Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 08:47:11 -0400
Subject: postcolonial "Theory" - location of Theory and contexts of practice


My header says it all:)

As Danny's post indicated, - questions about "theory" can sometimes seem
"anti-intellectual" "anti-theory" - further widening up an imagined gap
between (elite) Theory and (romanticised, pure) Practise. This binary - this
almost necessary separation in the very articulation of Theory is sometimes
the problem of Academic (and Corporate - but they don't claim to be
self-reflexive or not self-serving with as much vehemence as some of us try
to:) - they just say they are right) form - a problem that in another way
"merges" Theory and Practise in unproblematic ways (different from
"antitheory" or "atheoretic" erasures of the implicitness of Theory in
everything we write do etc...) and erases *context* - the fluidity and
complexity of context (and I am not talking french theorists here, although
"fluid" seems to be a word very much associated with the "posts"...that Maya
suggested we are leaning too much on...) 


In both cases - there is a de-politicization that happens. Even with the
self-reflexivity that Sam mentions (a "self-reflexivity" that we have
learned to perform so appropriately postcolonially and intellectually from
our still often unproblematised locations maybe?) the postcolonial
intellectual/writer/artist (even postcolonial intellectuals geographically
located in "real non-Western" contexts) becomes "representative."

Mar's earlier post addressed the topic a little too -  the issue of theory
and practice in relation to  how our theorizing flattens complex contexts
needs a lot of struggling with...

I'm not suggesting by the way - that our attempts in themselves are
insincere or self-centered or un-self-reflexive. We may not even engage
these questions if that was totally true?

r
****************************************************
Radhika Gajjala
http://www.cyberdiva.org/
http://lingua.utdallas.edu:7000/4425/
http://moo.hawaii.edu:7000/599/



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