materially constitutive of contemporary black diaspora consciousness?is category Lazarus's of Marxist analysis?class take on diaspora theory is as social ("consciousness bearing or indenture Indian (for Indians) indenture diaspora lived experiences but domination and

unit

a matter in terms of of relating life-worlds sociality. This is not only as of seeing life-worlds of imperialist process part of a systemic being exclusion. 38 39

In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures See Aijaz Ahmad, 1992). (London: Verso, An Enquiry The Condition into the Origins David Harvey, of Postmodernity: of Cultural 1989). Change (Oxford: Blackwell, are cricket and music. at length by Lazarus 40 Two key modes of resistance discussed of course, is a thoroughly the West establishment Cricket, game, and yet C. L. R. James,

402

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

Indian

Marxist

itself was image nuanced

the colonial critic, saw it as the game through which enterprise Cricket lends itself to the logic of the camera obscura, the inverted challenged. so it was through that needs for proper cricket and all its seeing. And correcting cultural

rules and attitudes and the principle of (black and white cricket, moral discipline that kept it a sport apart, and so on) that the aspirations of the federalists losing graciously on the in the West Indies towards a West Indian Federation (an early move Malaysian

were model) (who as captain of the ways in which Gary Sobers kept alive. The distinctive an alternative, test series against England introduced 1967-68 West Indian adventurous, staid mode of English and Clive Rohan Kanhai, cricket), style of play to the hitherto carried this cricketers the game played an is acknowledged by unlikely writer, V. S. The Overcrowded Barracoon See his "Cricket," in V. S. Naipaul, (New York: Vintage, Naipaul. to "Western its lyrics too forcibly declare resistance 17-22. As for popular music, 1984), in such immensely and packaging" successful albums as (218), noticeable homogenization music of the Zimbabwean Graceland Paul Simon's Stella Rambisai (1986). The popular Lloyd's "counter immensely narrative resourceful Indian of liberation." The point Chiweshe is rooted in the tradition of mbira playing African (mbira is a traditional As "world music," African both challenges instrument). pop (such as that of Mory Kante) and dismantles the "ideological of Euro-American parochialism" popular music. 41 Here, of course, Spivak's path-breaking (inWilliams essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been decisive. clear that and Chrisman, Colonial Discourse, 66-111) Spivak's essay makes an "elite nationalism has been, anticolonial (Lazarus, by and large, configuration" from of the everyday counter-colonial struggles of the subaltern. were never fighting and Belief German Peasant factored for his resistance into or a her expression the peasant West

Nationalism, 110) divorced or nonassimilable forms bourgeois immediate 42 43 3-14. 44 Gauri Princeton J?rgen liberationalist

was because ideology as such. nation and not that of the putative needs Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, Viswanathan, cited in text). Press, 1998) (hereafter University Habermas, "Modernity versus Postmodernity," New

(Princeton, 22

NJ:

Critique

(1981):

and Historical Provincializing Thought Difference Chakrabarty, Europe: Political Dipesh cited in text). Princeton Press, 2000) (hereafter (Princeton, NJ: University 45 Chakrabarty, Provindalizing Europe, 10, after Bhabha. Oxford 46 R. R. Nayacakalou, in Fiji (Melbourne: Press, 1975), 103. University Leadership D. Kelly Communities: See John and Martha 47 Represented Fiji and World Kaplan, Decolonization 48 In Fijian kere kere. society, (Chicago: University once again* of Chicago Press, 2001). the act of barter is captured Critical Inquiry in the well-known custom of

49 Chakrabarty, "The Future of Criticism?A Now?" Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 458. 50 51 52 53

Symposium?Where

Is the

"Where Is the Now?" 459. Chakrabarty, Manuel The Rise of theNetwork Sodety (London: Blackwell, Castells, 1996), 21n33. Critical Inquiry 29 (2003): 700. "The End of Temporality," Fredric Jameson, Foucault, "What Is Enlightenment," 108.