Nicholas Thomas', "Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government" (Book Note)

 

 

 

Nicholas Thomas's book, "Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government," challenges the conventional understanding of colonialism as a straightforward political project. Instead, Thomas posits that colonialism is best comprehended as a symbolic, often self-contradictory, cultural enactment. He delves into the various ways in which colonialism manifests and perpetuates itself through representational practices, ranging from missionary biographies to health and sanitation reports to colonial postcards. This approach prompts Thomas to critique recent theoretical perspectives by postcolonial critics such as Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, who conceptualize colonial discourse as a cohesive and unified totality.

 

The introductory chapter questions the utility of contemporary totalizing theories of colonialism. While acknowledging the critical value of overarching terms like "colonialism," Thomas suggests that scholars may benefit more from abandoning the assumption that the term relates to a meaningful category or totality. Instead, he advocates for an exploration of specific colonial projects, rejecting attempts to formulate global theories applicable universally to all colonial contexts. Drawing on Michel Foucault, Thomas argues for a critical approach to colonialism that is both localized and partial, yet rooted in longer historical developments and narrative traditions.

 

In the second chapter, which serves as a comprehensive introduction to recent postcolonial critique, Thomas summarizes the contributions of Said, Spivak, and Bhabha. He contends that considering colonial discourse as a coherent and unified field is problematic. For example, the book challenges the dynamics of Lacanian psychoanalysis, arguing that the prevailing emphasis on Self-Other relations empties these dynamics of their universal validity. Thomas advocates for a nuanced and contextualized understanding of colonialism, moving away from broad generalizations in favor of specific, historically situated analyses.

In subsequent chapters, Thomas delves into different yet contemporaneous colonial contexts. He examines governmental discourse generated during the annexation of Fiji and explores the writings and practices in the Australian Solomon Islands. Thomas meticulously examines how political contingencies shape colonial discourse, emphasizing that distinct colonial projects yield entirely different modes of representation. This divergence, as Thomas argues, challenges attempts to create global descriptions of colonialism, revealing that efforts to homogenize colonial experiences are inherently flawed.

 

Readers interested in understanding how Christian beliefs influence colonial processes and patterns will find Thomas's exploration noteworthy. He highlights that, until quite recently, scholars have seldom questioned the pivotal role missionaries played (and continue to play) in the colonial process. Missionaries, in their efforts to counter local representational practices, have been seen by postcolonial theorists as contributing to a homogenizing force. Thomas challenges this view, suggesting that the religious beliefs and practices of missionaries may differentiate them in certain historical contexts from other members of the colonizing culture.

 

Thomas identifies a "Christian difference" among missionaries in the Western Solomon Islands, characterized by their "incorporative ideology" rooted in the biblical account of the unity of humankind through God's single act of creation. Christian discourses, particularly missionary writings, mark others as pagans rather than savages or members of inferior races. Missionaries' narratives of conversion, crafted for audiences back home, played a crucial role in fundraising and self-legitimation projects. These narratives often contrast the natives' former state of savagery with their present state of supposed high development. Notably, Thomas distinguishes between missionary and secular concepts of "otherness," highlighting that the former's boundaries between pagan and Christian are mutable, whereas the latter often relies on fixed hierarchies of stable racial difference.

Thomas's differentiation of the representations of otherness produced by Christian missionaries should not be misconstrued as a defense of their work. On the contrary, he is meticulous in acknowledging how the prospect of conversion often functioned as a potent tool for legitimating colonial expansion. The crucial point to emphasize is not that missionary modes of depicting otherness were somehow superior to those produced by other colonial writers. Rather, Thomas underscores that these representations were organized by very distinct systems of identifying and classifying differences between colonizers and the colonized. Simple accusations of racism may oversimplify the complex ways in which Christian missionaries conceived of and represented themselves and the people they sought to convert.