Date: Thu, 06 Jun 1996 09:38:07 +1200
From: amst020-AT-cantva.canterbury.ac.nz
Subject: re:During, Mandela and the "Post"


piers-AT-kuc01.kuniv.edu.kw wrote:
>To Stephen Pritchard:
>Just  a few scattered peculations. 

>During sets up a number of conceptual alliances--amongst, say, modernity 
>(or the modern), rationality, universality, enlightenment--which turn on 
>Foucauldian epistemological breaks (as signalled by oppositions like "the 
>modern" and the "pre-modern"), rather than on old-style historicist 
>continuities. A first, perhaps over-hasty thought, is to ask: does this 
>not tend to melt distinctions, precisely geographical and historical 
>distinctions, between different colonizations and colonialisms, with a loss
> in terms of local oppositional politics and the very radical postcolonial
> nationalisms During advocates? 

I am inclined to agree with you here, but I'm not sure that During is 
necessarily accepting these "conceptual alliances". While considering 
Boswell's and Johnson's travel in the Hebrides During says "the journey 
brings into view that crucial but extraordinary elusive difference 
between what I am calling, skeptically, the modern and the pre-modern. 
Skeptically because, as their tour shows, that difference is 
simultaneously undisplaceable and uncontainable: any attempt to fix it is 
doubtful... it is not a difference between cultures...(and) the difference 
here is not racial...nor do they regard the locals...as existing in the 
proximity of primordial nature...nor, finally, do they have a strong 
political or economic sense of difference...The difference between the 
travellers and the locals functions more as the product of a desire to 
maintain a past considered to be doomed."(33-34)
 
>... the Clifford-derived "post-cultural" seems hard to 
>sustain--does one have to (re)visit this term outside of its root's 
>(historical) social/economic function, as a kind of pre-colonial 
>non-western (?) non-discursive sacred "past". If so, is it opposed to 
>enlightenment values or is it produced by them? Or does one take up the 
>text's challenge to synchronize with cultural difference, the other side of
> difference? What is meant here? 

I'm not entirely sure. BUt the first question concerning the 
'pre-colonial, non-western, non-discursive sacred past is interesting and 
deserves more attention. To claim that access to a pre-colonial past 
cannot be legitimately made does have serious implications in relation to 
identity politics.THis is particularly interesting in relation to the 
enunciation of (pre)/(post)colonial identity. How do we separate times, 
"traditional Maori time, pseudo-traditional Maori time, modern Maori time or
 occidental time?"(47) During considers this problem in relation to 
Makereti's assertion of identity, which During suggests must be seen as 
"all- which means, a little, or none."(47)

>Not sure what to make of the Mandela passage. Mandela as "representation 
>without an original" (29) is weirdly anachronistic and not at all 
>anachronistic. He *is* his TV image, even though (officially) no longer 
>incarcerated and silenced, a simulation bearing the weight of "our" 
>expectations.

Like you, I find this part of the essay difficult- but also interesting. 
It seems unfortunate that During doesn't fully explain the implications 
of the connection to Derrida's essay (which, by the way, is very interesting)
A key point to this essay (Derrida's) seems to be the relationship 
between Mandela's demand for justice and equality in relation to the 
West. One way of interpreting such an demand would be as an appeal to 
human equality, justice etc. which seems to be based on humanist notions 
of freedom, rights equality etc. Seen this way Mandela ironically appeals 
to humanist principles which have, in South Africa itself, been used to 
justify racism. This is like saying the law is unlawful or that justice 
is unjust- it appeals to the system that oppressed. BUt, of course, 
Derrida doesn't see it this way- Mandela's notion of democracy, freedom, 
equality etc are not based on Western models (at least solely). Mandela 
refers to notions of justice that preceed the arrival of the West and in 
many ways appears invisible to Western eyes. 
 

>The limits of universalism not as limiting but as the articulation of 
>double-jointedness (28) surely slides, back and forth, from the 
>historical to the transcendent transhistorical--which During makes explicit
> (later on) with Foucault's "simalucra". Now this is a provocative idea, 
>especially since it *is* political and not aesthetic or elitist (like 
>certain other overworked simulacra).

>This simulacra. Time above, or time alongside. Parallel times. 
>All--synchronically--guaranteed by groundlessness, no-history, the 
>modern. During, paraphrasing Foucault, says: "The order of simulacra knows no
> origins, no facts anchored in a transparent description of the world . . . 
> but rather circulations and aggregations of representations" (37). The 
>"cultural", the sacred, the pre-modern, these are structured as exchange 
>items in a postmodern economy, one which--crucially--doesn't 
>automatically gesture westwards. 

Yes, but could you spell out the implications for non-Western identities? 
What implications does this have for those that see their identity as 
inseparably connected to the past? Is During's way of conceptualising the 
sacred in terms of aura and modernity essentailly and necessarily 
Eurocentric? If yes then could be that the problems he sees are Western 
academic problems? Does it assume that simulations are, or can be 
non-Western?

>I see this approach to (post)cultural representation as highly attractive 
>for postcolonial studies. Especially after Jameson and Hutcheon, who are 
>both irredeemably historicist and Amero-Eurocentric. The challenge must 
>lie in the modality of enunciation: the how of discourse, rather than 
>the what or any point of origin.

I agree. Does this lead us to Bhabha? I'm interseted in this connection
 
Kevin Hickey <HICKEYK-AT-snyoneva.cc.oneonta.edu> 
wrote: After Stephen Pritchard and Piers Michael Smith's comments on
Simon During's "Waiting for the Post: Modernity, Colonization and
Writing," I ask the following (page references are to the text in
ARIEL).

During writes that "In nations like New Zealand, Australia,
Canada and South Africa (which should not, perhaps, be named in a
single breath) it is especially difficult to place oneself in...
[the post-modern or the post-cultural]. Not all of the
communities in our countries have  passed through the threshold
of modernity: some are maintained, some wish to maintain
themselves, at the far side of the difference" (37). 

>This, as I understand it, is a weak argument. First, we have here
>the essentialization of "pre-modern" communities (that everyone,
>or at least everyone of importance wishes to remain "at the far
>side of difference").

Yes, but I think he is talking about the essentialization of "pre-modern" 
communities of certain individuals- himself not included- (What is 
During's position? Does he even KNow?)

>Third, isn't During, with his use of "post-cultural," deconstructing the 
>very linearity of pre-modern, modern, post-modern that he is relying
>on in these generalizations? As I understand During's essay I see
>a strategy similar to Spivak's "strategic essentialism": During
>uses certain ideas to make a point but then, once the point is
>made, rejects at least some of the assumptions upon which those
>ideas are based.

Yes- this is the problem I have with him. THis is why I think the Mandela 
connection doesn't work. He sets up a position and then squirms out of it.

>I am particularly curious about the argument concerning
>cannibalism. During writes: "When, for instance, the missionaries
>expressed their quasi-sacred horror at Maori cannibalism they
>were drawn into a debate which, on utilitarian grounds, they
>could only lose. After all, there are no 'rational' reasons why
>warfare's victims should not be eater--here the Maori is more
>'modern' than the Pakeha [white New Zealanders]." Has cannibalism
>existed as a source of sustenance? I thought that cannibalism was
>always a ritual based on issues of power, spirituality, etc. and
>not a source of food. Anyone knowledgeable on cannibalism?

I'm certainly not knowledgeable on cannibalism- but from what I have read 
cannibalism did not exist as a form of sustenance- it was a ritual, for 
want of a better word. Although, apparently some Maori took delight in 
the way that it shocked Europeans and consequently "played up".

Thanks,
Stephen Pritchard
Canterbury University
New Zealand   s.pritchard-AT-amst.ac.nz


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