Iain Chambers & Lidia Curti (eds.) "The Post-Colonial Question" (Book Note)

 

The essays compiled in "The Post-Colonial Question" collectively delve into the intricate interplay between culture, politics, and theory. The title itself signals a deep engagement with the multifaceted dimensions of the "postcolonial." The editors acknowledge that there have been previous examinations of the term, its historical underpinnings, and its adequacy as a conceptual framework. This volume, however, promises fresh and "recombinant" explorations of postcolonialism, encapsulated in its subtitle: "Common Skies, Divided Horizons." Regrettably, the robust contestation evoked by this union—amidst what the editors aptly describe as the "urgent clamor" stemming from phenomena like famine, poverty, genocide, migration, fervent religious sentiments, and nationalist identities—largely remains unaddressed, even overshadowed. Consequently, the essential question at the heart of "The Post-Colonial Question" remains largely unarticulated.

 

One reason for this collective hesitancy to confront the disruptions inherent in postcoloniality stems from the inherent constraints of converting conference proceedings into edited collections. This particular volume emerged from a conference held in Naples in May 1993, embodying the challenges of generating entirely novel or systematically developed insights under such circumstances. Beyond this structural challenge, the essays reveal blind spots characteristic of the discursivist and idealist inclinations prevalent in much pre-established postcolonial criticism.

 

In formulating this assessment, I draw inspiration, albeit somewhat paradoxically, from Stuart Hall—a figure of immense influence in cultural studies, whose intellectual presence has profoundly shaped minority discourse within and beyond the academic realm. Over nearly three decades of critical scholarship, Hall has offered invaluable theoretical perspectives while maintaining a vigilant eye on what the Frankfurt School once referred to as "critique." Nevertheless, his recent stances on postcolonialism have grappled with a departure from the potent critical traditions that previously informed his work. In his essay "When Was 'The Post-Colonial'? Thinking at the Limit," included in this collection, Hall scrutinizes the historical, political, and epistemological dimensions of the term "postcolonial" by juxtaposing diverse critiques of its usage. Serving as a metacritique, Hall's essay scrutinizes how scholars such as Anne McClintock, Ella Shohat, and Peter Hulme have conceptualized the politics of postcolonialism, especially in their impact on disciplinary studies in the American academic sphere.

 

While Hall aligns himself with the broadly "poststructuralist" and "postfoundationalist" impulses guiding what he deems as the most astute endeavors to understand the postcolonial as a particular type of "limit" concept, he acknowledges in the latter part of his essay that, despite the intricacies and crises explored, there remains a conspicuous absence in the literature—a serious consideration of the "relationship between postcolonialism and global capitalism." This significant gap, as Hall contends, has become "seriously damaging and disabling for everything positive which the post-colonial paradigm can, and has the ambition to, accomplish" . However, this acknowledgment on Hall's part is somewhat reluctant, and one of the most pivotal opportunities overlooked in this very collection pertains to the omission of what could be termed "materialist" analyses of postcolonial cultural expressions and practices.

 

 

 

Two notable exceptions to this trend are Catherine Hall's essay "Histories, Empires, and the Post-Colonial Moment" and Paul Gilroy's "Route Work: The Black Atlantic and the Politics of Exile". Even in these more historically attuned discussions, one must ask: do the politics of exile, post-imperial Britain, and postcolonialism primarily revolve around identity? While it's undeniable that ideologies regarding the reshaping of identity are pivotal in constituting the postcolonial, they must surely be considered within the broader context of material forces. To push this a bit further, are we now in a realm where consciousness dictates existence? If so, have we transcended any determining link between global capitalism and postcolonialism? In that case, the limit, as Hall delineates it, may no longer be a significant concern. For those who remain skeptical about the assertion that "globalization" signifies the eclipse of the state-mediated aspects of capital (and the consequent assumption that, therefore, the narrative of postcolonialism revolves around the disruptions and upheavals of modernity without the blunt mechanisms of the capital-labor dynamic on a global scale), this book may prove unsatisfactory.

 

At the core of what seems to be an increasingly enigmatic perception of "third spaces" within both colonial centers and former colonies—where the "asymmetrical" and "heterotopic" coordinates of hybridized postcolonial subjectivities are located lies an age-old contradiction: namely, that the "epistemic violence" of colonialism was a means and justification for the appropriation of surplus, in other words, economic exploitation. Any substantial exploration of colonial modernity (which, after all, imbues meaning in the postcolonial) must grapple with this enduring tendency, as Marx astutely theorized, of capital to present itself as the universal form for social processes of valorization and value extraction. This contrasts with Lawrence Grossberg's essay in the volume, "The Space of Culture, the Power of Space," where he somewhat perplexingly contends that "the new order of globalization is built upon an ecumenical abstract machine" where "what is to be produced is no longer the form of value (capital) but its substance (money)..." At the close of the (postcolonial) day, one may wonder if the sun that set on the empire now rises on a horizon whose divisions appear in anything other than semantic form.