Understanding Postcolonialism

Jane Hiddleston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780367476304
• eBook ISBN: 9781317492610
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Postcolonialism offers challenging and provocative ways of thinking about colonial and neocolonial power, about self and other, and about the discourses that perpetuate postcolonial inequality and violence. Much of the seminal work in postcolonialism has been shaped by currents in philosophy, notably Marxism and ethics. "Understanding Postcolonialism" examines the philosophy of postcolonialism in order to reveal the often conflicting systems of thought which underpin it. In so doing, the book presents a reappraisal of the major postcolonial thinkers of the twentieth century.Ranging beyond the narrow selection of theorists to which the field is often restricted, the book explores the work of Fanon and Sartre, Gandhi, Nandy, and the Subaltern Studies Group, Foucault and Said, Derrida and Bhabha, Khatibi and Glissant, and Spivak, Mbembe and Mudimbe. A clear and accessible introduction to the subject, "Understanding Postcolonialism" reveals how, almost half a century after decolonisation, the complex relation between politics and ethics continues to shape postcolonial thought.

oneIntroduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315711669-1

Postcolonialism is a broad and constantly changing movement that has aroused a good deal of both interest and controversy. Inaugurated in earnest during and after the fight for independence in the remaining British and French colonies around the 1950s and 1960s, it has developed rapidly to become today a major area of intellectual innovation and debate. While the term first became popular in North American university campuses, and in particular in literary departments, it is now widely used both inside and outside Western academic institutions and attracts ever-growing numbers of commentators as well as students. The term “postcolonialism” can generally be understood as the multiple political, economic, cultural and philosophical responses to colonialism from its inauguration to the present day, and is somewhat broad and sprawling in scope. While “anti-colonialism” names specific movements of resistance to colonialism, postcolonialism refers to the wider, multifaceted effects and implications of colonial rule. Postcolonialism frequently offers a challenge to colonialism, but does not constitute a single programme of resistance; indeed, it is considered consequently by some to be rather vague and panoptic in its ever more ambitious field of enquiry. This book will focus on the philosophical dimensions of postcolonialism, and will demonstrate the diversity of conceptual models and strategies used by postcolonial philosophers rather than by political thinkers or literary writers. Post-colonial philosophy will be shown to feed into these, but detailed discussion of the politics, economics and literature of postcolonialism is beyond the scope of this study.

The term “postcolonialism” is a highly ambiguous one. In order to understand its meanings and implications it is first necessary to define the colonialism to which it evidently refers. Colonialism should be conceived as the conquest and subsequent control of another country, and involves both the subjugation of that country's native peoples and the administration of its government, economy and produce. The act of colonization is a concrete process of invasion and a practical seizing of control, although it is important for postcolonial studies that this material, empirical manifestation of colonization is at the same time backed up by a colonial ideology that stresses cultural supremacy. Colonialism is from this point of view both a specified political and economic project, and a larger discourse of hegemony and superiority that is enlisted to drive and support that concrete political act. The colonial project involves the literal process of entering into a foreign territory and assuming control of its society and industry, and, on a more conceptual level, the post facto promulgation of a cultural ideology that justifies the colonizer's presence on the basis of his superior knowledge and “civilization”.

“Colonialism” is close in meaning to “imperialism”, although at the same time slightly different. If colonialism involves a concrete act of conquest, imperialism names a broader form of authority or dominance. Colonialism is in this way one active manifestation of imperialist ideology, but imperialism can also be understood as a larger structure of economic or political hegemony that does not have to include the direct rule and conquest of another country. Imperialism could, then, continue after the end of colonial rule, and indeed, many critics have described the United States's current dominance of global markets as a new form of imperialist rule. This conception of imperialism shows that the term is wide-ranging, but it certainly helps to conceptualize both past and present forms of economic and cultural dominance. Imperialism is also now associated with capitalism, and with the attempt by Western states to impose their capitalist system on the rest of the world. Colonial conquest and settlement was one way in which those states accomplished the spread of their capitalist ideology, but even after decolonization this ideology continues to exert its pressure on the ex-colonies and the “Third World” (and the use of this term itself stresses the subordinate status of the countries to which it refers).

If these are the distinctions between colonialism and imperialism, then what do we understand specifically by the term “postcolonialism”? We might assume that postcolonialism designates the aftermath of any form of colonial rule. This means it could presumably refer not only to the effects of British rule in India, for example, or of the French presence in Algeria, but also to the wake of the Roman Empire, or to the traces of the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of Latin America. Indeed, some critics believe that the model for current conceptions of postcolonialism precisely emerges out of the earlier experiences of independence and neo-imperialism in Latin America, and certainly, some thinking around the concepts of liberation and transculturation can be traced back to this region. So the term could be seen to name a series of historical contexts and geographical locations that is bewildering in scope. In fact, however, perhaps as a result of the new understanding of imperialism as associated with capitalism mentioned above, post-colonialism is more frequently conceived to describe what has resulted from the decline of British and French colonialism in the second half of the twentieth century. Of course, many critics continue to reflect on the “postcolonial” heritage of Latin America, or, indeed, use the term to discuss the impact of foreign power on Canada or Australia. It has even been suggested that the United States is postcolonial in the sense that it was once a British colony, although it is clear that the conditions of this colonial project were different from those that were being questioned specifically in British and French colonies around the 1950s. Nevertheless, most critics who identify themselves with postcolonialism focus on the particular form of colonial ideology that was also tied to capitalism, and that brought about not just the conquest of peoples and the use of their resources, but also industrialization and the wholesale restructuring of their economies. Postcolonial critique of British and French colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also focuses very much on the ruthlessness of their methods of exploitation and on the inequality and impoverishment brought about by this particular form of oppression.

So postcolonial thought is potentially geographically and historically wide-ranging, but has been narrowed slightly by some of the major critics, who tend to concentrate on British and French capitalist forms of colonialism. The question of the precise dating of the postcolonial, however, remains to be resolved. On this matter, thinkers have distinguished the “post-colonial” from the “postcolonial”, arguing that the removal of the hyphen designates a shift in meaning. It is widely agreed that “post-colonial” names a distinct historical period following the end of direct colonial rule. Post-colonial Algeria, for example, describes the nations trajectory after 1962, once decolonization was agreed after eight years of bloody conflict. Post-colonialism is in this way narrow in scope and names a specific, identifiable moment. Postcolonialism, with no hyphen, is larger and more problematic. For a start, it tends to refer not to all that happened after the end of colonialism, but to the events that succeeded its beginning. So postcolonialism also names the period of colonial rule, together with its gradual weakening and demise. For this reason, in his book Islands and Exiles (1998), Chris Bongie suggests writing the term in the form post/colonialism, since this stresses the presence of the colonial within postcolonial critique. Far from celebrating the definitive conclusion to colonialism, then, postcolonialism analyses its effects both in its heyday and during the period that followed the end of the literal, concrete colonial presence. The movement is associated with the examination and critique of colonial power both before and after decolonization.

This expansion of the historical period to which the term postcolonialism refers means that it has come to be associated with a range of situations and events. Furthermore, postcolonialism names the analysis of the mechanics of colonial power, the economic exploitation it brought with it, and a form of both cultural and ethical critique or questioning. It is both a political and a broader ethical philosophy, and indeed, it will be the contention of this book that latterly the field has become split, often artificially, between these two distinct strands. Overall, it can be agreed that postcolonialism names a set of political, philosophical or conceptual questions engendered by the colonial project and its aftermath. But the approach taken by critics towards these questions varies significantly, with one school of thought tending to lean towards a denunciation of colonial politics and economics, and to call for practical revolution or reform, and another stressing colonialism's ethical blindness and the cultural regeneration required in the wake of that oppression. Postcolonialism does not propose one answer to such questions – although many critics have objected that it tries to – but offers a framework for their expansion, exploration and clarification. So although commentators point out the risks associated with conceiving the term as a homogeneous label, unifying distinct experiences of oppression, it can be understood to describe a multifaceted and open process of interrogation and critique. It is not a single structure or a straightforward answer, but, as Ato Quayson helpfully puts it, it is a process, a way of thinking through critical strategies. Quayson goes so far as to propose not a “postcolonialist” analysis, but a “process of postcolonializing”, or an intellectual engagement with the evolving links between the colonial period and current or modern-day inequalities.

Postcolonialism is additionally, in this sense, different from postcoloniality If postcolonialism involves some form of critique and resistance, despite its proponents’ awareness of capitalism's neo-imperial effects, postcoloniahty is a looser term for a current moment or epoch. Postcoloniahty is at the same time a condition rather than an intellectual engagement or standpoint, and this term also contains the negative connotations of a generation still, perhaps unthinkingly, bound up in the politics of the hegemony of “the West” over its (former) overseas territories. Moreover, postcoloniahty has been described by Graham Huggan as a particular condition in the market, whereby certain texts, artefacts or cultural practices are celebrated precisely as a result of their apparent “marginahty” in relation to the Western canon. The irony of this process of exoticization is that only certain authors or works are championed, and those who achieve this status do so largely because they fulfil Western expectations of the nature of the other culture, and of the form of a good work of art. Some critics have argued that post-colonialism is also guilty of this fetishization of certain aspects of “Third World” culture, but we might argue in response that postcolonialism is the movement that interrogates this cynical process, whereas postcoloniahty is the broader epoch and set of conditions in which such exoticization has come to thrive. Postcoloniahty is from this point of view intermingled with neocolonialism: that is, with lingering ideologies of cultural patronage of the sort that originally backed up and fuelled actual colonial powers.

To return more specifically to postcolonialism, this book will stress that this is a movement of questioning that seeks not, as critics have at times objected, to propose a single model or understanding for the colonial project and its aftershocks, but to analyse the nuances and implications of its multiple, varying manifestations. Postcolonialism is equally not a coherent strategy for resistance, but it names the at times self-contradictory or internally conflictual movement in thought that examines, unpicks and compares multiple strategies and potential modes of critique. This book will analyse some of these varying strategies as they were conceived by some of the major philosophers and thinkers of the twentieth century, and will explore the distinct approaches that have been reified by certain critics into a strict, and ultimately rather problematic, division. While for some readers postcolonialism is an overtly political movement, concerned above all with the empirical, material effects of colonialism and its aftermath, for others this field of enquiry heralds an ethical reflection concerning, rather more broadly, relations between self and other. Postcolonial thought is, on the one hand, seen to interrogate the underlying political structures of colonialism, and the mechanics of its promulgation and subsequent dismantling. Postcolonial critique goes on to enquire after the structure and efficacy of particular forms of nationalism as they emerged at the time when colonial ideology faltered and declined. On the other hand, however, an apparently alternative strand to this movement in modern thought forces us to rethink our understanding of the deeper relations between peoples, cultures or communities, and the ethical encounter interrupted by colonialism but crucial to its denunciation. A major part of postcolonial critique concentrates on the militant condemnation of a pernicious political ideology, but another aspect uses that condemnation to challenge and extend our understanding of how to contemplate the other.

The two strands of postcolonialism draw, respectively, on Marxism and Levinasian ethics. These influences are evidently combined with others and used in different ways, but some understanding of Marxist politics and Levinasian ethics offers insight into two of the dominant currents in postcolonial philosophy. Marx commented explicitly on colonial ideology in a number of essays, although it is above all his critique of capitalist exploitation and his call for revolt that inspired later postcolonial thinkers. Emmanuel Levinas does not engage openly with the question of colonial power, but his reinvention of the ethical relation in the wake of National Socialism is undeniably at the heart of many later discussions of postcolonial alterity. The rest of this introduction will sketch the relevant parts of Marx and Levinas, and establish the philosophical bases on which much subsequent postcolonial thought is constructed. Nevertheless, in noting that many secondary postcolonial critics appear to choose between politics and ethics in their reflections on the works of the major philosophers, much of this book will consider the fragility of the frontier between these apparently distinct poles. Levinas himself offers an equivocal response to Marx, arguing both that the latter s materialist confrontation of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat casts aside the possibility of absolute freedom, and that he nevertheless did universalize French revolutionary ideals by championing freedom of consciousness. Much more broadly, moreover, postcolonial thinkers of each camp at times borrow from the other, and leading critics such as Gayatri Spivak constantly and deliberately dart between them in the effort to stress their reciprocal uses. Materialist commentators such as Aijaz Ahmad, Neil Lazarus and Benita Parry may battle against the “textualist” approach of a critic such as Robert Young, but most of the leading philosophers address both the politics of colonial oppression and its underlying, unethical representational structures. Certainly, the overt goals of political and ethical postcolonialism will be found to be quite clearly distinct from one another, yet a genuine understanding of the postcolonial arena will necessitate an engagement with both levels.

Marxism and ideology

Marx refers directly to colonialism somewhat sporadically throughout his work, and many of his comments on this subject appear rather ambivalent. There can be no doubt, however, that he condemns the subjugation and economic exploitation of the underclass that the colonial system demands. Marx's most developed observations concerning colonialism are focused on India and on the inequality enforced by British colonial rule in that context. He notes in numerous journalistic essays, and in parts of Capital, the misery and poverty suffered by the natives, the cruelty of their exploitation and the destructive effects of the British restructuring of the economy. Marx notes that the British effectively broke down the founding framework of Indian society by taking control of the means of production and imposing British capitalist principles. As a result of the British presence, Indian agriculture deteriorated as it struggled to conform to these principles of free competition, laissez-faire and laissez-aller. Furthermore, British forms of industry destroyed local technologies – the handloom and the spinning wheel, for example – in order to impose a larger-scale manufacturing industry, with the result that the colonial system entirely recreated the means of the production of cotton in the “mother country of cottons”. Smaller farms, local businesses and family communities were dissolved because they were based on a domestic form of industry – on hand weaving and tilling, for example – and the natives as a result no longer ran or managed their own resources. Not only was economic control passed over to the British, but local communities were dissolved and fragmented by the installation of this foreign form of industry. In addition, the higher employees of the British East India Company instituted a monopoly on the tea trade, fixing prices and taking profits away from local workers. In analysing such instances of restructuring and exploitation, Marx and Engels both denounce the economic drive conceived as the major basis for colonial power: “colonialism proclaimed surplus-value making as the sole end and aim of humanity” (Marx & Engels 1960: 261).

Despite these condemnations of the inequality and exploitation brought about by the British in India, Marx's position on colonialism nevertheless at times seems contradictory. First, in arguing that the British colonizers did make an economic profit out of the colonial project, he succeeds in both condemning the exploitation associated with this profit and stressing the success of an economic venture that anti-colonialists at the time wanted to deny. As Young points out in Post-colonialism (2001), Marx goes on to contradict himself on this question of profit, as he mentions how the East India Company was stretching British finances to the point of potential ruin, but for the most part he underlines the impact of colonialism in the capitalist drive for financial gain. Furthermore, if Marx denounces the moral failings of British colonialism, and laments the suffering of the native population, he does also note that the British succeeded in imposing some unity on a people that had been disastrously fractured up until that point. He recalls that India had previously relied on hereditary divisions of labour, solidified by the caste system, and these impeded the progress and development of Indian power and industry. The modern industrial system imposed by the British, together with the construction of a railway system, in fact to a certain extent helped to transcend existing petty hierarchies. So Marx is virulently against colonial exploitation, but does not condemn every aspect of the colonial project.

Marx is also above all interested less in independence than in the revolt of the working classes against the bourgeoisie. In order for the Indian working class to achieve such a revolt, and then to reap the benefits of British industrialization, Marx argues that the British bourgeoisie would first need to be supplanted by a strong industrial proletariat capable of undermining the bourgeois control of the means of production. The first revolution had to happen back home, then, and the colonized might be able to follow suit if the British working class had created a model for them to follow. The Indian proletariat needed to learn from the British proletariat before achieving the conditions necessary for their emancipation. At the same time, the colonial and imperialist projects were preventing the socialist revolution in Britain from taking place, so the danger was that the combined force of colonialism and capitalism mutually strengthened each system, disabling revolt both at home and abroad. Colonialism is an ideology thrown into question in Marx's work, then, but anti-colonial critique is by no means his first priority. He continues to believe that Indian society might have something to learn from Britain, and indeed, that an anti-colonial revolt should not take place at any cost, and without a properly constructed political framework to support it.

In The Communist Manifesto (1967), Marx and Engels again at once denounce the capitalist exploitation of colonized countries and remain hazy on the nature, and appropriate moment, for something as specific as a nationalist revolution. They vilify the scope of capitalist ambition, its spread beyond Western nations and drive to rule the economies of the world. It is a holistic ideology that demands not only the reign of surplus-value making in Europe, but at the same time the derivation of further surplus-value using the resources of other countries, of colonies. Capitalism for Marx and Engels is also pernicious because it is propped up by a rhetoric of civilization, and claims to bring moral as well as economic benefits...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Fanon and Sartre: colonial Manichaeism and the call to arms
• 3 Decolonization, community, nationalism: Gandhi, Nandy and the Subaltern Studies Collective
• 4 Foucault and Said: colonial discourse and Orientalism
• 5 Derrida and Bhabha: self, other and postcolonial ethics
• 6 Khatibi and Glissant: postcolonial ethics and the return to place
• 7 Ethics with politics? Spivak, Mudimbe, Mbembe
• 8 Conclusion: neocolonialism and the future of the discipline
• Questions for discussion and revision
• Guide to further reading
• Bibliography
• Index