Topic outline
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Definitions
Imperialism—the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies, the advocacy of imperial interests, the policy of so uniting the separate parts of an empire with separate governments as to secure for certain purposes a single state (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Colonialism—the policy of a nation seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people's or territories (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
The orient—the East, comprising the countries to the east (and south-east) of the Mediterranean (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Oriental—of or pertaining to, or characteristic of the Orient or East (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Orientalism—the character or characteristics of oriental people, the knowledge and study of oriental languages, literature, etc (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Neo-colonialism—the control, especially political, by a powerful nation of a smaller one which is technically independent (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Metropolis—a central or principle point, as of some activity, the mother city or parent state of an ancient Greek or other colony (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Subaltern—having an inferior or subordinate position or rank; subordinate (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Modernity—the quality of being modern; of or pertaining to present and recent time; not ancient or remote (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Hybrid—derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of elements of different or incongruous kind (The Macquarie Dictionary 1991).
Introduction
This topic looks at three of the most well known and influential postcolonial theorists. Postcolonial thought is a critique of the cultural legacy of colonialism taking as its central themes issues of race, nation, empire, migration and ethnicity. Postcolonial theory explores the relations of domination and subordination between and within nations, cultures or races as a result of the history of modern European colonialism and imperialism. Postcolonial thought has influenced a wide range of disciplinary fields including literary studies, history, sociology, feminist criticism, art history, anthropology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and international relations.
Although post colonial theory does not involve a distinctive methodology, it is useful to discuss in this series because of its widespread use across social science and humanities disciplines. Like Foucault and Derrida, post colonial thinkers offer a critique of Western knowledge making practices, in this case of specific European ways of knowing non-European nations, ethnicities and races. Edward Said argued that European knowledge of non-European countries tells us little about the nature of those countries and their people, reducing them to a subordinated and inferior reflection of an idealised version of the West. Spivak argues that there is no authentic colonial subject, rather colonised subjectivity and culture exist on a continuum with colonial discourse and practices. Bhabha explores the implications of Western post colonial discourse for Western colonial subjectivity, pointing to its inherent instability and the ongoing domination and racism arising from this. For Bhabha, this can be addressed by telling the histories of cultural groups in ways which avoid dichotomous oppositions, and which reject understandings of race, ethnicity and nation as comprised of fixed, essential differences.
Edward Said (1935–2003)
From Moore-Gilbert, B. 1997, Postcolonial theory: Contexts, practices and politics, Verso, London, chapter 2.
Post colonial scholars regularly express an indebtedness to the work of Edward Said, who was born in Jerusalem in Palestine to Protestant parents, and later became a Professor of English at Columbia University. Said was interested in the relations between Western systems of cultural description and Western material and political power. His work was influenced by Foucault and Gramsci and involved an extensive analysis of mostly eighteenth century Western scholars and writers employed as imperial administrators or advisers on the basis of their 'expert' knowledge of the Orient and Orientals. Said analysed literature, political tracts, popular press, travel writing, and religious and philological texts in relation to British and French imperialism, the neo-colonial aspirations of the contemporary United States, as well as classical conflicts between Athens and Persia.
Key tenets of Said's theory of Orientalism:
- There is no pure or disinterested knowledge of the Orient which is not complicit with colonial and neo-colonial expansionism.
- Humanities knowledge is not pure or disinterested, but is implicated in the operation of power.
- Western systems of knowledge have been involved in the subordination of the non Western world from classical times to the present.
- The term 'Orientalism', which was first used to describe enthusiasts of Indian culture and learning, can be used to refer to the discourse that mediates the relationship between the East and the West.
- However, notwithstanding expressions of sympathy with Eastern culture, all Western discourse about the East reflects the dominating impulse of the West over the Orient.
- Orientalism produces the East as an inferior 'other' of the West.
- This helps to sustain the West's self-image as a superior civilisation.
- This is achieved by producing a set of essential, dichotomous characteristics to identify the difference between the East and the West.
- Typically Orientalism characterises the East as feminine, sensual, despotic, irrational, backward and voiceless, while the West is seen as masculine, rational, progressive, democratic, dynamic and moral.
- Sometimes the East is characterised in more positive terms, for instance, as spiritual and stable, but these representations nevertheless reflect Western projections onto an Oriental other.
- Orientalism includes not only representations of the East by the West, but also a certain 'style' or political position and moral attitude, as well as the material structures and processes (military, political and economic) which have enabled the domination of the East by the West.
- Each of these three aspects of representation, style and material structure, reinforces the others. For example, military conquest opens up territory for study, such study then supports the extension of colonial or neo-colonial rule by providing knowledge about the customs of Eastern peoples, which then forms the basis for administrative and policy interventions. Representations of the East in the metropolis then work to support interventions.
By the 1980s critics began to seriously question some of the central tenets of Orientalism. In his later work, Said himself reconsidered his original thesis.
Critical debate about Orientalism revolves around a number of observed contradictions, ambiguities and omissions in Said's early work:
- It is not always clear within Said's writing whether the Orient is an imagined space, or whether the West has misrepresented a 'real' Orient which existed prior to Western invasion and representation. If it is the latter, the implication is that false or ideological knowledge of the Orient needs to be replaced with 'real' knowledge of the Orient. But Said claims that 'pure' knowledge of the Orient is not possible. Said claims that it is not possible to stand outside the discursive field under analysis, yet his work claims to provide a 'faithful' reading of Western Oriental practice. Said justifies this claim by arguing that, as an exile (of Palestine), he brings the necessary 'lived experience' or occupies a 'sensitive nodal point'. This contradicts earlier anti-humanist statements about critics being unable to speak outside the text.
- There is also uncertainty about the relationship between what Said refers to as the 'latent' or 'deep structure' of an Oriental discourse or text, and the 'manifest' or 'surface detail'. The first refers to the will to power that remains constant within Orientalism, the second to changeable elements to do with the individual writer, discipline, cultural work or national context of writing. The degree to which the former is thought to determine the latter is unclear, giving rise to problems of interpretation. Are texts to be read for their expression of an Oriental will, or should they be read to ascertain the extent to which the unique aspects of the text and the writer override the Oriental will to power?
- There is also a tendency within Said's work to homogenise different kinds of Oriental narrative and to represent Orientalism as continuous, underplaying important historical and cultural differences and discontinuities between nations.
- There is a lack of explanation of the emergence and transformation of Orientalism over time. There is little sense of struggle, as though Orientalism was simply always there. Orientalism then comes to seem like an inevitable and 'natural' way of thinking about the East.
- All Western observations about the East are seen as necessarily racist, imperialist and ethnocentric, and it is not deemed possible for a European to be sympathetic towards, or knowledgeable about, the experience of those in the East. It is assumed that the West has never been able to think about the East, despite its various negotiations with different places, in anything other than absolute terms. Said suggests that all power lies with the coloniser, and represents the subaltern as passive, silent and unable to resist. He pays little attention to subaltern counter discourse thus replicating Oriental discourse itself.
- Little attention is paid to gender.
In his later work Said:
- abandons the attempt to provide a universal or systematic thesis or explanation, and is more sensitive to context;
- pays more attention to subaltern counter discourse;
- moves away from the view that the future between the West and the non-West will inevitably be divisive and conflictual, and entertains the possibility of interdependent and overlapping histories, cultures and economies;
- posits a 'common' global culture as a result of a shared history of colonialism and imperialism.
Gayatri Spivak (b.1942)
From Moore-Gilbert, B. 1997, Postcolonial theory: Contexts, practices and politics, Verso, London, chapter 3.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is considered a founding scholar of post colonial theory. Her best known text is 'Can the subaltern speak'. She is also well known for her translation of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. Spivak was born in Calcutta, India to a middle class family, was educated in India and the US. Spivak currently holds a post at Columbia University.
Unlike Said, Spivak:
- prefers Derrida over Foucault;
- is influenced by deconstruction;
- chooses counter-colonial discourse rather than colonial discourse as her object of analysis;
- insists upon the heterogeneity of postcolonial cultures and forms of Orientalism;
- attends to conflict and difference within migrant experience and among postcolonial subjects;
- pays specific attention to the 'female (sexed) subject';
- sees negative and positive effects of Western domination, rather than continuous oppression and exploitation;
- is interested in bringing non-Western texts into the Western academy without defusing their challenge to existing canons;
- acknowledges the ambiguity of her own position as privileged Western-based critic of neo-colonialism;
- utilises classical or orthodox elements of Marxism, rather than cultural Marxism.
Key tenets of Spivak's thought:
- There is no essential identity tied to origins or sense of belonging.
- It is not the case, as the 'nativist' view holds, that only local knowledge and theory applies in post colonised contexts.
- There is no 'pure' or 'authentic' subaltern consciousness or identity.
- To assume so is to ignore the violent history which has constituted the post colonial subject.
- For example, 'Indian' and 'Asian' are products of colonial discourse and have material histories which cannot be ignored.
- Colonial discourses and practices construct the subaltern subject position as a social category.
- Nostalgia for the 'authentic' Third World subject stems from a Western consumerist tradition which values 'purity', 'authenticity' and 'genuineness'.
- It is not only the post colonial subject who can address the post colonial subject. (To assume so is reverse ethnocentrism).
- For example, it makes no sense for Third World women to reject feminism on the grounds that it is a Western movement.
- Although it is true that the postcolonial subject is too often spoken for, this is not to say they possess the privileged insight into their own condition.
- 'Elite' Western theory is useful in analysing postcolonial and subaltern material.
- In a similar way, the argument of some 'progressive' Westerners that they should not address questions concerning the post colonial subject makes little sense serving only to reinforce the status quo.
- At the same time, the idea of a 'pure' subaltern consciousness is often a necessary theoretical fiction which can operate strategically to question dominant colonial discourse.
- Nevertheless, despite its strategic usefulness, such constructs must remain 'under erasure' and not be taken as universal truths.
- 'Progressive' Western representations of 'authentic' subaltern experience is a gesture continuous with the colonial tradition of constructing subaltern identities.
- For example, the British assumed the prerogative to speak on behalf of oppressed women in India (with references to practices such as sati) in order to justify their domination as 'modernising', 'civilising' and 'liberating'. That is, Indian women were represented by the British as calling upon the British to liberate them.
- The same critique can be levelled at Western feminism whose claim to speak on behalf of the subaltern woman reflects a self-interested and self-obsessed desire to define itself, and carve out a citizenship role in benevolent opposition to a homogenised subaltern other. This can clearly be seen in Kristeva's (1977) article About Chinese Women, and the celebrated feminist novel Jane Eyre.
- It is better to allow the subaltern to remain an 'inaccessible blankness' which can then reveal the character and limits of Western knowledge.
Homi Bhabha (b. 1945)
From Moore-Gilbert, B. 1997, Postcolonial theory: Contexts, practices and politics, Verso, London, chapter 4.
Like Spivak, Bhabha also addresses criticisms of Said's work and is primarily interested in the Indian context. However, unlike Spivak, Bhabha is influenced by Freud and Lacanian revisions of Freud and their implications for questions of identity and the unconscious. Bhabha is also influenced by Derrida and Foucault.
Unlike Said, Bhabha, in the first phase of his work:
- is not interested in either critiquing colonial definitions of the subaltern, or of offering more positive representations;
- is interested in the 'psychic economy' of stereotyping and colonial identity;
- investigates the commonalities and negotiations between colonisers and the colonised;
- questions the distinctiveness and stability of coloniser, colonised identities;
- asserts the contradictions and anxiety within coloniser discourse (rather than seeing it as consistent and always confident).
In the second phase of his work Bhabba:
- is interested in the effects of post colonial history and inherited thought about race, nation and ethnicity for migrant relations, struggle and resistance in contemporary culture;
- turns his attention to the condition of the postcolonial migrant in the Western metropolis;
- offers re readings of the condition of modernity through a post colonial lens.
Key tenets of Bhabha's thought on colonial identity:
- (Neo-)colonial psychic relations are conflictual and ambivalent.
- (Neo-)colonial stereotypes about the colonial other do not offer a secure point of identification for the representing group.
- Analysis of the regime of stereotypes suggests not a secure, stable sense of identity, but a fractured, destabilised, contradictory response to the colonised Other.
- This insecurity is demonstrable in the endless recirculation of stereotypes about what is supposedly already firmly established.
- The insecurity demonstrated in the need to continually re-assert the stereotype is born of a 'lack' in the psyche of the coloniser.
- This 'lack' is evident in the identification with something one is not, and with something that is always potentially confrontational ('the wily Oriental', the 'untrustworthy servant').
- The stereotype is like a fetish, it stands for something apparently 'real', and is the means by which conflicted feelings can be expressed.
- The ambivalence of the coloniser can be seen in the contradiction between representations of the colonial other as at once completely knowable, and yet beyond knowledge, and as manipulative, lying, worldly, and yet innocent, mystical, child like, and primitive.
- A process of mimicry is at work within the colonisation experience in which the coloniser requires the colonised to adopt the values and habits of the coloniser's culture.
- While this is a more effective means of domination than brute force, it also contains an inherent instability. On the one hand colonial discourse insists that the colonised be reformed by the superior and benevolent guidance of the coloniser, but on the other hand it insists upon an elemental difference between the coloniser and the colonised (in which the latter is inferior).
- In these circumstances the image in the mirror that mimicry produces of the coloniser is a refracted or distorted one – similar, but not quite the same, producing an unstable sense of identity.
- The coloniser's identity, 'Englishness' depends upon, or is an effect of, what it is not. Knowing oneself as English depends upon contact with alien cultures. Hence, there is a lack at the centre of coloniser identity.
Key tenets of Bhabha's thought on modernity:
- Modernity is not complete and has not been replaced by post modernity as arguably witnessed in the global spread of social democracy and Western economic models (as some post modernists—for example, Rorty and Fukuyama—assert).
- Migrant and displaced peoples are still not given equal legal and cultural status.
- The role of the non-West in the achievements of modernity, often via slavery and colonial exploitation, has still not been fully recognised.
- This is also true in the cultural or ideological sphere where the 'other' enables modern ideals of progress, reason, and the nation by standing in as their apparent opposite—as pre-modern, irrational, outside history, primitive, barbaric, not fully human.
- Racism is not a throw back from the time before nationhood (as Foucault thought). Rather the modern disposition feeds racism and domination.
- It is important to tell the repressed histories of the colonised.
- But these histories should not be told in order to complete modernity and to arrive at a more rational and progressive place (as for Habermas or within liberalism).
- There is always the danger that modernist imaginaries about 'the triumph of the proletariat', the 'family of man' and the 'end of history' will simply subsume subaltern histories.
- The multiple histories and identities of the marginalised must continue to be recognised.
- Mainstream versions of multiculturalism, which hold that plural identities can share the same geographical and cultural space, suppress challenges posed to the dominant culture by cultural difference. Multiculturalism, in other words, posits the view that cultures blend together and come together in one final voice, when in fact one culture continues to dominate the others, and does so in the name of 'consensus'.
- Meaning does not cross transparently between cultures. Things like 'aging', 'mothering' and 'the family' mean different things within different symbolic, narrative and language systems.
- The point however is not to reverse the order of privilege by valuing the other. This does not displace Western racism.
- Nor are relations between the 'foreign' element and the dominant culture always antagonistic. We should not replace the 'family of man' view promoted within multiculturalism with a view of cultures as necessarily confrontational, irreducible, and particular.
- What is needed is a fragmenting of the original or dominant culture by demonstrating how an apparently 'foreign' element links different groups and cultures in a constantly shifting social landscape.
- The relations between cultures can be conceptualised, or rather not conceptualised, in the new terms of 'indeterminism', 'difference', 'the third space', the 'in-between' and 'hybridity'. That is, instead of thinking about relations between cultures, we need to reject notions of fixed differences between groups either within or between nations.
- All cultures are mixed, hybrid and 'impure'.
References
Moore-Gilbert, B. 1997, Postcolonial theory: Contexts, practices and politics, Verso, London.
This web resource was developed by Wendy Bastalich.
