File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2000/postcolonial.0007, message 44


Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 11:26:23 -0400
Subject: Re: Questions
From: "Lisa Anne McNee" <lm23-AT-qsilver.queensu.ca>


Dear Eric, 
I have followed most of the debates in silence, but I would like to address
some of the points that you raise. 

1). I am a scholar of francophone literature, and I would argue that
postcolonial studies does not limit itself to English, as you assume. In
fact, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and other European languages are
important in postcolonial studies. The fact that postcolonial studies
involves the examination of the post-COLONIAL condition means that it is not
surprising that imperial languages are important to the field. However,
there is a growing interest in non-European languages within postcolonial
studies--see, for instance, Spivak's work, or any number of critical works
focused on the importance of African-language literatures for postcolonial
African literatures in European languages. I looked at the article by Ngugi
that you mentioned, and I have to thank you for drawing my attention to it.
Yet I would argue that Ngugi himself, even though he now writes his fiction
and drama in Gikuyu, occupies a space that is postcolonial, in part because
it is ambiguous--it includes English as a factor in spite of his disavowal
of European languages. This is true not just because all of his Gikuyu works
are immediately translated into English, and sell very well in English, but
also because English is an ideological presence that affects his fiction in
many ways. 

2). If you follow discussions on the internet or even in print, you will
find that scholars in the countries you mention (Singapore, Germany and
Australia) do have an important presence in postcolonial studies. Mots
pluriels is a major journal in francophone studies, and is edited at the U
of Western Australia; people in Melbourne also edit important journals in
the field. Although I am less aware of what is going on at the U of
Singapore, Mots pluriels includes articles by people from Singapore, so I am
distantly aware of their work, which is excellent. Others would be more able
to comment on Asian scholars. I would include Hong Kong, by the way--Shirley
Lim has done excellent work. And in Germany, the interest in postcolonial
studies has grown by leaps and bounds. Look at the well-established journal
Matatu, as well as at the many conferences German scholars have organized!
(By the way, you don't mention New Zealand, Canada, and other alternatives
to the American imperium.)
A second response to this question: Personal decisions are not always
dictated by ideals, but by realistic hopes and expectations. I know many
African scholars employed in the United States and Canada. I think that
every one of them would prefer to live in his or her home country; however,
conditions there would not permit them to use the Internet to polemicize or
to do the work that they would like to do. Some of them, as you seem to
forget, have spent time in jail. Ngugi's prison journal is enlightening in
this regard. There is a long history of intellectuals working in
exile--think of Copernicus, for instance. I recently read an article about
Galileo--had he chosen to take a sinecure in Venice, he would not have faced
the church authorities who forced him to recant. Because he wanted to be in
his home region, however, he faced the situation that many postcolonial
scholars face. Certainly, many postcolonial intellectuals hope to be able to
use their influence in order to change things for the better--but they
cannot always do so from a jail cell! It seems to me that you are holding
postcolonial intellectuals to an unfairly high standard; you expect more of
them than you do of other intellectuals. Do we really want a double standard
in postcolonial studies?

3)I believe that the issue at hand is nationalism. Quebecois nationalist
thought, like any other nationalism, can be turned inward, but is also
outward-looking. Part of the problem of "nation-building" is defining the
group in opposition to the oppressor. Postcolonial studies has been
dedicated to analyzing these processes from a scholarly standpoint. (I'm
thinking of the many studies like Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities
or Bhabha's Nation and Narration.) In the postcolonial era, dictators around
the world have used the language of nationalism in order to restrict
liberties. Postcolonial intellectuals that I know do not accept the surface
language, but analyze it! And even if you support the Quebecois, that does
not mean that you have to accept every politician's spin on sovereignty and
nationalism, including the famous PQ denunciation of the "allophones."
Moreover, the Quebecois may be a minority in Canada at large, but the First
Nations people who live in Quebec have made it clear that they do not want
to live in a new state of Quebec. They are in the minority in Quebec taken
as a whole. When do we support "the minority," and who is in "the minority?"
It's a pretty complex situation. The current languages of nationalism do not
necessarily reflect the situation in its complexity. 

4)Every discipline has its own language, its own jargon, if you will. We
need a shorthand to be able to talk about ideas that particular scholars
developed. If we really wanted to talk about the idea of subalternity
without using the word subaltern as developed by the Subaltern Studies group
and other postcolonial scholarly groups, we would have to in effect
reproduce work that has already been done. Terms like those you object to
allow us to refer to important ideas in the field quickly and easily, and
are not intended to exclude outsiders, as you seem to think, but to enable
scholarship. I agree that much theoretical writing is opaque, and could be
better written; however, no discipline can do without its own language.
Think what would happen if we asked physicists to do without their own
language! They, too, popularize physics in works intended for a general
audience. Literary theorists do the same--with the many introductions to
literary theory that are on the market. But I think that this list actually
serves specialists and people familiar with the field, so can we really
reproach its members for using postcolonial studies terms?

Amicalement, Lisa

----------
>From: Eric Dickens <eric.dickens-AT-wxs.nl>
>To: postcolonial <postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
>Subject: Questions
>Date: Wed, Jul 5, 2000, 6:44 AM
>

>5th July 2000
>
>Dear Scholars of Postcolonial Literature ,
>
>I'll try and keep it short, since Tony Alessandrini has already almost
>written me off as slightly on the garrulous side of Polonius.
>
>Matters brought up by me and not yet answered very thoroughly:
>
>1) Why is it that what is termed "postcolonial studies" is, in fact, an
>examination of novels written in English, by people who have discovered that
>the colonial powers did some pretty bad exploitation of other parts of the
>world? Why do the other colonialisms simply not count?
>
>2) Given the fact you can park yourself anywhere and polemicise on the
>internet, why do so many scholars find what Tony terms "the American
>imperium" so attractive as a place to exercise their freedom of speech and
>pick up their salaries? What's wrong with Singapore, Germany or Australia?
>
>3) Why is it that when a minority is discovered within English-speaking
>countries, such as the Quebecois, some scholars feel the necessity to
>immediately point out how racist and inward-looking they are? Motes and
>beams?
>
>4) Why do we need words like "liminicity", "differance", "subaltern",
>"carnival", "heteroglossia", etc. I'm not a linguistic Luddite, and I
>appreciate philosophers have to break new ground,  but I do think there must
>be simpler ways of getting these points across to the uninitiated, without
>creating a kind of coterie of vocabulary, an in-crowd of Bakhtinian
>Derring-do. One awful misnomer is "Eurocentric", considering the fact that
>Europe hardly gets a look in, and what is actually meant is the domination
>of colonial and ex-colonial countries where the English-language virtually
>keeps out all others.
>
>It was therefore most interesting to read the Todd S. Purdum article about
>Spanish in California which Marwan Dalal posted to our group. I admire the
>fact that Marwan often says "this e-mail has a clear political motivation"
>at the end of things he sends. Claiming the overweening superiority of the
>English language is also highly politically charged. But any criticism of
>this frequently gets shrugged off as bitching.
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Eric Dickens
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>


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