Postcolonial studies between the European wars: an intellectual history  

Timothy Brennan  

 

Ricardo gave a summary of the thinker’s work and opened the floor for discussion. 

 
 
Brennan is really interested in showing continuity in historical events and shaping, rather than an idea of history where there is a rupture. Reading of the text is spread out and can be perhaps understood in three essential parts 

1. Postcolonial studies as a ‘form of theory’. 

2. Interwar Marxism and Anti-colonial Liberation 

3. Discusses various cases of art and their interactions with non-western forms and influences.  

The troubled lineage of postcolonial theory 

Postcolonial studies as a ‘form of theory’: We discussed about the problems of postcolonial studies in academia and university systems and its troubled history. 

 
“Over time, this array of meanings amounted to a virtual ethics of poststructuralism, freely applied to diverse situations and investigative contexts with a rigorous conformity.” (186) 
 
We also stated the two problem postcolonial studies faces. One is the work happening through the lineage of philosophical borrowings from poststructuralism- which aims to end western dominance by bringing attention to differences (race, gender, power struggles etc) and other is the articulation of non-western conceptions, making space for them, marking anti-colonial leanings. The former, we discussed could be seen has separating postcolonial studies from its project of exposing Western dominance and giving voice to non-western forms of knowledge production. 
 
We then discussed about the former structure- where postcolonialism works with the poststructuralist frameworks, the impact and consequences of such a frame. We briefly discussed about how Derrida, Levinas (radically perhaps) criticize western metaphysics in their work but nonetheless still re-assert their Jewish origins through their work. Which is to say that Derrida and Levinas criticize eurocentrism but in a euro-centric way. Expanding on the above, we notice Nietzche’s genealogy too is ultimately concerned with defending eurocentrism.  

“What writers like Emmanuel Levinas or Jacques Derrida left out of their parochial fixations on the Graeco-German West constructed by Romanticism (the object tirelessly exposed in their writing) is much less pertinent than their vigorous prolongment of European superi­ority in the guise of an anti-Eurocentric critique that has rarely been called by its rightful name (Bernasconi 1998, Critchley 1995)” (187) 

The drive of to broaden postcolonial theory (postwar) is brought into the picture as a suggestion. Originality of discussion is a theme, a way of working many postcolonial scholars pick up. 

 

Interwar Marxism and Anti-colonial Liberation 

Brennan singles out 1880 to 1939 as time that ‘angry colonial’ were taking up arms and drawing the attention to theorists working on race, modernity and city etc.  

Two forces stand out particularly- cross cultural contacts and political unease with colonial system. 

We discussed about the impact of Russian revolution that Brenna in his article is trying to invoke and how he connects it to the beginnings of an anti-colonial feeling. (196) We found that the focus on third internationalists and the interpretation of Marxism in this localized forms and expressions to be really fascinating (193). 
 
Discusses various cases of art and their interactions with non-western forms and influences 

Brennan discusses various cases of art where non-western art forms touches on western arts and shapes its formation. Walter Benjamin, Bataille’s examples are discussed. However, we also note that these art formations or influences of non-western forms can be also read as sites of appropriation, as a modality of consumption (by the colonizer’s gaze, and because of their economic capacity to co-opt, take, appropriate creative forms to theirs) 
 
The conclusion ends with an appeal to Bataille’s concept of economy and the limits of Marxism. We also notified how he made naïve references to non-western cultures in his writing and can be seen as perhaps a rather amateur thinker, but it is also this amateurishness that has a certain appeal, an influence on the way he writes and thinks without in-depth analytical analysis of theories in an academic way, one can say. 

 

 

 
Other Points 

In our discussion we first talked about the question of how we can begin to think of history of the anti-colonial movement/sentiment. We also grappled with the question of history in relation to anti-colonial origins in different places. 

Secondly, we discussed historical materialism and its linkage to anti-colonial sentiment. We noticed that Brennan has been perhaps deliberately critical of few things in his writing than others. Which is to say that the writings on some pieces has not evoked the same sentimentality. For example, it seems like there is a special emphasis in his work on Russian Revolution and its linkage (almost as an originary point for anti-colonial sentiment).  

Around this we had various views, and we were troubled about the politics of purity (which is to negate any post structural thoughts and influences) but also, we wondered about the conceptual (Eurocentric) frames that perhaps never get questioned. How do we reconcile these issues and think of history and postcolonial frameworks? 

Some of us didn’t see Brennan’s reading to be accurate which was that postcolonial thinking does not deal or acknowledge the debt of Marxism. Brennan almost points out to it in in a way that shows that Marxism is heavily repressed whereas it was noted that in the works of Said, Leela Gandhi, Spivak, they have time and again acknowledged the Marxist understandings and leanings (in their various work). 

We also discussed that this kind of a rupture-less historical knitting and the stakes of it. The narrative of Russian revolution as the sole beginning of anti-colonial sentiment might hold problem that we began our discussion early on, who does the work of decolonizing and perhaps may raise ethical epistemic question in due course. We also reflected on the question of ‘theory of postcolonialism’ and said that it is impossible to perhaps have a unified pregiven singular origin or theory of colonialism and post coloniality for a given place, because it manifests itself quite differently in different geo-political spaces, cultures, etc.  

Limitations to Decolonization seen from the Irish Neoliberal Ecological Regime

 In the meeting of November 17th, Katherine presented the article “World-Ecology and Ireland: The Neoliberal Ecological Regime” written by Sharae Deckard. This text bridges together analysis of world-system theory (influences primarily by Immanuel Wallerstein) that have been used to study Ireland as a periphery with Jason Moore’s world-ecological paradigm. One of the questions Katherine presented at the end of her presentation was to rethink sovereignty in the contrast of territorial sovereignty versus natural resources sovereignty. We started the conversation with a question about the colonial history of Ireland and how to think and characterize the native population of Ireland, whether they are consider indigenous and the role that race, identity and culture plays in the characterization of the Irish. Katherine shared a brief overview of the long history of colonization of Ireland and the difficulties of qualifying the Irish as indigenous. Some key points of this historical revision were: 

- How Ireland was Britain first colony and how Britain established the first plantations in Ireland. 

- The long history of invasion and dispossession in Irish land where religion differences played an important role in informing colonial tactics and rhetoric to systematic disposed the catholic Irish (example: Penal laws).

- Racialization of Irish share similar racist tropes as the racialization of non-white colonized people that animalized and inferiorized Irish people, even though there might not be much phenotypical differences with the Britain. 

- Racial formation in Britain changed with its colonial relationship in the US and the enslavement of Africans. 

-  The case of Ireland not only complicate what we understand of race but of how we understand more broadly colonialism. 

Following the general discussion about colonialism in Ireland but also going back to the text we puzzled with the question of what is specific about colonization that can be distinguish from primitive accumulation? In the account presented by Deckard, how is an ecological account of colonization different from an economic/materialist analysis? What is specific about the world ecological analysis that can be distinguished from other Marxist approach? How to understand colonialism today in relationship to economic system like financial neoliberalism and capitalism? Part of the problem that we encounter is that in different approaches to the question of colonialism there seems to be a split between an approach that is more epistemological versus an approach that is economic and political. The challenge is to combine both analyses. This article also challenges some preconception we have about disciplines. In this case is a materialist, ecological, political analysis coming from a scholar that works in English studies. Another example of crossing academic boundaries is environmental humanity that are incorporating colonial theory. Images and metaphors have material implications. One example is the representation of Ireland “Greenness” as an icon of colonization through the deforestation that open the path for cattle and industrial capitalist agriculture. 

The conversation continued with the question about the limitations of pursuing localized process of independence or decolonization when one considers the political and economic structures that regulates exchange, commerce, and economic relations among nations. This brings the question of how to decolonize within a global capitalist system that is colonial and imperialist. This challenges projects of decolonization that are partial. From this perspective, it seems, decolonization, to be sustainable, needs to have a globalized approach. Decolonizing beyond borders brings again the challenge of creating and sustaining networks of solidarity outside of capitalist accumulation. The difficulty of thinking of how decolonization works and how we decolonize today is to account for the entanglement of economy and politics between the local and the global. We consider the importance of not falling in a dichotomy between systematic change and local changes. The challenge is how to act and think in the entanglement of local realities that are part of global economies and political networks. 

Disability, Queer Exceptionalism and Setter-Colonialism

Last week, we continued our discussion about settler colonialism with a focus on Israel-Palestine. We discussed chapter 3 of Jasbir Puar’s book The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. The following ideas of this chapter stood out to us:

 

Analysis of settler-colonialism from the lens of bio-politics: Puar’s analysis can be distinguished from the majority of body of work on settler-colonialism in that it is not merely an investigation of material conditions, political territories or cultural ideologies but uses Foucault’s notion of biopolitics to investigate the complex ensemble of practices that aim to control population through the deployment of modern technologies.

 

The coloniality of disability: Puar looks at the under-studied theme of disability in the context of settler-colonialism and shows how the notion of health is constituted by normative colonial ideas that render the racialized colonized groups a target of biopolitical domination.

 

Problematization of queer exceptionalism: Puar unmasks the colonial dynamics that shape queer politics, especially in the way that it is deployed by imperialist and colonial states. The concept Pink-Washing points to the ideological mechanisms in which the supposed existence of queer liberation gives legitimation to the colonial state, masking the ways in which queerness is deployed in racially determinate ways that marginalize and oppress queer people of color.

 

We decided to continue this conversation by looking at other geographies in order to explore parallels that might help us establish new ways of thinking about decolonial solidarity.

Moving away from damage-centered research and confronting sovereignty

In our meeting on October 27th Audrey presented the text “Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities”, written by Eve Tuck. Here Tuck is calling for a moratorium in a type of researched that she identifies as “damage-centered” that defines communities by their experiences of pain and oppression. As Tuck says, “In damaged-centered research, one of the major activities is to document pain or loss in an individual, community and tribe.” (p.413) Even though they situate their analysis in the history of exploitation of those communities, Tuck observes that “the danger in damage-centered research it is a pathologizing approach in which the oppression singularly defines a community.” (p.413). One alternative Tuck presents is a research that is based on desire rather than damage. Desire-based research allow to account for the complexities and contradiction of communities. While it recognizes the pain and loss of those communities, it accounts for the hopes, visions and humanity of the lives of the people. In doing so, it sees them more than broken people. 

Kate opened the discussion with a question about the idea of sovereignty in the indigenous context. At the end of the text Tuck introduce the centrality of the idea of sovereignty within the desire-based framework. 

"We can practice our sovereignty within a framework of desire but cannot within a damage framework. By this I mean that a framework of desire recognizes our sovereignty as a core element of our being and meaning making, a damage framework excludes this recognition." (p.423)

We spent time trying to flesh out the idea of sovereignty, how do we think about it beyond Modern political narratives, and the difficulty of thinking about sovereignty without the logics of coloniality. One of the problems we identify with the idea of sovereignty is how it has been attached to ideas of the modern State, absolute authority, and ownership.  We discussed about the difficulty of understanding the concept in different contexts in relation to the US indigenous context: in the case of India, in the Palestine-Israel conflict, and in Irish history. 

There are some differences to consider in the Indigenous context. First, sovereignty is tied to the land, but not in the logic of ownership, but rather in a form of relational convivence with land, that could be understood with an idea of stewardship. Sovereignty manifests itself through the land, practices, bodies, stories and traditions. Second, we should think sovereignty in regard to the communities, as a defense of a way of living of those who belong to the community. In this sense, sovereignty can be understood as a way to assert and affirm community and culture. Here one should be aware the inadequacy of modern concepts of the individual, but as Tuck mentions, we should think more of the contradictions and multiplicity of ‘complex personhood’. Third, sovereignty and survival are strongly linked. Due to the history of settler colonialism, claims to sovereignty can be understood as a defense for the survival of the communities and tribes. There are more complexities about the relationship between members of a tribe, the belonging to a community, the recognition of tribes as nations and the relationship between different tribes in the context of US Native American history that are beyond the scope of this summary. 

Some of the challenges we faced with this discussion is recognizing the pervasiveness of modern European concepts to think the realities of different colonial communities and experiences. We talk of this difficulty as not only a linguistic and philosophical one, but also as a historical and geopolitical one. There are challenges when we attempt to apply ideas such as sovereignty in context with different colonial histories, political, economic, geographical, linguistic and cultural differences. Puja called to be careful with the problems of ‘incommensurability’, and the limitations/possibilities of reimagining a concept as sovereignty. In some contexts, such as possibly Kashmir, it might not be productive to apply a concept as sovereignty. Is important then to attend issues in their historic, cultural, economic, and geopolitical specificity. 

Lastly, we closed with questions about solidarity that takes seriously the need to move beyond damage-centered frameworks. How is it possible to build solidarity that is not based on injury? Beyond a common wound? We thought about the possibilities of coming together in our aspirations, desires, and longings. We opened the possibility of building solidarity with the desire to open new possibilities and doing a productive work of reimagination…. 

The Coloniality of Language and the possibilities of a Decolonial Communication

 

This week, Rosa presented the article "A coalitional approach to theorizing decolonial communication", written by Gabriela Veronelli. We have wondered previously on the thought- how would a decolonial communication look like (especially how to communicate such that we do not appropriate the epistemologies, cosmologies in the margins). More importantly, how can a dialogue be facilitated amongst the marginalized groups. In both cases, we have seemed to come to a sort of impasse. This article was selected with such an existing dialogue and prevalent narrative in our minds.

The article draws on a decolonial approach to communication. It involves in the understanding of possibilities of an inter-cultural dialogue. It raises important questions that seem long due (and yet which govern) the decolonial logistics in communication. The author does a great job of assuming possibilities in various frame-works of decolonial thinkers but also being equally critical of them, thus showing us (pushing us) for the need to a new model to re-think our ways of negotiations in relating to Self-Other and hence of communication. She clearly invokes a transcendence from merely an epistemic conceptual talk about an ‘intercultural approach’ to what would such a dialogue look like, in the real world with what she refers as ‘real people’. The author takes on the frameworks of Dussel and Mignolo for her analysis (but we in our discussions do not go in a very detailed analysis of that part). We understand and note that the author’s position is primarily of taking these decolonial scholars and establishing a fine critique of their epistemic positionality.  And by pointing out how they operate significantly at a macro level of epistemic projects, Gabriela Veronelli creates a special space for recognizing what she terms as the common people, the real people. It is in this move, that we go back and reflect on her deeper take on the notion of communication here.

On page 405, the author notes (and Rosa directed us there) to some pertinent question, essential to the navigation of this project.

Decolonial futures don’t have words yet; they don’t have a “how”: How would these networks of exchange of people thinking and living against coloniality be formed? What are the conditions of possibility of this pluriversal movement? Would it be necessary to establish conditions for these dialogues? Among whom would they be? Would they include the oppressor? What languages would be spoken? How would nonverbalized knowledge be recognized? The call for plurality and critical intercultural dialogue is there; the idea of pluriversality is there. It is a nice idea. The question is how to go about it. Is it necessary to decolonize dialogue itself.

 

It seems that the author suggests that coloniality restricts and limits our modalities of communication. Once we understand that, there is a need to re-imagine a new form of dialogue. Talking about coloniality of language and speech on page 408, the author throws light on the linguistic element and coloniality of power. She teases out, quite brilliantly, how the process of racialization affects the consolidation of language. Not only that, there is pernicious attempt of dehumanization, racialization, and linguist stripping through coloniality – all processes disfiguring the birth of not only existence but speech. Thus, the author outlines how a space of fracture and birth of a seemingly new subjectivity happens through the consequence of colonial difference. Teasing out the challenges with coloniality of language, the author points to the production of coloniality of mistrust. And the choice of mediation through the colonizer, a state utterly problematic (as elaborated on page 411). The author proposes a nondialogical understanding of communication that moves beyond the colonial and rationalistic understanding of the encounter of two logos (dia-logue), moving to a more emotional and affective perspective with Lugones and Glissant. We noted that Glissant is not only helpful here to illuminate a different understanding of ‘relations’ but that in his thinking we might find possibilities of averting a teleological method of communicating (which is helpful because it does not allow the colonial logic to replicate itslef further).

 

We opened the floor with some important question based on the readings above. We tried to gauge if Gabriella in her article has underestimated the project that Dussel or Mignolo had in mind. To elaborate further, we wondered if the realm of sensibilities of the real people that the article seems to indicate as the space where organic exchange ought to happen at the cost of the political? Clearly, Dussel and Mignolo have political considerations here when they talk about decoloniality. We also looked at a particular quote on page 417, to understand what the author makes of communication to be this organic, non-willful exchange that is happening in what she has seemed to indicate as a different space. “There is no need to think here of willfulness or resistant consciousness. The possibility that the "Echos-monde” opens to engaging complex communications is neither a linear nor agential sense of communication, but, rather, an uncertain one. Opacities need to be preserved and one is never sure of understanding them.”

 

We had different views on this quote. Some of us felt that this quote signifies to a crack that is often left out in the larger discourses guided by larger structures of power. Things that are not said because they cannot be said does not mean that they do not have agency. In fact, it is a limit of defamiliarization in communication and perhaps the inability our epistemic positionality to grasp. We discussed how the quote challenges a theory that arises bereft of community. Often, we take theory to the margins, whereas perhaps the author is throwing light to an important element by saying that communication is already, always happening. Outside academia and theory, in various forms, through art and literature, preservation by being ordinary. The need to let these communications unfold. We at the same time wondered about the lack of what we from our positionality might term as ‘the political project’ (what some of us think as Glissant’s position.) We also wondered if her and Glissant’s position is normative or descriptive.

 

We came to understand rather that it is a synthesis of both. The moment we idealize Glissant’s position, we fall ourselves into the trap of a colonial linear idea of time where we think of solutions as mostly normative. Linearity of time is not helpful to think when it comes to coloniality. Maybe Glissant is opting out of this framework by/through/via his writing. We also recognize that we might be in a trap. We operate under both forms of time- linear and cyclic as we think about coloniality. Hence, we struggle to find a ‘political solution’ to the project of decoloniality and at the same time understand that relationality is happening (organically) at some level for some individuals and even for us. Our worlds are, as precursors, as forerunners, because of our history- a parable of two times. A linear modernity with a need of politics and a cyclic time where we are continually operating through this struggle.

 

There is another question that arises in terms of understanding Glissant, and the notion of rootedness and indigeneity. We conclude that Glissant’s position on relationality is difficult to grapple with, but if understood in its entirety and complexity, will show us how it is an appeal to a rhizomatic thinking. He is never writing devoid of the relationality with the land and language. Everything is coming together in his process of understanding relationality- the historical process, the land, the language, modes of being, etc.

 

We understand that this relationality that is operating through various forms of time translates itself in communication and resistance in various ways. It manifests in different areas in different situations. And this different translation reiterates a point made previously too, that how not only communication but decolonization will appear to manifest differently in different parts of the world. Say for someone it might mean, political juridical decolonization, for some bodies, it might mean economic reforms. For some other bodies it might mean claiming back language, revitalization, re-establishing cultural signifiers. This also suggests how and what we understand as ‘political’ might mean different things on the map given where we are located and what we do.

 

However, we do understand that underlining all this is an idea of a ‘community’. But we also wonder about how decolonization would looks for those geo-political spaces where there is multiple position of subjects such that there is still no community formed. Here we discuss about the dangers of national narratives that run through the logic of blatant homogenization of communities. We feel that in case of varied multiplicity, if establishing a commune is dreary, what can still count as a way of unification is deciding what are we against. We do not know if such a thinking will appeal to all bodies, singularities, and subjectivities but we recognize that solidarity across myriad differences have happened. We think the history of solidarity would be a useful literature to turn to, to understand how communities based on understanding solidarity were actually and materially established. Next week, we plan to tease out the notion of community further.

(Notes taken by Puja)

Discussing Concepts of Cross-Cultural Communication

 

For October 13th, we read and discussed “Cultural Alterity: Cross-Cultural Communication and Feminist Theory in North-South Contexts” by Ofelia Schutte. 

Published in 1998, “Cultural Alterity” draws on postcolonial feminist theory and phenomenological ontology to propose methods for embracing rather than obscuring incommensurabilities in dialogues across gendered and racialized hierarchies, particularly those in the academic contexts in the USA. Schutte concludes that alterity is productive, and incommensurability needs to be maintained in cross-cultural dialogues. To do this, Schutte proposes postcolonial feminist frameworks as a mode of communication that tracks difference without dispelling or attempting to resolve that difference.

Implicit questions that Schutte raises are: What distinction is there between the dominant position and that of the subaltern? To what extent are these two terms overlapping, relational, or non-essential? In a condition of sameness, how does alterity emerge? Is the burden on marginalized others to unsettle normative, dominant identities?

Our discussion of the text began with a clarification of terms, namely, how Schutte was using the idea of “the split self.” We talked about the psychoanalytical, postcolonial, and feminist theory implications of this term, which led to a conversation about the stakes of Schutte’s argument. That is, what are the consequences of listening? Is it possible? Since the burden of the split in colonial contexts is imposed on colonized others by the dominant group/discourse, a conversation that decenters and splits the dominant position remains uneven. 

Such persisting colonial hierarchies turned the conversation toward the material stakes of tensions and contradictions between ethics and politics. Philosophies of ethics upon which Schutte draws (e.g., Habermas and Levinas) obscure some of the material and political implications of cross-cultural dialogue. Group members pointed out how ethics examines how the split is happening and establishing the Self and Other but does not give us the conditions as to why this split exists in ways that perhaps Foucault would offer. Oppression only ends with the change to social reality and not through communication. 

Building on this, questions of larger social realities and their material implications also came up for discussion, particularly in how European philosophy is often more ethical than political. We talked about how ethical questions implicitly invoke Euro-centric forms of humanism, materialism, and modernity to discuss colonial contexts. Group members noted how the ethical question thus posits an implicitly white, western subject as needing to become cognizant of how different colonial projects independently create the many outsides writers are imply in theoretical texts.

The conversation concluded with questioning Schutte’s understanding of solidarity and how we can critically position philosophical traditions in our own readings of various theoretical texts on postcolonial or decolonial methodologies. We finished by discussing what to read next week. We’ll continue discussing communication by reading Gabriela Veronelli’s “A Colonial Approach to Theorizing Decolonial Communication” for October 20th.

Continuing the Conversation on Solidarity- The Local and the Universal

 

 Last week, we continued our conversation on solidarity and focused on chapter four and chapter 6 in Mohanty’s text Feminism without Borders. 

 

Rosa presented on chapter four, Sisterhood, Coalition, and the Politics of Experience. She summarized and highlighted the main points by asking the following questions: 

How do we think about difference in feminist discourse? “Feminist analyses that attempt to cross national, racial, and ethnic boundaries produce and reproduce difference in particular ways. This codification of difference occurs through the naturalization of analytic categories that are supposed to have cross-cultural validity.” (pg. 107) 

Where do we situate commonality? Mohanty points out commonalty is often found along two threads- women as victims or women as truth tellers. She argues instead that discourse around difference must be self- conscious of its production of notions of difference and experience. (pg.  119) 

Do we need a form of commonality to have communication and coalition? Mohanty argues “for a politics of engagement rather than a politics of transcendence.” (pg. 122) 

Puja presented on chapter 6, Women Workers and the Politics of Solidarity. This chapter focuses on the exploitation of poor “third world” women and their agency as workers. Puja highlighted these main points:

Capitalism makes certain women consumers and other producers.  “The fact of being women with particular racial, ethnic, cultural, sexual, and geographical histories has everything to do with our definitions and identities as workers.” (pg. 142) 

The class struggle is a strategic move that pits people against each other. Instead of an intersectional approach, racism, sexism and classism are treated as separate issues that do not inform each other. 

The problem with qualifying work as “women’s work”. “Ideologies of domesticity, femininity, and race form the basis of the construction of the notion of ‘women’s work’ for Third World women in the contemporary economy… women’s work is defined as unskilled, tedious, and supplementary activity for mothers and homemakers. It is a specifically American ideology of individual success, as well as local histories of race and ethnicity that constitute this definition.”(pg. 158) 

 

In response to these presentations, the question was asked, “to what degree is solidarity a personal or impersonal phenomena?” This question occupied the remainder of our discussion time. 

(Notes by Audrey)