Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 21:36:53 -0400
Subject: Re: Post-postcolonial theory


Sam:
Thanks for your note. There seems to be a weird notion that being
"theoretical" or "intellectual" is bad or effete and that rejecting theory
will enable activism (Michelle Wallace's scathing critique of this position
is interesting) . By this logic, we shouldn't read anything of Marx other
than the Communist Manifesto.
Malini


At 12:52 PM 8/13/00 +0000, you wrote:
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>



     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---