In After Colonialism, literary
theory intersects with the more nuanced aspects of the social sciences.
Collectively, the essays illustrate that while some social scientists readily
acknowledge and assimilate the insights and vocabulary of literary criticism,
often labeled as "theory" by its practitioners, literary theorists
seem less inclined to glean lessons from anthropologists or historians.
Presented as explorations of "displacements," most essays reveal a
fundamental tension between the discursive and material dimensions of power.
This tension, or some variant of it, is evident not only in the book's title
but also in its organization into sections—colonialism and the disciplines,
colonialism and cultural difference, colonial discourse and its displacements—and
to varying degrees in several individual essays.
After Colonialism implies a
focus on temporality, yet much of the book, especially Prakash's opening essay,
centers on spaces—albeit of the materially disembodied variety. While
"Imperial histories" suggests narratives of empire or ways of
representing empire, the majority of the essays delve into subaltern histories.
If "postcolonial displacements" seems to allude to a series of
atemporal ruptures rather than substantive or material-discursive shifts, some
essays stand out for their original perspectives, offering analyses of
empirically rich material from previously overlooked yet dense and compelling
"sites" (such as Blusse on Dutch missionaries in seventeenth-century
Formosa, Lockman on labor-Zionists in early twentieth-century Palestine,
Feierman on U.S. university history departments in the 1970s, and Silverblatt
on the cultural construction of "Indians" in seventeenth-century
Peru).
A notable aspect of the book
is the limited exploration of what colonialism truly meant, let alone what it
was, in different parts of the world. Klor de Alva's essay is a rare exception,
delving into a discussion of "(Latin) American experience," albeit
with a largely negative outlook. The reluctance to engage with the essence of
colonialism or postcolonialism across regions may stem from a tendency to view
colonialism primarily as a discourse—a category rather than a dynamic process.
Colonial (and postcolonial) discourse, as depicted in the book, involves the
ordering and reordering of categories, oppositions, and relationships at a
hypostatized level of meaning or signification, divorced from actual fields of
action. Prakash's introduction and Said's essay, in particular, convey a deep
suspicion of History as a mode of representation and a skepticism towards
(Western) disciplines, casting them as mere knowledge/power structures in which
intellectuals are ensnared.
Phillips critiques
early-twentieth-century U.S. anthropologists while simultaneously bolstering
her argument by invoking ethnographic authority— a tactic largely discarded or
reserved for casual conversations by seasoned ethnographers. The reader is
prompted to view the resistance of the colonized as "theoretical events.
The contributors to the book
move beyond simplistic oppositions and dichotomies to explore the intricate and
multifaceted relationships between knowledge and power, as well as between
colonizer and colonized. According to the editor, the volume aims to go beyond
the narrow focus of previous studies on colonialism, which merely documented
its record of domination. Instead, the goal is to unravel the failures,
silences, displacements, and transformations produced by colonialism, and to
highlight the (subaltern) positions and knowledge that could not be properly
recognized and named within colonial discourses. The intent is not only to
chronicle Western dominance and resistances to it but also to identify local
sites of knowledge and agency overlooked by conventional historiography.
Edward Said sets the tone for
the volume by exposing the imperial affiliations and universalizing discourses
inherent in Western academic disciplines such as history, anthropology, and
philology. He underscores how the colonized world is portrayed according to
Western epistemological foundations, reinforcing Europe's "natural"
claims to preeminence. Said delves into the imperialist sentiments embedded in
Western literature, from Shakespeare to Jane Austen, advocating for a
contrapuntal reading of colonialist texts to unveil the interconnected
"structures of attitude and reference" linking culture and
imperialism in the West.
In a complementary critique,
Steven Feierman challenges the universal narrative of world history that has
resulted in constructs like "Africa." He reveals the provincial
nature of tropes framing a world history that is essentially an expanded form
of European history. Feierman argues that diverse and culturally specific
narratives of African pasts defy the hegemonic criteria shaping the concept of
civilization. Rejecting the reduction of African history against master
historical narratives rooted in European perspectives, Feierman advocates
transcending an understanding of history that originates solely in Europe. The
book, in my view, achieves this goal with remarkable success.
Joan Dayan's essay on the 1804
slave revolution in Haiti, which resulted in the establishment of the world's
first black republic, addresses the practice of history. Seeking to move beyond
the extremes of idealization and debasement found in French historiography,
Dayan advocates for a different approach to history—one drawn from local
legends and somewhat blurred but still-remembered oral traditions of the
revolution. This alternative history, featuring prominently the practices and
beliefs of vodou, highlights the ambiguity of power and the ambivalences
inherent in revolution. Dayan contends that revolution is rarely as complete as
mythologizers and ideologues portray it. A vodou history of the 1804
revolution, incorporating unwritten narratives, fosters an understanding of how
inventions of the mind and memory dismantle the illusion of a final, singular,
and uncontested master narrative.
After Colonialism also delves
into the examination of the multifaceted dimensions of encounters between
colonizers and the colonized. While advocates and critics of colonialism often
uphold distinct distinctions between exploiter and exploited, this penchant for
oppositional clarity oversimplifies the complex, improvisational dynamics in
colonial settings. Ruth B Phillips argues that formal programs of collecting
and exhibiting in North American museums, driven by ethnographic authenticity,
excluded Native American art explicitly produced for sale to tourists.
Neglecting to acknowledge art forms reflecting local negotiations with Western
systems of art, economics, and aesthetics reinforces representations of Native
Americans as other, marginalized, and premodern.
Shifting focus to the
encounter between colonialism and the broader issue of cultural difference, a
set of essays, including those by Anthony Pagden, explores European conceptions
of nationalism and their impact on effacing difference. Pagden examines how
Denis Diderot and Johann Herder approached the idea of nationhood and cultural
difference. Diderot's optimism envisioned migration and commerce leading to the
creation of new national communities based on shared values and experiences,
but colonialism disrupted this utopian vision. In contrast, Herder viewed
cultures as fundamentally incommensurable, seeing nationhood as the product of
centuries of accumulated cultural habits reinforcing distance and difference.
Pagden contends that the contemporary world continues to grapple unsuccessfully
with these two opposing and equally unsatisfying nationalist perspectives on
cultural difference.
Differences, divisions, and
internal competition were inherent within various colonizing projects,
challenging the perception of colonialism as a seamless endeavor. Leonard
Blussé's account of the interaction between the Dutch colonial administration
and the Protestant mission in seventeenth-century Formosa challenges the notion
of colonialism's inherent coherence. In Formosa, the Dutch Protestant mission,
particularly assertive compared to other mission fields, actively supported the
colonial administration's extension of jurisdiction into heathen areas,
initially facilitating the expansion of mission efforts. However, the
compatibility of these projects proved temporary. Faced with the slaughter of
Dutch citizens on the nearby island of Lamey, the colonial administration, to
the unwritten dismay of its missionary allies, shifted from supporting the
indigenization of the gospel to a program of violence and coercion. This
revealed the ultimate incompatibility, at least in seventeenth-century Formosa,
of empire and Christianity.
Colonial regimes also grappled
with ordering that which resisted easy categorization, yielding confounding and
sometimes tragic outcomes. Gauri Viswanathan's contribution details how the
acceptance of Christianity in colonial India resulted in civil death for
converts, who were no longer recognized under Hindu scriptural law as
functioning members of their former communities. British colonial policy in
India, complex and often contradictory, reflected liberal humanism's
secularization of religious experience, privatizing belief and subordinating it
to reason, logic, and the law—a discourse that encountered resistance in
colonized environments. Colonial courts, for administrative purposes,
disregarded the social consequences of religious change experienced by converts
and the efforts by established religious communities in India to enforce the
banishment of these outcasts. The converts found themselves in liminal spaces,
unwanted by their former communities and unprotected by colonial law.
Similarly, Zachary Lockman
explores how Zionist discourse in Palestine, despite using the language of
socialism, class struggle, and working-class solidarity, ultimately depicted
Arab workers as shadows on an essentially unoccupied land. This portrayal
denied them the characteristics of a nation and, consequently, the right to
self-determination, while also rendering them susceptible to the
anticolonialist activities of "outside agitators." Like other
subordinated peoples, Palestinians were rendered invisible or marginal in the
discourses and historical narratives of the powerful. However, their presence,
always there, had a constitutive, though denied, influence on the development
of Zionism between 1897 and 1927.
Although the concept of
colonialism holds centrality in both modern and postmodern worlds, this volume
subjects it to critical, discursive, and historically contingent analyses. De Alva,
in particular, scrutinizes the indiscriminate application of the term
colonialism, arguing that it lacks relevance when applied to peoples in the
core areas of Central and South America. For these communities, regional,
relatively autonomous sociopolitical, and cultural units created by the growing
mestizo/criollo worlds offered more immediately relevant orderings of
experience. De Alva contends that decolonization cannot be said to have
occurred in these areas as it did elsewhere globally due to the formation of an
elite ruling class resulting from distinctive racial and ethnic mixings among
colonialists, Africans, and indigenous peoples. The anthropologist from
Princeton urges readers to recognize the historical particulars informing
contemporary notions of identity, including the emergence of nativist
ideologies discriminating against true natives. Like Spivak, de Alva shares a
concern for identities of strategic essentialism that overlook historical
differences and varieties of oppression in favor of common agendas against an
assumed, globally uniform style of colonialism.
The third and final set of
contributions in After Colonialism delves into the fault lines of knowledge
across colonized landscapes. Irene Silverblatt examines the perceived
advantages that led ethnically distinct Andean groups in seventeenth-century
Peru to identify themselves as Indians—a decidedly pejorative social category
bequeathed by the Spanish colonial administration. Despite being marred by colonial
constraints and prejudices, the term "Indian" articulated Andeans'
experiences as colonized people. The deliberate use of the term, along with the
historical memories it evoked, gave rise to indianism—an ideology transcending
ethnic borders, forming alliances across gender and privilege boundaries, and
challenging colonial truths. This indianism embodied a resurgent nativism that
spoke of self and possibility but existed in an intricate dynamic with the
compromising practices of Spanish hegemony. As Silverblatt notes,
"Indianism's simultaneous embrace and rejection of the colonial order
charted courses of possibility for the years to come".
In the concluding essays by
Emily Apter and Homi Bhabha, the advocacy for alternative forms of knowledge
and agency is emphasized, stemming from the dysfunctioning of colonial
discourse. Apter focuses on the work of Elissa Rhaïs, a popular Algerian
novelist from the 1920s, illustrating how persistent reproduction of Oriental
fictions and stereotypes of North African women impacted and was influenced by
French feminism. This interplay resulted in diverse representations of Muslim
life competing in claims to authenticity and advocating for a common feminism
addressing the situations of North African and French women. The clash of these
colonial realisms undermined confidence in a transcendent, irreproachable
representation of colonial reality, creating space for other visions of
identity and agency. Apter concludes by advocating for a new historiography of
literary history that acknowledges the parodic, provisional, and historically
contextual nature of narratives.
In his essay revisiting
prominent themes, Bhabha identifies space for subaltern agency within the
ambivalent functioning of history and anthropology, particularly as outlined in
Foucault's The Order of Things, and in the events surrounding the 1857 mutiny
of local colonial troops in India. Bhabha highlights the uncertain interstitial
spaces of history and anthropology when applied to the 1857 mutiny, emphasizing
the role of rumors in the uprising. What emerges is a form of agency that is
partial, contingent, and ambivalent, encouraging new histories beyond the
confines of colonial fears, fantasies, and desires. Both Bhabha and Prakash
express the hope that After Colonialism will inspire further exploration of the
fissures, uncertainties, and contradictions in colonial discourse. This, they
believe, will not only raise awareness of the humanity and agency of the
subaltern, the exploited, the colonized, and the forgotten but also contribute
to a broader understanding of the complex dynamics at play in postcolonial
contexts.
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