The Postcolonial Politics of Development

Ilan Kapoor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415773980
• eBook ISBN: 9781135976798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book uses a postcolonial lens to question development's dominant cultural representations and institutional practices, investigating the possibilities for a transformatory postcolonial politics.

Ilan Kapoor examines recent development policy initiatives in such areas as 'governance, ' 'human rights' and 'participation' to better understand and contest the production of knowledge in development - its cultural assumptions, power implications, and hegemonic politics. The volume shows how development practitioners and westernized elites/intellectuals are often complicit in this neo-colonial knowledge production. Noble gestures such as giving foreign aid or promoting participation and democracy frequently mask their institutional biases and economic and geopolitical interests, while silencing the subaltern (marginalized groups), on whose behalf they purportedly work. In response, the book argues for a radical ethical and political self-reflexivity that is vigilant to our reproduction of neo-colonialisms and amenable to public contestation of development priorities. It also underlines subaltern political strategies that can (and do) lead to greater democratic dialogue.

Part I
POSTCOLONIAL INSIGHTS?

1
CAPITALISM, CULTURE, AGENCY

Dependency versus postcolonial theory

The dependency school seems to have lost favour among current scholars of social science and Third World politics, while postcolonial theory — in spite of, or perhaps because of, growing out of literary studies — appears to be on the rise. This trend is at least partly due to the fresh and exciting perspective that postcolonial theory brings relative to (or retrospective to) dependency, much like the latter did in the mid-1960s/early 1970s in relation to ‘modernization’. But the contemporaneity and novelty of the one need not blind us to the continuing importance of the other. In fact, I want to suggest that reading dependency alongside and against postcolonial theory can help reinvigorate and re-validate some of the insights of the former, while at the same time supporting the latter’s ascendancy.

Dependency and postcolonial theory cover some similar territory and share important common concerns — a suspicion of Western liberal modernity, a historical-global analysis, and a critical politics. Yet at the same time, as Christine Sylvester points out, ‘One field [development studies, of which dependency is part] begins where the other refuses to look’ (1999: 704). Dependency chooses a structuralist and socioeconomic perspective, seeing imperialism as tied to the unfolding of capitalism, whereas postcolonial theory favours a poststructuralist and cultural perspective, linking imperialism and agency to discourse and the politics of representation. Dependency’s politics is premised on state and class control of capitalist development; postcolonial theory’s on the subaltern subversion of orientalist discourses.

I shall not attempt, in this chapter, to reconcile or synthesize these differences. Rather, believing (and showing) them to be irreducible, I shall stage a mutual critique between the two by bringing their tensions — economy/capitalism versus culture/representation, structuralist versus poststructuralist politics — to productive crisis. Reading one against the other will help draw out the strengths and persuasiveness, but equally the limits, vulnerabilities, and blind spots, of both. Accordingly, after outlining the main arguments of, and similarities between, dependency and postcolonial theory, the chapter will stage their mutual critique. The fault lines of this mutual critique will be drawn principally around the status, if any, each gives to the issues of capitalism, culture, and agency.

Some brief programme notes on the characters in this staged mutual critique: I shall rely mainly, although not exclusively, on a close reading of the work of Frank and Cardoso/Faletto to treat dependency, and that of Said, Spivak, and Bhabha to treat postcolonial theory. While not representative of the entirety of their respective schools of thought, the writing of these theorists provides a sense of the variety, refinement, and even divergences within each school. Moreover, I shall ‘stage’ the mutual critique more in one direction than in the other: postcolonial theorists have commented on dependency and Marxist theory (albeit mostly on the latter); while the dependentistas, unable to enjoy this chronological advantage, cannot have (and have not) commented on postcolonial theory. I will attempt to redress this disadvantage by leaning on contemporary critics of postcolonial theory (e.g. Ahmad, Dirlik, O’Hanlon & Washbrook, Parry), whose mainly Marxist arguments conform at least in spirit to those of the dependentistas,¹ and who will serve, so to speak, as understudies.

Dependency

Andre Gunder Frank’s insights derive primarily from his critique of modernization’s ‘dual society’ thesis. This thesis holds that the ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ sectors of developing societies are independent. The former sector is modern because of its exposure to the outside capitalist world. The latter is ‘underdeveloped’ because it has lacked such exposure; but it can be modernized through the diffusion of ‘capital, institutions, values’ (Frank 1969: 4). Based primarily on research on Chile and Brazil (1967, 1969), Frank argues that, on the contrary, ‘underdevelopment is not due to the survival of archaic institutions and the existence of capital shortage … [but] is generated by the very same historical process which also [generates] economic development: the development of capitalism itself’ (1969: 9). Far from being separate, the modern and traditional sectors are ‘fully … integrated parts of the imperialist system’ (1969: 221). Latin America may have been ‘undeveloped’ in pre-colonial times, but it is ‘underdeveloped’ as soon as capitalism arrives on its shores. And it is this self-same underdevelopment that makes possible Europe’s modernization (1969: 4). Frank concludes that ‘Economic development and underdevelopment are the opposite faces of the same coin’ (1967: 9).

For Frank, imperialism is primarily about the appropriation of ‘economic surplus’, a process that begins when Brazil and Chile are colonized and that ends up integrating even the most isolated areas into the global capitalist system: ‘a whole chain of constellations of metropoles and satellites [or ‘peripheries’] relates all parts of the whole system from its metropolitan center in Europe or the United States to the farthest outpost in the Latin American countryside’ (1969: 6; cf. 226; 1967: 6-7, 10, 16). National development in the colonial and postcolonial periphery is thus severely constrained: the periphery is ‘condemned to underdevelopment’ (1967: 11).

Frank has little faith in the national bourgeoisie playing a progressive role even after political independence, believing it to be nothing more than a collaborator in imperialism. He writes that the

national bourgeoisie, where it can be said to exist, and indeed the entire national metropolis and capitalist system on which it thrives, are necessarily so inextricably linked into the imperialist system and the exploitative metropolis-periphery relationship it imposes on them that it cannot possibly escape from and can only extend and deepen the resulting underdevelopment.

(Frank 1969: 228-9; cf. 1967: xv, 118; 1972)

The only way forward, according to him, is socialism, to be arrived at through revolutionary ‘class struggle’ and even ‘guerrilla warfare’ (1969: 371-2, 402).

Like Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto adopt a ‘historical’ and ‘structural’ approach to dependency, viewing capitalism as a ‘world system’ (1971: x, xxi, 23). But their approach differs from Frank’s in being ‘dialectical’. They analyze dependency as a complex outcome of global capitalist relations: ‘We do not see dependency and imperialism as external and internal sides of a single coin, with the internal aspects reduced to the condition of “epiphenomenal”’ (1971: xv; cf. ix, 22, 173). Based on a number of Latin American case studies, they specify the varied and complex ways in which imperialism and capitalism manifest themselves, concluding that dependency is the result not of the ‘abstract “logic of capital accumulation” but … of particular relationships and struggles between social classes and groups at the international as well as at the local level’ (1971: xvii; cf. xiii, 173). This conclusion leads them to resist a ‘theory of dependent capitalism’ in favour of specific ‘situations of dependency’ (1971: xxiii).

Unlike Frank, who pays scant attention to social analysis, Cardoso and Faletto focus their study on how local social groups and practices reproduce and/or resist imperialism (in the post-colonial period).² They delineate two main dependency situations, one in which there is a relatively strong local state that allows for more national control of development, the other, an ‘enclave situation’, in which foreign interests dominate, thereby allowing for less national control. For Cardoso and Faletto, the type of local dependency is dictated by the specific nature of alliances among and between local and foreign classes, groups, and ideologies (labour, peasantry, national or collaborating bourgeoisie, state bureaucracy, landed/traditional oligarchies, the army, ethnic groups, nationalism, populism, multinational corporations, international financial systems, foreign states, etc.) (1971: xvi-xx, 17-18, 27, 174). For example, at times the ruling bourgeoisie may ally itself with foreign multinational corporate interests, while at other times it may seek an alliance with local classes/groups to better insulate itself from these foreign corporate interests. Of note here is Cardoso and Faletto’s articulation of what they call a ‘new dependency’, ushered in by the rise of mainly US multinational corporate power in Latin America after World War II (1971: xvii, xxii).

Cardoso and Faletto’s dialectical approach suggests various degrees of dependency, so that given the appropriate sociopolitical alignments, dependent relations can generate some growth and do not necessarily have to induce underdevelopment: ‘in spite of structural “determination,” there is room for alternatives in history’ (1971: xi). Cardoso thus speaks of ‘associated-dependent development’ (1973), and appears to be distinguishing himself from Frank when he writes that ‘it is possible to expect development and dependency’ (1972: 94, italics in original). But despite the possibility of some growth, he and Faletto end up in agreement with Frank when they advocate that Latin America’s dependency ties ultimately need to be broken by constructing ‘paths toward socialism’ (1971: xxiv; cf. 19). What such paths entail remains vague, although other dependentistas such as Celso Furtado (1970) suggest a move to more autonomous development through regional (Latin American) cooperation.

Postcolonial theory

In contrast to dependency, which relies on social science methodology and ‘field’ research, postcolonial theory emerges out of literary studies, disclosing its arguments based primarily (although not exclusively) on literary sources. Edward Said’s work (1978, 1993) builds on an analysis of Western novels (e.g. Austen, Conrad, Chateaubriand, de Nerval, Flaubert), travel/anthropological writing (Burton, de Sacy, Renan), opera (Verdi), and media (mainly in the US) to link Western imperialism with Western culture. This linkage produces what Said calls ‘Orientalism’. Orientalism is the systematic ‘body of theory and practice’ that constructs or represents the Orient (1978: 6; cf. 1993: xxiii; 1985: 248). By ‘theory’, Said means the Western imperial ‘episteme’ — the West’s intellectual and cultural production, including research, writing, ideas, arguments, images; and by ‘practice’ he denotes the accompanying sociocultural institutions and structures — the colonial administration, universities, museums, media, etc. (1978: 3, 5, 332).

While Said distinguishes between British and French imperial Orientalism, as well as between colonial and post-colonial Western Orientalism, he argues that there is general continuity in the way West and East are depicted (1978: 3-4, 201ff.). Westerners tend to be characterized as ‘rational, peaceful, liberal, logical … without natural suspicion’ (1978: 49) and Easterners as irrational, degenerate, primitive, mystical, suspicious, sexually depraved, and so on (1993: xi; 1978: 49, 172, 187-8, 190). What is important for him is that these representations are not neutral; drawing on Foucauldian discourse theory, he shows how they are laden with a ‘will to power’, a will ‘to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different … world’ (1978: 12). In this sense, Orientalism is the ‘enormously systematic discipline by which European culture [has been] able to manage — and even produce — the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period’ (1978: 3).

Although Said does later recognize it (1993: xii),³ ‘Orientalism’ tends to be an overly unifying and monolithic concept, at least as it is portrayed in his book Orientalism: it depicts colonial discourse as all-powerful and the colonial subject as its mere effect. This tendency is evident in the following statement: ‘because of Orientalism, the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action’ (1978: 3).⁴ And it is partly in response to this tendency that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi Bhabha make their respective interventions. While accepting the general idea of Orientalism, which Spivak indicates as the ‘“worlding” of what is today called “the Third World”’ (1985a: 247), both theorists show it to be ruptured and hybrid. Bhabha suggests that Said himself hints at, but leaves ‘underdeveloped’, this idea in Orientalism (1994: 73; cf. Young, R. 1990: 141-2). In fact, Bhabha makes ‘hybridity’ the keystone to his subsequent elaborations.

Hybridity describes the way in which colonial/imperial discourse is inherently unstable, ‘split’ in its ‘enunciation’, so that ‘in the very practice of domination the language of the master becomes hybrid’ (Bhabha 1994: 33). Bhabha illustrates this instability through an analysis of the ‘colonial stereotype’, which he considers an instance of the deployment of imperial authority. Applying a poststructuralist (in particular, a Lacanian⁵ psychoanalytic) lens to various colonial texts, Bhabha shows how these stereotypes — the ‘noble savage’, the ‘wily oriental’ — are meant to be accepted as ‘fixed’ and ‘natural’; yet they are endlessly and anxiously repeated and reconfirmed by the colonizer. Often the stereotypes are also contradictory: the colonial subject, Bhabha writes, is ‘savage (cannibal) and yet the most obedient and dignified of servants (the bearer of food); he is the embodiment of rampant sexuality and yet innocent as a child; he is mystical, primitive, simple-minded and yet the most worldly and accomplished liar’ (1994: 82; cf. 66, 85ff., 111). Such repetition, such ‘double inscription’, for Bhabha, betray the slipperiness and ambivalence of colonial discourse and authority (1994: 108).

Discursive instability has two important implications. First, it makes for agency. While critical of imperialism’s discursive violence, Spivak speaks of an ‘enabling violence’ (1996: 19; cf. 1988b: 198) and of the persistent transformation of ‘conditions of impossibility into possibility’ (1988b: 201). Similarly, Bhabha sees discourse as both ‘incitement and interdiction’ (1994: 72), its doubleness empowering: ‘The ambivalence at the source of traditional discourses on authority enables a form of subversion, founded on the undecidability that turns the discursive conditions of dominance into the grounds of intervention’ (1994: 112).

Bhabha conveys this subversive intervention by way of a number of colonizer– colonized encounters.⁶ For example, in the essay, ‘Of Mimicry and Man’, he writes about the colonizer’s attempt to promote a civilizing mission by creating ‘mimic men’, that is, recognizable and docile colonial subjects who are ‘almost the same, but not quite’ (1994: 86, italics in original). But this ambivalence (‘same’/‘not quite’) is exploitable: mimicry is easily camouflaged as mockery, with the colonial subject consequently subverting or refusing to simply repeat the master’s lessons. Rather than producing a controlled imitation or a managed response from the native, the civilizing mission elicits an answer back, a menacing look, a distorted and disturbing echo.

Bhabha provides contemporary illustrations of agency as well. He singles out, for example, the British group, Women Against Fundamentalism, for using the Rushdie affair, not to endorse or defend either Western liberalism or Islamic conservatism, but to draw attention to women’s issues (household inequality, education, prostitution), thereby ‘reconjugating, recontextualizing, translating the event into the politics of communities and public institutions’ (1995a: 114). Bhabha’s point, in these or other colonizer–colonized and migrant–metropolitan encounters, is to demonstrate that agency is a kind of cultural and ‘psychological guerrilla warfare’ (Moore-Gilbert 1997: 130). It involves estranging, contaminating, or misreading the master discourse, at times imposing suppressed knowledges and at others making unanticipated, slight alterations, with the overall effect of denying or subverting dominant authority.

It should be noted that such agency is emergent only from within the master discourse, a situation that Spivak describes as saying an ‘impossible “no” to a structure, which one critiques, yet inhabits intimately’ (1990c: 228). This means that there is unavoidable collusion and complicity between the colonizer and colonized (Spivak 1985b: 9; 1988b: 180). Not surprisingly, Bhabha repeatedly refers to subaltern agency as a form of ‘negotiation’ (1994: 25, 38, 185, 191). It also means that the agent cannot hearken back to pre-colonial, pre-orientalist discourse in search of an ‘authentic’ identity or out of ‘nostalgia for lost origins’ (Spivak 1988a: 291). According to both theorists, colonial discourse has forever marked colonized and ex-colonized societies (and for that matter colonial and excolonial powers), so that it is impossible to recuperate any identity uncontaminated by it. They thus warn of the dangers of direct opposition to dominant power, arguing that the result is often reverse Orientalism and racism or substitution of one power for another. Referring to Spivak, Bart Moore-Gilbert explains that ‘directly counter-hegemonic discourse is more liable to cancellation or even reappropriation by the dominant than a “tangential”, or “wild”, guerrilla mode of engagement. For this reason, too, she advocates the modes of “negotiation” and “critique”, which unsettle the dominant from within’ (1997: 85).

The second (and related) implication of the instability and ‘doubleness’ of discourse is that it enables the retrieval and recognition of difference. The object of postcolonial concern here is orientalist binary categorization (e.g. master– slave, colonizer–colonized, civilized–uncivilized, White–Black), into which the ‘Other’ is invariably incorporated. Postcolonialism seeks to preserve heterogeneity and to critique its aspersion or transcendence by any master discourse. Said likens this task to ‘counterpoint’ in baroque music, where several musical lines hold together without one dominating (1993: 51). Bhabha, for his part, coins ‘third space’ (1994: 37) as an in-between, incommensurable location in which minority or ‘supplementary’ discourses intervene to preserve their peculiarity. He also speaks of ‘time-lag’ as a way of validating different temporalities and ‘reconstructing other kinds of histories’ (1995b: 87). Here, metropolitan time (or Western ‘modernity’) is not allowed to be used as a standard or measuring rod for non-Western time(s) or ‘traditions’.

One of the principal ways in which difference is valorized is by focusing on the marginalized. This is evident in Bhabha’s above-noted work on the agency of the colonized and the migrant. But it is Spivak who may be said to emphasize it most. As a member of the Subaltern Studies Group (1988b: 197ff.), whose aim is to write history ‘from below’, Spivak declares her interest in ‘subsistence farmers, unorganized peasant labour, the tribals and communities of zero workers on the street or in the countryside’ (1988a: 288). But among these, she pays particular attention to the ‘disenfranchised woman’ whom she argues is the figure ‘most consistently exiled from episteme’ (1990a: 102-3; cf. 1985a, 1988a, 1993: 177ff.).

Paradoxically, while trying to retrieve the voice of the ‘gendered subaltern’, Spivak admits her failure. In perhaps her most famous text, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ (1988a), she concludes that the nineteenth-century sati (the widowed woman who immolates herself/is immolated) cannot speak because she is never empowered to speak. Her voice, as Chapter 3 will further illustrate, is always mediated and appropriated by others (the colonial administrator, patriarchical institutions, the academic intellectual, etc.). Spivak concludes that, nonetheless, the role of the postcolonial critic is to record this silence/disappearance so as to valorize the ‘difference’ revealed by the disenfranchised woman and to critique the domination of imperial and patriarchical discourses.

A postcolonial critique of dependency

Before I stage the mutual critique — the postcolonial critique of dependency and the dependentista critique of postcolonial theory — the common territory between the two must be briefly noted. For, in many ways, this common territory forms a basis for comparison, but it is also divided territory that will enable the mutual critique.

Perhaps, more than anything, what brings dependency and postcolonial theory together is their shared commitment precisely to critique. In their own fashion, both are counter-modernist and critical of Western liberalism. And this critique yields a correspondingly shared critical politics, aimed principally at arresting the status quo of liberal modernity. In response to the liberal/modernization tendency to explain the rest of the world in Euro-North American terms, each attempts to shift the focus to the ‘periphery’. As a reaction to the West’s tendency to neglect examining its past, each accentuates the study of colonial/imperial history for understanding modernity in the Third World and in the West. In this sense, analyzing history a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I Postcolonial insights?
• PART II Postcolonial complicity and self-reflexivity?
• PART III Postcolonial politics?
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography