28 Post Colonialism

Rajnikant Pandey

Contents

Introduction

1. Postcolonialism: Definition

1.1 Edward W. Said

1.2 Homi K. Bhabha

1.3 Gaytri Chakrvarti Spivak

2. Subaltern Studies Group

3. Anthropology And Its Colonial/Postcolonial Encounter

Summary

LEARNING OUTCOME

In this module we will briefly discuss

the emergence of postcolonial thinking
establishment of Postcolonial studies as a separate discipline
the origin of postcolonial ideas and how it has influenced the anthropological inquiries
the importance of postcolonial theory in ethnographic studies in present time.

INTRODUCTION

Anthropology, more than any other of the Western academic disciplines, has been the target of criticism from postcolonial thinkers. This is because of overlapping trajectories of colonization and anthropological practices in the different part of the world. The theory questioned the intellectual authority of Europeans to define the native and to represent their culture.

1. POSTCOLONIALISM: DEFINITION

The postcolonial can simply mean after colonialism. However, what should be called postcolonial has become a contested idea. The colonialism refers to physical occupation of one land by people associated with another place. This involves settlement of colonies and agriculture and industry building etc. The term imperialism is used to refer to removal of resources and wealth of any area without actual settlement.

Scholar have argued that there could be two way of writing postcolonialism differentiated by the use of hyphen. Post-colonialism with a hyphen refers to a temporal aftermath: that is a period of time after colonialialism and postcolonialism without hyphen refers to a critical aftermath: critique of colonialism that lie beyond but remain closely influenced by colonialism. The critical aftermath which directs its attention towards understanding of contestation of colonial domination and legacies of colonialism is most important goal of postcolonial thinking.

2. POSTCOLONIALISM: BEGINNING

The postcolonialism can trace its beginning in the movements against colonial empires; the leaders who were the fountainhead against these movements shaped the discourse of anti-empire sentiment and language of resistance. The Algerian national Franz Fanon was most important among them and he is widely regarded as the founding stone of postcolonial thinking in west.

Franz Fanon was born in a French colony in Caribbean called Martinique. He was trained in psychiatry and medicine in France at University of Lyon. He chose to pursue his career as psychiatrist in Algeria another French Colony in Africa. There he started participating in Algerian war of independence lead by Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and resigned from his medical position. He started writing for the FLN and editing their journal EL Moujahid.Fanon himself experienced the colonial might and resisted it throughout his life. He applied his training in psychopathology for the analysis of colonialism. He was influenced with the dialectic materialism of Marx and Hegel and used it for understanding of colonial dominants on local people.

He wrote Black Skin White Mask to explore the experiences of black people in French colonies; in Caribbean, in France and in conflict ridden Algeria. He examines the role of racial features in shaping of life of people in colonies. He has experienced the exploitation and suffering of black race that live with a sense of inferiority in colonies. He discusses the attempt of black native elites to internalize the colonial norms and values and failure to change the skin colour which is black. The native surrenders to the will of white masters and only way to emancipate them were to hide behind white mask as their skin cannot be white. The black elites have to wear white mask to get recognition from outside or sometimes even from themselves as peer social groups in colonies. His work brings in the dialectical and psychological dimension of making of black people as ‘negro’ and as ‘others’ and its traumatizing effects on the human psyche. He proposes for the unmasking of black men and women from white ideology and constructing their own identity– free from white norms and values as the primary way of emancipation.

His other important works like Dying Colonialism and Wretched of the Earth are call for decolonization and are situated within his moral commitment to bring equal rights and recognition to every human being. In Dying Colonialism he describes the Algerian revolutionary movements and tactics deployed by Algerians against the colonizers. In Wretched of the Earth he recommends the revolutionary path decolonizing nation must take to rid themselves of colonizers. He believes in the participation of local masses in black revolution against colonizers and use of violence in decolonization process. His agenda of violence is about throwing it back to the colonizers who have used violence for colonization.

The writings of Fanon anticipate several of ideas which are central to postcolonial thinking today. Several other scholars in academics like Aime Cesires and Albert Memmi were also writing and reflecting upon the colonizer and colonized realties of the days before the emergence of postcolonialism in academics in 1980s.

Mahatma Gandhi who was negotiating freedom from colonial regime in Indian subcontinent wrote Hind Swaraj (1909) which can be taken as one of the earliest critic of colonial power. It is very important declaration of self-rule and rejection of western centric notion of civilization. It emphasizes the virtue of Indian tradition and rejects the superiority of western life style. His ideas have guided the making of Indian nation and nationalism in various ways. Though there is lack on part of social thinkers in India to build upon the legacy of Gandhi for conceptualizing Indian social thoughts instead of borrowing Marx, Durkheim and Weber of Industrial West. Recently the historians in Subaltern Studies Group have highlighted the importance of Gandhian Thinking for understanding postcolonial India.

The important thinking in postcolonialism is grounded in the work of three scholars namely Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi K Bhabaha. They represent the so-called “Holy Trinity of Postcolonialism” and it is important to discuss their work to understand postcolonial theory.

1.1 Edward W. Said

Edward W Said was born in Jerusalem Palestinian. He attended a British school in Cairo and got higher education at Princeton and Harvard. From 1963 until his death he was a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York. He emerged as the most prominent name in postcolonial theories and considered as pioneer in the field.

His book Orientalism (1978) is considered founding text and source book for the postcolonial studies. This book directs its attention to the discursive and textual production of colonial meanings and consolidation of colonial power. Orientalism elaborates a unique understanding of imperialism /colonialism as an epistemological and cultural attitude which accompanies the curious habit of dominating and whenever possible ruling the distant territories. Orientalism is defined as the project of teaching, writing and researching the orient. The orient was represented as mystical, irrational and sensuous with ironically ambivalent fascination and disgust by Europeans. He questions the self-imposed authoritative position taken by westerners citing Marx’s remark for Asians that ‘they cannot represent themselves so they need to be represented’. Said problematize the binaries created by west to essentialize and reify the way of life of people in the east. As Said puts it: “Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, “us”) and the strange (the Orient, the ‘East, “them”).”

Thus Said’s critic was not directly engaging with system of colonial power and practices but the system of colonial knowledge and the creation of orient as unified cultural area and category of representation. He bluntly rejects the western representation and its epistemological claims. Said critic was basically founded upon his studies of own native area West Asia and North Africa and his active interest in Palestinian Cause. His later work like The Question of Palestine, (1979), Covering Islam (1981), focuses upon the Zionist imperialism as well as United States Islamophobia. In his Culture and Imperialism (1993), Said examines the complex and ongoing relationships between east and west, colonizer and colonized, white and black, and metropolitan and colonial societies even after decolonization. Here, he is less confrontational in his approach and rather accepts though ambivalently the western discourse.

1.2 Homi K. Bhabha

Homi K. Bhabha is a cultural critic and one of the leading postcolonial theorists of the present time. He is currently professor of English at Harvard University. Bhabha was born in Mumbai, India in a Parsi Family. He received Padma Bhushan by Indian Government for his contribution in the field of literature. He developed the theoretical insights of postcolonialism and coined several neologisms like mimicry, hybridity, ambivalence and influence etc. He was inspired by Lacanin psychoanalysis, poststructuralism and postmodernism in his critic of various constructions of cultural identity.

In postcolonial studies the question of rendering natives marginalized without any agency and identity of their own and the misrepresentation of native culture and distortion of native subjects has been crucial issue. Bhabha in his essay “Of Mimicry and Man” (1985) deal with this issue with the concept of Mimicry. Mimicry is the process of imitation by indigenous colonized to the life style of colonizers. The colonizers taught and disciplined the native people to learn and ape the white man culture and become civilized “like them but not quite”. He asserts the colonizers also wish to maintain certain difference so that they can rule them forever. This shows the ‘ambivalence’ of colonizers in their desire to reform the subjects but not a total transformation like Englishmen. This dilemma result into, what Bhabha calls mimicry. He believes that mimicry has subversive power because ‘‘disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority.” Though the native who mimic the colonizers culture never realize the power of becoming reformed, recognizable other and its potential to undermine the powerful system of colonizers. Bhabha believes that mimicry can lead to mockery and subversion of colonizers by colonized.

In his most important work The Location of Culture (1994) Bhabha deals with negotiations of cultural identity across race, gender and cultural traditions in colonial situations. He is against all claims of purity of racial and national identity and instead believes in in-between categories and hybridity. He maintains that identity is produced in a third space which is in-between real and idealized space. This third space is the precondition for the articulation of cultural differences. The colonizers and colonized can also not be viewed as separate entities defining themselves independently without recognizing each other historically. Instead he suggests the on-going negotiation of cultural identity involves the exchange of cultural performance and production of hybridity. He believes in understanding of cultural differences which is situated not only in the analysis of colonial past but also in postcolonial present. Hybridity emphasizes the interdependence of colonizers and colonized and its continuous interactions after decolonization.

In his other very important work Nation and Narration (1990) Bhabha limits nationalism to a mere narrative. He critics the essentialist reading of third world national identity supposedly as innate, traditional and homogenous which renders them inferior to other nations. The idea of nation is construction emerging from contesting hybrid cultural constituencies.

Bhabha being a diasporic scholar seeks to find the location of culture in marginal spaces and share the vision of postcolonial misrepresentation. These ideas have lasting effects on understanding the cultural differences in present world. Anthropologist can take this critical agenda further for understanding the identity of indigenous people in so called nation state.

1.3 Gaytri Chakrvarti Spivak

Gaytri C. Spivak is a radical postcolonial literary critic. She herself is a third world woman of colour, Bengali exile from India and at the same time diasporic elite, intellectual currently teaching at prestigious Columbia University. Her critics of postcolonial realties are uneasy marriage of feminism, Marxism and deconstructionism. She received Padma Bhushan from Government of India for her contributions to literary criticism and feminist literature.

The exemplar of her theory, the essay ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak’’ is a masterful work first published in Marxism and The Interpretation of Culture (1988). In her essay, Spivak casts doubt on the categories like third world and postcolonial and label them as unstable, essentialist categories. These categories are product of violent encounter between colonial powers and natives. She terms this process of creation and continuation of knowledge of others as ‘epistemic violence’ of colonization.

She raises her concern with the postcolonial approaches that study the subaltern and claim to provide the academic voices for them. She believes that these postcolonial critics instead reinforce and co-opt the neocolonial imperatives of subjugation, exploitation, discrimination and cultural erasure. She questions the location of postcolonial writers in privileged western academic institutions and its influence in recycling of colonial system of knowledge and power. She finds serious faults with such kind of postcolonial efforts to ameliorate the subaltern from oppression and marginalization. She, for example, is apprehensive of subaltern historiography approach developed in leadership of Ranjit Guha to write alternative postcolonial history of marginalized in India.

Her major theoretical work is Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of Vanishing Present (1999). She also translated the writings of Mahasweta Devi a Bengali Writer of Adivasi Literature to present them as parameter for postcolonial thinking.

3. SUBALTERN STUDIES GROUP

Subaltern Studies Collective came into being in 1980s with a purpose of attempting alternate historiography of India. The group under the leadership of historian Ranjit Guha and other founding members directed their attention to free the Indian history from the shackles of Colonial Eurocentric elitist model of historiography. They aimed at making peasants, tribals as and other marginalized group as the main subject of historical research and writing. This group over the years has created a set of scholarship with diverse interest and appeal but notion of marginality and subalternity remained central to the ideas and writing of the scholars who associated with it. The theoretical movement has inspired the Latin American Studies and African Studies and has achieved a global recognition.

The subaltern studies group has immensely contributed to the understanding of history of marginalized group and has helped in correcting the wrongs of colonial form of history writing. The projects have moved towards postcolonial understanding of Nationalism and identity issues in Indian context particularly in the work of Partha Chattarjee. This school has several convergences with postcolonial thinking in literature. Both the school together has immense potential to contribute to the anthropological fieldwork in South Asia.

4. ANTHROPOLOGY AND ITS COLONIAL/POSTCOLONIAL ENCOUNTER

Anthropologists were apprehensive of adopting the postcolonial thinking because it puts all classical anthropological enterprise into question. The postcolonial critic which was largely ‘coming from outside’ targeted the ethnographic practice and power relations it wield over its subject and objects of study. Many of the postcolonialists like Said have specifically questioned the anthropologist role in creation of “Other”. However, there were increased consciousnesses inside discipline about the power relations which have always existed between observers and observed. Anthropology as a discipline have always been sympathetic to the people they study and have advocated the preservation of their culture and tradition from western influences. However in process have also distorted the local realties, exotified local culture and single handedly wrote people’s history and fate.

Anthropology has anticipated many of the concerns raised by Postcolonial critics. Saudi born anthropologist Talal Asad edited a book Anthropology and Its Colonial Encounter (1973) to highlight the interesting parallels between colonization and anthropology and its consequences for colonized people. All the contributors in this volume were skeptical of colonial biases in anthropological writings of past. This was the part of reflexive turn which was emerging in discipline in 70s. This work has been instrumental in raising the awareness of colonial imprints on ethnographic fieldwork and writings.

Dutch anthropologist Johannes Fabian in his Time and Other (1983) blended his critical argument with anthropological attempts of freezing the community in a particular time when ethnographic fieldwork was conducted. Not only the notion of bounded holistic community but also the fixing of others in a particular “ethnographic present” is problematic too. Jack Goody in her East in the West (1996) reassesses the Eurocentric biases present in writings of East in the western academician. She challenges the exaggerations of traditional family and labour relation as hindrance to the east societies. She questions the western rationality which seeks to modernize the west but not the east. This leads to the misconceptions about east and misunderstanding of the west.

The doubts over anthropological writings and methods started to surface from educated native community members from different corners. Vine Deloria an expert of Native American Studies, a Lakota Sioux tribe, wrote Custer Died for Your Sins (1970). He furiously rejected the relativism of Franz Boas which lead to the eternal exoticism of Native Americans. He was highly critical of those who tried to speak about and on behalf of native and in process stopping them to speak for themselves. Linda Tuhaui Smith is a Maori indigenous Scholar from New Zealand who has called for the Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) of social science which claims to research and write about third world indigenous people. She believes that “research” is one of the dirtiest words in the vocabulary of Indigenous World. Smith in her book remarks that the “ways in which scientific research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world’s colonized peoples”. She highlights the imperialist ideology implicit in the western knowledge creation and decolonizing research can help to reclaim the indigenous way of knowing and being.

The impact of the postcolonial critics like Edward Said was so deep that it motivated James Carrier to edit the counter narrative to the Orientalism called Occidentalism (1995) in which he proposed that oriental peoples also have a biased and stereotypical view of west. The contributors to this volume outlined the need of highly reflexive writings to erase these mutual stereotypical representations. In Threatening Anthropology (2004) David Price shows that how anthropology has been used as a cover for spying and military work and has added to imperialistic powers till date. The use of anthropologists during Iraq war has also been confronted by Marshall Sahlins in his writing. Many of the continuing impacts of colonial power structure is inherent in western system of knowledge creation which need to be dismantled for future abuse of colonized nations. The postcolonial thinking provides a window to these endeavors.

Many of anthropologists still believe in the power of empirical scientific research of simple communities and its role in understanding and interpreting the lived reality cross culturally. Earnst Gellener have raised voice against postcolonial thinking for undermining scientific truth claims confusing ideology and analysis, and not understanding that… problem of power and culture is too important to be left to literary criticism.

Indigenous Studies as a discipline has emerged in most of the non-colonized land as a postcolonial discipline to represent the writings about native people. The emergence of indigenous movement across the world has guided the development of indigenous studies as a multidisciplinary subject. The Maori studies in New Zealand, Native studies in Canada, Aboriginal Studies in Australia and Indigenous Studies in USA is example of such efforts to correct the Eurocentric biases in research and writings about indigenous people. These studies have emphasized the use of native tongue and development of indigenous languages for the research and teaching.

SUMMARY

Postcoloniasm is critical theoretical movement which emerged in arts and humanities and has a defining impact on the anthropological mode of understanding of indigenous people. The theory emphasized to interpret and critic the culture of colonialism and imperialism and is product of resistance to colonialism and imperialism. The postcolonialism can trace its beginning in the movements against colonial empires; the leaders who were the fountainhead against these movements shaped the discourse of anti-empire sentiment and language of resistance. Franz Fanon, Mahatma Gandhi, Aime Cesires and Albert Memmi were thinkers who anticipated the present understanding of postcolonial thinking. Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) is considered founding text and source book for the postcolonial studies. This book directs its attention to the discursive and textual production of colonial meanings and consolidation of colonial power. Homi K. Bhabha is a cultural critic and one of the leading postcolonial theorists who reflect upon the question of rendering natives marginalized without any agency and identity of their own and the misrepresentation of native culture and distortion of native subjects has been crucial issue. Gaytri C. Spivak is a radical postcolonial literary critic who in her essay ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak’’ theorizes ‘epistemic violence’ of colonization. Anthropology has anticipated many of the concerns raised by Postcolonial critics. Saudi born anthropologist Talal Asad edited a book Anthropology and Its Colonial Encounter (1973) to highlight the interesting parallels between colonization and anthropology and its consequences for colonized people. The doubts over anthropological writings and methods started to surface from educated native community members from different corners. Vine Deloria and Linda Tuhaui Smith are examples of such indigenous scholarships.

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