In this meeting Katherine guided the discussion of the text “Postcolonial Studies After the Invasion of Iraq” by Neil Lazarus.
We discuss the critique this piece makes to postcolonial studies, particularly its lack of analysis of capitalism, imperialism and political events that are contemporary to their writers. One of the questions that opened the discussion is how we are limited and restricted in doing postcolonial and decolonial research within the neoliberalization of the university and scholarly research. Lazarus text’s questions the avoidance of engaging with the political reality of imperialism by postcolonial studies as a discipline: “scholars in postcolonial studies have consistently failed to recognize the unremitting actuality and indeed the intensification of imperialist social relations in the times and spaces of the postcolonial world” (p.16) There are some scholars that do engage in a historical and deep analysis of the contemporary crisis, but they are dissidents of their own discipline.
One of the reactions and questions to Lazarus' critique is that is not clear who are the postcolonial scholars that avoid analyzing the imperialist politics of the present. Although he mentions Homi Bhabha, this does not necessarily entail that there are not postcolonial scholars that engage in a Marxist and materialist analysis of the present. Part of the concern with this text is that the generality of the critique can project a stereotypical reading of diverse postcolonial scholars. For example, Said has written about imperialism and Spivak has taken a Marxist approach in some of the texts. However, part of the critique is how postcolonial research has been institutionalized which have prevented a more robust discussion of, for example, US imperialism.
We discuss about the challenges, difficulties, and risks in engaging in critique to US imperialism, and the consequences that can bring, not only to individual scholars, but also to the field. One example of this is the institutional expressions against Critical Race Theory, and how the previous administration discussed banning from schools the 1619 Project. Another example is how there is not enough work done about the Middle East in postcolonial studies and how this can become a sensitive topic when it touches topics such as radicalization and US intervention in the Middle East. Lastly, there are consequences that scholars have faced (like losing teaching positions) for researching and advocating in favor of Palestine and against US and Israel settler colonialism and imperialist violence in the region. We discuss those constraints, but also how scholars that take those risks are pushing the boundaries of what can be criticized within the academia and the possibilities of doing radical work from their research and activism.
Lastly, we had a conversation about the limitations of postcolonial and decolonial studies in terms of the overall limitations that disciplines face due to the hyper specialization and professionalization that is promoted in the university. We discuss of the need of more interdisciplinary work to be able to develop a more complex understanding of the problems that we are committed to study: colonialism, imperialism, immigration, capitalism, Islamophobia, etc. Postcolonial and Decolonial research are inherently interdisciplinary, they need to engage with history, economy, politics, literature, Marxism, and any approach that allows us a better understanding of the systems of domination in the past and the present.
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