Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 11:57:08 -0400
Subject: Re: Post-postcolonial theory


DK, JUST THOUGHT I'D GIVE YOU A PEEP AT WHAT THE LEFT ACADEMICS ARE CHEWING
ON THESE DAYS! SEE WHAT WE MISSED BY NOT SEELING OUT :) (SORRY FOR THE CAPS)
bb with love
--
"solidarity means sharing the same risks" - Che
( la solidarita significa correre gli stessi rischi)

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>From: Sam Durrant <4srd1-AT-qlink.queensu.ca>
>To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: Post-postcolonial theory
>Date: Sun, Aug 13, 2000, 8:52 AM
>

>  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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