File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-02-20.131, message 128


Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 04:16:42 +1300
From: gdv-AT-deepsouth.co.nz (danny/dessford vogel)
Subject: Re: testing water



>But can she ever
>> inscribe her geneology outside the space of First World Theory??
>>
>
>CAN YOU DO THAT FOR YOURSELF, SEEING THE LANGUAGE (and I don't mean English)
>YOU HAVE ADOPTED? I don't think she wants to, or cares to; perhaps
>because she does not pretend she can.
>

mmm. i may have missed something here, but the problematic of
'post-colonial theory as such' (whatever that includes/excludes) doesn't
feel like a particularly fruitful locus of analysis for language as an
inscription of colonial practice.

i didn't know that anyone was expecting any theorist to avoid the
contrariness inherent in a western-textual (yuk - sorry) interrogation of
colonialism. i, here (white/pakeha in an ostensibly 'bicultural' state),
read 'postcolonial theory' as being an intervention directed at white,
unmarked, colonial discourses. The extent to which 'it'
legitimates/reinscribes and subverts these discourses is obviously a
pressing question, but i think the theorists discussed on this list are
aware that it is always both, that there is no innocence to be found, and
that the First World is screaming out for someone(s) 'untainted' to
represent the Other to us (so we can make a deal with them and get on with
business, unburdened by the past. to be past colonial. many local and
historical examples are at hand.)

much postcolonial theory to me seems a particular strategic response to
these kinds of things, and perhaps best analysed in terms of the
*particular* ways these works try to intervene in the colonial discussion
while limiting their own colonial impact, and the *effects* of that
intervention, rather than whether they survive unsullied by the colonial
stain. we're old enough not to need superhero(in)es anymore, right?

sorry if i got a bit carried away

danny




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