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.