Postcolonial theory and wheel-spinning

I hesitate to publish this response, because I worry it is too negative. Perhaps given some distance from the texts, I might feel differently. But my response to today's reading was primarily frustration. It seems like every article we have read for this micro seminar says much of the same thing; the Western hegemonic discourse is bad, incorporating non-Western theory and literary works are good. Other scholars have tried their best, and some of them have done well explaining certain parts of this Euro-centricism, but inevitably, they all somehow perpetuate the hegemonic discourse in some way. Spivak beats Eagleton and other scholars over the head with this perpetuation in her Literature chapter, all the while responding (primarily in the footnotes) to criticisms of her own work. In Krishnaswamy's article, he criticizes not only Spivak, but theories on the subaltern in general by saying, "theories associated with subaltern studies and postcolonial studies have not fared much better in their attempts to analyze or evaluate Dalit literature, in part because these theoretical models are dominated by the binary colonizer and colonized, and in part because they are overly reliant on a terminology of mobility and hybridity" (414). Of course, Shih's article implicitly, if not explicitly, criticizes postcolonial studies for not being able to accommodate the liminal nature of Taiwanese culture. But it seems like much of this is just patting themselves on the back. Are we ever going to accomplish the kind of teaching and discussion of world theories that each of these articles proposes? If left up to the scholars of these three articles, I don't know. I hesitate to speculate about Shih, considering I only have read the introduction to a book-length discussion of Taiwanese hybridity. But at the very least, it seems Spivak's chapter does not offer any real solutions for confronting this imperial discourse. Though Krishnaswamy offers examples of latent, emergent, and alternative explicit literary theories that could be included in pedagogy, he fails to provide a model or a method for integrating these works and avoiding Euro-centricism. He himself cites the Norton Anthology's overwhelming proportion of white, male theorists to minority theorists ( fifteen out of over 140 theorists), but acknowledges the Norton's attempt to become more inclusive. Though he clearly sees their current efforts to include any minority or non-Western theory as a failure, he does not offer any ideas on how his suggestions for non-Western theory can be incorporated. With the best intentions of talking about these thinkers, but without a methodology for integration (or timeline, for that matter, demonstrating at what point we will have conquered Eurocentricism) offered convincingly by any of the post-colonial writers we've encountered so far, I wonder if his attempts to "initiate such an epistemologically inclusive and methodologically open-ended study of 'world literary knowledges'" will succeed, or if they will end up in the same boat as the Norton Anthology: trying hard, but still failing (408). 

Spivak Quotes and Thoughts

Just some quotes and a few thoughts for this week from the Spivak chapter.

First, a baffling one: “The broad strokes of my presuppositions are that what is at stake, for feminist individualism in the age of imperialism, is precisely the making of human beings, the constitution and ‘interpellation’ of the subject not only as individual but also as ‘individualist.’ This stake is represented on two registers: childrearing and soul-making.” (116) I can see women’s role child-rearing as the making of individuals, but I don’t understand what women have to do with soul-making, which is far as I understand it, is a reference to the imperialist discourse of granting humanity to citizens and “savages.” Also, I have no idea what the term “individualist” is doing here.

Here is something that I took as a kind of thesis statement... sort of. “No perspective critical of imperialism can turn the other into a self, because the project of imperialism has always already historically refracted what might have been an incommensurable and discontinuous other into a domesticated other that consolidates the imperialist self.” (130) The second clause is what I take to be a thesis (beginning with “the project of imperialism...”), but I cannot figure out how this logically fits with negation in the first clause: “No perspective critical of imperialism.”

“But it is of course Victor Frankenstein, with his strange itinerary of obsession with natural philosophy, who offers the strongest demonstration that the multiple perspectives of the three-part Kantian subject cannot cooperate harmoniously if woman and native informant are allowed into the enclosure.” (136) This sounds very compelling, and I’m willing to believe that it is, but I do not see where the proof for this is. It doesn’t seem to be in the paragraph before, about the character Clerval in Frankenstein, nor in the sentences that follow, about the categorical and hypothetical imperatives.

This next one I have a little more to say about, from 138: “The sheer social reasonableness of the mundane voice of Shelley’s ‘Genevan magistrate’ reminds us that the radically other cannot be selfed, that the monster has ‘properties’ that will not be contained by ‘proper’ measures: ‘I will exert myself’ he says, ‘and if it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear... that this will be impracticable.’” This is interesting since it is not about the positive affirmation of a “wild” subject, but rather it is about the inability for the dominant system of law to adequately provide punishment. Still, the extension from man-made monster to man-made “subject” (the native, Caliban), seems fraught with trouble. For one, there is the obvious difference of a reanimated person and a discovered person, even if the discovered one is considered savage. Second of all, is the problem is really about the “humanization” of anyone, monster or subaltern, than what do we get by examining the subaltern that we can’t get form examining Frankenstein’s monster? In other words, this passage does not really help us understand what I take to be Spivak’s mission, which is highlighting the specific case of what happens to the effacement involved in “naming” and “humanizing” of the subaltern subject.

From 155. Spivak writes off a student’s attempt to give an ethical reading to Baudelaire’s “negress.” The student suggests that “Baudelaire meant to focus on her predicament as being exiled without history or geography.” Just wondering what everyone thought about this. To me the student’s opinion seemed plausible.

Lastly, I found the conclusion strange. We read several texts, but it ends with just a wrap up of Foe. What’s the rationale for this kind of non-conclusion?

Reading notes 03/03 & Questions

Spivak

• Reading 19th cen. British literature with Imperialism in mind
• List of Texts: 
• Jane Eyre-Wide Sargasso Sea-Frankenstein: read from context of imperialism 
• Caliban vs. Ariel
• Mahasweta Devi: Pterodactyl
• Baudelaire: Le cygne
• Kipling: William the Conquerer
• East India Company directors discussion
• Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, Roxana
• Coetzee: Foe
• Colonialism vs. neo-colonialism vs. post-colonialism

Shih

• Utopic vs. dystopic globalization 
• Utopic: freedom, subjectivity, flexibility, hybridity, multiplicity 
• Dystopic: disparity, neo-colonisation, exploitation, “lowest cultural denominator” (American pop culture) = Americanization 
• Global: explicit and implicit universal
• Local: particular embodiment of difference and otherness
• The “Taiwan question”
• Taiwan marginalized in post-colonial discussions because it was colonized by Asian instead of Western powers
• Perspectives
• Liao Pinghui: How to not talk about Taiwan in terms of postcoloniality, postmodernity, and globalization 
• Ko Yufen: Consumption and globalization, Hello Kitty as product of ex-colonizer 
• Liou Liangya: Queer representation in Taiwan fiction that opens up conflicting space between Western and Taiwanese queerness
• Yue Mingbao: Diasporic longing for national community 
• Kelly Kuo: Critique of multiculturalism-very true (affirmative action?)
• What would Shih have to say about Taiwan in 2014? Especially since it is probably more culturally influential now than it was in 2003. 

Krishnaswamy

• Postcolonialism simply response to the West? 
• Death of cmlit? What does this mean? 
• Krishnaswamy's solution: World literary knowledges
• “Radically re-vision question of what counts as theory in the first place” 
• Anti and post colonialism only dented Eurocentric practices
• “Knowledges”: indicates local or indigenous epistemologies that have been marginalized by Western high theory
• Proposition: regional, subaltern, popular traditions studied alongside canonic and counter-canonic traditions

Outline and Interpretation of Shu-Mei Shih's "Globalisation and the (in)significance of Taiwan"

Outline and Interpretation of Shu-Mei Shih's "Globalisation and the (in)significance of Taiwan"

Globalization

·      Utopic

o   Free, flexible

·      Dystopic

o   “homogenize world cultures and replace them with lowest common denominator” (pg. 143)

·      Taiwan is neither of the above— it is caught in the “ in between” of extremes: forgotten for its insignificance (pg. 144)

o   Because not colonized by West, Taiwan does not enter realm of post-colonial thought

§  In this way, is post-colonialism still a selfish view of the west? Looking only at what we have influenced, and disregarding study of those not on our immediate radar.

·      “It was the close of British colonialism and Hong Kong’s retrocession to China in 1997 that made imperative, and, some say, viable, a space for Hong Kong cultural studies.” (pg. 144) == only after West’s connection, did Hong Kong become “worth studying”

§  In order to survive in the world, necessary to globalize—but do not have luxury of time to stop and consider how to do so in the best way (pg. 147)

·      “Farewell China”

o   Taiwan separate from China in political and national identity, but mixed in economy and culture (pg. 147)

§  Results in confused dilemma that seeks to race toward western globalization (pg. 148)

§  “The question for Taiwan to solve is how one can partake of an ethnic Sino-Chinese heritage without having to be part of China” (pg. 149)

o   If Taiwan neither connects to Chinese nor “Taiwan nativism” completely, with what should it culturally identify? What should it accept? The globalization gives the easy answer of filing the void with a westernized society—but is there a way to reconcile without complete surrender to that? (pg. 149)

·      In search of inauthenticity

o   Taiwan is neither Chinese nor Japanese culture; the forced identification to one or the other will only end in inevitable futility and disappointment (Wu Chuoliu’s example) (pg. 150)

§  Need to instead “dis-identify” with those completely, and from here the acceptance of a new, mixed culture is possible

·      “The death of the subject, here no longer metaphorical but literal, spells out the necessity of dis-identification (not simple counter-identification), upon the basis of which new collective imaginings of a non-authentic multi- culture may be possible.” (pg. 150)

§  “Taiwan’s abject status may paradoxically help spur new imaginings of transculturalism while avoiding the many pitfalls of multiculturalism.” (pg. 152) – the fact that Taiwan is in such a marginalized position may prove to be the very thing that saves it; as other cultures look at the difference in order to solidify their own identity (binary); thus, the more other cultures reify their identity through Taiwan, the more Taiwan does, indeed, develop an identity—based upon inauthenticity, rather than a forced identification

Spivak and Ibn Tufayl

        In the second chapter of A Critique of Postcolonial Reason Gayatri Spivak uses Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and J. M. Coetzee's Foe to discuss the native informant and the “figuration of the wholly other as margin” (Spivak, 174). I want to highlight some ways this analysis can be placed it in conversation with Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan, by placing these texts in conversation with one another in terms of their discourse on the margin/subaltern.

        Ibn Tufayl's text tells the story of Hayy, a boy who grows up on an island isolated from all other human contact. A tabula rasa, Hayy is a model of self-acquired knowledge, and through the use and development of his intellect is able to attain knowledge of the world, himself, and God. When Hayy is thirty years old, a visitor comes to the island. Asal leaves his country to go to the island to meditate and practice his religion in solitude. Asal and Hayy discover each other, and Asal begins to teach Hayy his language in order to educate him and to convert Hayy to his religion. Asal is shocked to discover that Hayy knows more about spiritual truths than he does. hearing about Asal's society Hayy wishes to travel to it and teach the people the wisdom he has gained through his own reflection. The city ultimately rejects Hayy, and the story ends with the two friends returning to the island.

• The island is central in Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in fact the location and name of the island are clues to the allegorical reading(s) of the text. The island that Hayy grows up on is identified as the Island of Wāqwāq. Wāqwāq is an Arabic word of unclear origin. It could possibly be onomatopoeic, referring to a cuckoo bird or the noise of a baboon or bat, thus alluding to babble or irritating noise. How does this relate to Spivak's discussion of Crusoe (Defoe) and Susan Barton (Coetzee) teaching Friday? Who has greater control of language and intellect, Hayy or Asal? As an imaginary place, this island usually signifies the edge of the known world, the boundary between the known and the imaginary or fantastic, or the meeting point (barzakh) between the physical and the spiritual. Who is the subaltern here? Hayy? Asal? Both?
• The story of Hayy begins by naming the island and distinguishing it as the location of a tree that bears women as its fruit. How does this fit into Spivak's discussion of the competing narratives of capitalism and empire (Defoe) and gender and empire (Coetzee)? If one is discussed the other has to be marginalized. Women are “almost-native informants”. “The feminism we inhabit has something like a relationship with the tradition of the cultural dominant, even when adversarial” (Spivak, xi) The woman- fruit bearing tree is never mention again, but it is possible to read it as present in the margins of the text. “For every territorial space that is value coded by colonialism and every command of metropolitan anticolonialism for the native to yield his 'voice,' there is a space of withholding, marked by a secret that may not be a secret but cannot be unlocked. 'The native,' whatever that might mean, is not only a victim, but also an agent. The curious guardian at the margin who will not inform.” (Spivak, 190)

Karatani and the Archive

Karatani's post-colonial amendment to the Kantian question of beauty posits that what is really at work is "bracketing," or the process of separating, or pushing aside, certain issues to focus on a few in particular. Specifically, aestheticentricism happens when a person or a group looks at one culture by bracketing their people, their lifestyle, and their other contributions solely to examine their art. A colonizing culture often will forget to "unbracket" the colonized culture, minimizing their importance to that of their aesthetic contributions.

I'd like to examine the idea of bracketing and unbracketing when it comes to a quote from Spivak. Spivak inserts herself into the archive by telling the story of her experience searching for the Rani, and on page 239, claims, "Unlike the archives, where the past is already digested as the raw material for history writing, the past here is a past of memory, which constitutes something differently in different subjects interconnecting." She goes on to say that her Rani "can be invoked," and is at the "shadow-border of the prehistory of this colonial/postcolonial (dis)continuity," but that she cannot be "commemorated" (240). Spivak distinguishes, then, between the past of the archive, of the physical, scholarly iteration of the past, and the memory. In fact, it is the archive which has already been "digested," or interpreted, processed until it fits within the dominant discourse. But memory cannot be fit into the hegemonic discourse in the same way. It is interconnected, not digestible in the same way. This is how the Rani remains. And in that sense, memory avoids bracketing. Memory's interconnectivity makes it unable to be bracketed successfully; it is impossible to simplify and restrict the memory, cultural or individual.

The archive, however, is where the issue is truly raised. The archive is bracketing incarnate-- it has already been bracketed before one has the chance to do it oneself. The archive then already enacts aestheticentricism and already enacts a colonizing force upon the reader. It must be, then, through memory that we avoid bracketing, simplifying cultures to their aesthetic or other contributions. Memory "invokes" the other against the hegemonic discourse, and in some way, may give the subaltern a brief representation against the voicelessness perpetuated by the archive. 

Thoughts on Spivak. Analyses and Questions

First, the first sentence. “If by our old-fashioned reckoning philosophy concentrates and literature figures, feminist historiography excavates.” I had no idea where she was going this until I returned to it after reading substantial parts of the chapter. I think what she is driving at here is that “feminist historiography” has cannot work in the general terms (“concentrative” and “figural”) that philosophy and literature have worked in. This makes some sense: since feminist historiography as a “new” field would need to “extract” data about women from the strata of historicized material, which will of course be a rather masculine substance (i.e. history is made up of men’s stories, we have to go digging for women’s stories beneath the surface.)

            Nevertheless, I am struggling to understand this first sentence as a rhetorical move. She writes “old-fashioned” pejoratively—presumably because these are overgeneralizations—yet she inscribes (what I’m assuming to be) her own work within this class of over-generalizations. As if she says “well these fields have over-generalized themselves, I’ll overgeneralize myself too!” Odd move, I think, especially when what I understood from the piece is that she wants to bring attention to the fact that discourses come predetermined with their own damning sets of overgeneralizations which efface local discourse. (On this note, I’m curious if anyone knows how she is different than Foucault in this sense.)

Next, a suggestion for looking at two pages which seemed fairly central to me, 238 and 239. I think this complicated piece can be fairly well summed up with a quote from 238: “Of what is history made as it happens? Of the differed-deferred “identity” of people in the deferred-differed “unity” of actions?” I find this quote insightful. History has to operate by means of a generalized cause and effect that is always specious, i.e. Hitler caused World War II. Furthermore, history erroneously lumps together people’s as well: “All Germans wanted to exterminate the Jews.” Still, I want to identify a potential paradox that which embodies my general critique of this kind of post-colonial thinking. Essentially, I don’t see the post-colonial space as a special locus for this kind of historical discourse violence. What would be a case where the historicizing of collected information not constructed in this way? I find it good that we are discussing these third-world, post-colonial spaces, especially the minorities therein, such as women, but I have trouble seeing them as special cases.