Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 12:52:26 +0000
Subject: Re: Post-postcolonial theory


 The problem with Maya's initial wording is not the anti-French sentiment
but the anti-intellectual or anti-theory position this 'critique' sometimes
masks.  If not "french theory" then what?  The answer to this is not more
practice, activism etc--all practices need theoretical bases.

Has anybody read Neil Lazarus' piece in a recent (last sept?) issue of New
Formations (devoted to Adorno), wonderfully entitled "Hating Theory
Properly"?  It also decries what Maya describes as  ""excessive" alliances
between poco and post-structuralist theories," but from a Marxist position.
Lazarus' article is useful in that it makes the stakes clear(er).  From a
marxist point of view, poststructuralism is an inappropriate ally for poco
because of

1) its anti-revolutionary fervour (post-68 and all that)
2) its relativism.

Like Jameson, Lazarus restates the need to retain some sort of universal
critique of capitalism.  This I am inclined to agree with: If postcolonial
theory is to lead to political activism, its seems to me, it has to have as
its base in a critique of global capitalism and an assertion (however
qualified) of universal human rights.

Lazarus mainly quotes from certain bits of Foucault, which allows his
second charge a veracity that would be complicated by the repeated claim of
Derrida and others that they are not relativists.  Indeed I would argue
that Lazarus' critique of poststructuralism is already being mounted from
within poststructuralism itself: a book like Derrida's Spectres of Marx
seems to me to be moving towards a kind of 'new universalism' that would
enable a form of global critique and renew--in a severely circumscribed
form--the Marxist (dare I say Enlightenment) commitment to ideals such as
emancipation and liberation.

So I would turn maya's question around: the danger seems to me to be not
reading enough 'French' theory:  many postcolonialists, thanks to an all
too cursory engagement with poststructuralism seem to reject Enlightenment
values tout court. We need to return to essays such as Foucault's "What is
Enlightenment" (which lazarus reads rather partially) , as well as marx and
the Frankfurt school, to work out exactly what parts of the Enlightenment
we need to reject, inherit or qualify.

 But this ongoing project of self-critique would merely be so much
navel-gazing if it weren't for the fact that so many non-Europeans (or
'illegitimate' heirs of the Enlightenement') are engaged in this process of
(self-)critique. Lazarus suggests that:

"recent historical developments have definitevely stripped the burden of
speaking in the name of humanity at large from such Eurocentirically
limited figures as Adorno and invsted it in differently situated
intellectuals.  He goes on to quote Said's list of figures such as "CLR
James, Cesaire, Antonius, Alatas, Ranajit Guha, Cabral, Abdel-Malak, Fanon"
and adds to this list writers (often, those of you who don't like the
'excessive alliance' of literature and poco, will note, novelists) such as
"Assissa Djebar, Toni Morrison, VY Mudimbe, Marquez, Carpentier, Gordimer,
Wilson Harris, Pramoedya Toer, George Lamming, Nayanthara Sahga, Ninotchka
Rosa. What is striking about the literary practice of these writers is
their simultaneous commitment to the philosophical discourses of modernity
and to its urgent critique, their extraordinary command of and respect for
the European humanist (or bourgeoise) canon existing alongside an equally
extraordinary knowledge (and endorsement) of other cultural works, cultural
experiences and social projects, the necessary consideration of which
cannot be accomplished on the provincial soil of the European canon. . . .
Might it not be these figures in whom, through a paradoxical ruse of
history--since this was the last thing that imperialism was meant to
acheive--'tradition' has been encoded and they, therefore, who, enjoined to
find ways to hate tradition properly,  are uniquely placed to do so." (15)

Apologies for the length of this quotation, but much food for thought here,
I suspect,

Sam.

Samuel Durrant
Lecturer,
School of English
Leeds University
Leeds LS2 9JT
England.




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