Professional Documents
Culture Documents
THINKING AT THE L l M l T
con-
there is undoubtedly some careless homogenising going on, as the phrase has
caught on and hecome widely and sometimes inappropriately applied. There are
f i e n t l y , p o ! i t c & n ~ s i t ~ ~ n?t n ~áxed.and
e. .damot m ; e Z themselves
~ -- serious distinctions to bc madc here which have bezn neglected and which do
(from on~~historica!.s&u?!hon lo the n e n r . ~b ~ ~ m ~ ~ ~ . ~ f to~ o n i s mweaken the conceptual value of the tem. 1s Britain 'post-colonial' in the same
s z t v s r , ever 'in place', in an endless iteratioa6n.t that the shift from r>6lfk&as sense as the US? Indeed, is the US usefully thought of as 'post-colonial' al a117
a ' i a r of manoeuvre' topolitics as a'war o'f position', which ~ r a m s c i ' l o nago. ~ Should the t e m be commonly applied to Australia, which is a white settler
and decisively, chmted? And are we not all, in different ways, and through colony, and to India? Are Britain and Canada, Nigeria and Jamaica 'equally
different conceptual spaces (of which the post-colonial is definitively one). "post-colonial"', as Shohat asks in her article? Can Algerians living at home and
desperately trying to understand what making an ethical political choice and in France, the French and the Pied Noir settlers, o11 be 'pusl-colonial'? 1s Latin
taking a political position in a necessarily open and contingent political field is Amenca 'post-colonial', even though its independence stmggles were fought
like, what sort of 'politics' it adds up to? early in the nineteenth century, long hefore the recent stage of 'decolonisation' to
There may indeed be differences of response here between the US and Britain. which the tetm more evidently refers, and were led by the descendants of Spanish
Withoot going to great Icngths, I fin* myself insisting that what the Gulf War settlers who had colonised their own 'native peoples'? Shohat, in her article,
provided was not the clarifying political experience of 'lines . . . drawn in the exploits this weakness effectively and it is clear that, in the light of this critique,
sand' hut the difficulties which arose in opposing the Western war i o the desert those deploying the concept must ancnd more carefully to ils discriminations and
when manifestly the situation in the Gulf involved both the atrocities which the specificities andlor estahlish more clearly at what level of ahstraction the t e m is
Alliance committed in defence of Western oil interests under UN cover against operating and how this avoids a spurious 'universalisation'. Anne McClintock
thc people of lraq (in whose historic 'under-development' the West is deeply also persuasively distinguishes betwcen a number of different trajcctories in
irnplicated); and the atrocities conuoilted against his own people and against the global domination, in the course of making a valid and important general point
best interests of the region. not to speak of those of the Kurds and the Marsh about the need to think the 'continuities and discontinuities of power' together (p.
Arahs, by Saddam Hussein. There is a 'politics' there; hut it is not one from which 294). Lata Mani and Ruth Frankenberg, in their carefully argued assessmenl
complexity and ambiguity can be usefully expunged. And it isn't an untypical (1993) are particularly helpful here in reminding us that it need not follow that al1
example, randomly chosen, but characteristic of a certain kind of political event societies are 'post-colonial' in the some way and that in any case the 'post-
of our 'new times' in which hoth the crisis of the uncompleted sttuggle for colonial' does not operate on its own but 'is in effect a constmct inteiiially
'decolonisation' ond the crisis of the 'psl-independence' state are deeply inscribed? differentiated by its intersections with other unfolding relations'.
ln short, wasn't the Gulf War, in this sense, a classic 'post-colonial' event? So,a more careful discrimination is in order hetween different social and racial
244 245
STUART HALL WHEN W A S 'THE POST-COLONIAL'? THINKING A T THE LlMlT
formations. Australia and Canada, on thr one hand, Nigeria, India and Jamaica on cultural effects of the 'transculturation' which characterised the colonising ex-
the other, are certainly not 'post-colonial' in rhe sume woy. But chis does not i perience proved, in my view, to he irreversible.iTh~pif~erences, o f coune.
mean that they are no1 'post~olonial'in any way. In tenns of their relation to the between colonising and coloniscd cultures remain profound. But they have nevw
imperial centre, and the ways in which, as C. L. R. lames put it about the f opratcd in a putely hinary way and they certainly do so no longer. Indeed, the
Caribbean. they are 'in but not of the West', they were plainly al1 'colonial', and sKif from circumstances in which mti-colonial stmggles secmed to assume a
are usefully designated now as 'post-colonial'. though the manner, timing and hinary form of representation to the present when they can no longer be rcpre-
conditions of their colonisation and independcnce varied greatly. So, for that sented within a binary structute, I would describe as a move from one conception
matter, was the US, whose curtent 'culture wars', conducted throughout with of difference to another (see Hall, 1992), from difference to'd;%éraice, -d this
referente to some mythicised Eurocentric conception of high civilisation, arc shift is preCi&ly what the serialised or s@gg+d transition to the 'post-colonial'
literally unintelligible outside the framework of America's colonial past. is maiking. But it isnot only not marking it in a 'tben' and 'now' way. It .i
Tbere are, however, soine ways of discriminating between uses of the t e n ohliging us to re-read the very binary form iri which thc colonial cticounter hasi
which are not, in my view, helpful. Some would deny it to white settler colonies, for so .long
.- .itself been represente$. rt obliges us to re-read thebinaries as fonns
reserving it exclusively for the non-westem coloniscd societies. Others would ~Ttranscuituration,of cultural translation, destined to trouble the heretthere
refuse it to the colonising societies of the rnetropolis, reserving it for the colonies cultural binaries for ever.
uf the periphery only. This is to confuse a descriptive category with an evaluative
on-efl_JWhZConcept m@vhelp us~todo is io descnbe or ch&terise the shift in
d o h a l relations which marks the (necessarily uneven) transition from the age,of
Empires to the post-independence 9r pa~t~dccolonlatioq momentl lt may also
'/ It is precisely this 'duuhle inscription', breaking down the clearly demarcated
insideloutsidc of the colonial system on which the histories of imperialism have
thrived for so long. which the concept of the 'post-colonial' has done so much to
k
* ,~ ,,
s -(though
..
here
-.
relations and dispositiins
.~ ..~--..
its
u1 a s P e t e r ~ u l r n has
<-.
value
of
is
power
more
which
e argued recently,
gestural)
are
to identi@
emerging in the
what & m w
new ConjunCturb.
f
1
alues of the tenn 'post-coloniál' has been to duect our attenrión to tlie niany
&&6!r%nbed
...- ~, ,
- *.--
ways in w h i c h ~ l o n i s a t i o n w a snever simply externa1 to the socictics of rhe
impcrial mrtropolis. It was always inscribed deeply within them - a s i ( %<ame
g the ciillures of the col- This was a process whose
temporality'. What 'post-colonial' certainly is not is one of hose periodisations
based on epochal 'stages', when everything is reversed at the samc moment, al1
the old relations disappcar for ever and entirely new ones come lo replace them.
Clearly, the disengagement from the colonising process has hccn a long. drawn-
negative effects provided the foundotion of anti-colonial political mohilisation. out and differentiated affair, in which thc recent post-war movcments towards
and provoked the atrempt to recover an altemative set of cultural origins not decolonisation figures as one, hut only one, distinctive 'moment'. Here,
confaminated by the colonising experience. This was, as Shohat observes, thc 'colonisation' signals direct colonial occupation g d nile, and the transition to
crilical dimension of anti-colonial stmggles. However, in t e m s of any ahsolute 'post-colonial' is characterised by independence from direct colonial nile, the
return to a pure set of uncontaminated origins. the long-tem histoncal and fomiation of new nation states, f o m s of cconomic dcvclopment dorninated by the
246 247
.,iulini HALL - ." ~~
triumphantly declares lo be 'over"? Dirlik for example, finds it strange that the critique that it fails to discriminate between different i m p e r i a l i s m s . m
,,?
post-colonial critics are so preoccupied with the Enlightenment and with Europe, the keep
. ..., .these
a hvo ends of the chain in, play a t t h e saEi.tt; over-determination
critique of which seems - oddly - to be their central task. McClintock also criticises and
.~ . diffgrence,
. .-. , ...
condeniation
- . " l__.L____.__ - if we are not to f$l into
h d..dissemination
the 'recentering of global history around the single mbric of European time' (p. 86).
lt'is tme that the 'post-colonial' signals theproliferation '8f MRistoñes and
playful
~
dcconbüuctionism
-.4-.-.-.-:--.---2..--,---
the fantasyoraQowe-rece ,,
It is
only tao tempting to fall into the trap of assuming that, hecause essentialisni has i
teñipO&eS,efielntniSion ofdifferéince~andspecificiiy into ttie generalising and
Eurcceiimc post-Edightenmeni grand nanatives; the multjpliciíy of lateral and
been deconstnictcd rheorericnlly, therefore it has .... ~ . .~
been. diaplaccdpoliricully~~"'
1n'teGs of periodisation, howevei, the 'post-colonial' retains some ambiguity
-
decentred cultural connections, movements and dgrations,wlch.&e "p the world. because, in addition to identifying the post-decolonisation moment as critical f0r
today, often bypassing the old metropolitan ceotres,,?erhaps, however, w ~ s h o u l d a shift in global relations, the term also offers - as al1 periodisations do - an
>..
have heen wamed by other theoretical examples, where the deconstniction of core alternative narrative, highlighting different key conjunctures to those embedded
concepts undenaken by the so-called 'post-' discourses is foliowed. not by theu in the classical narrative of Modernity. Colonisation, from this 'post-colonial'
abolition and disappearance but rather by their proliferarion (as Foucault wamed), perspective, was no local or marginal sub-plot in some larger story (for example.
~)dynowi" a ' d ~ e.n t .r e-.d.'position in the discourse.\'ihe
.- ,_....,. subject. i d 'identity' are the transition from feudalism to capitalism in western Europe, the latter de-
o n l y hvo of the concepts which, h&irtgheen radically undermined in their unitary veloping 'organically' in the womb of the former). In the re-staged narrative of
and essentialist form, have prnliferated beyond our wildest , cxpcctations ..,. iii tlieii the post-colonial, colonisation assumes the p l a c ~ & @ s . ~ ; ~ f ~ \ ~
' ..
'. decentred forms
. ,..Ki,.,h +..'.., into new
.-....... .- ... discu~j,ye.p,~.si~onaliUes./
e same time, there is someting to the argument that, as Lata Mani and
extended and ruptura1 world-historical
-.; event.,! y e@-casn> the 'post-
Col'6nEf7Zerences something more than direct mle over certain areas of the I
Ruth Rankenberg remark in their critique of Robert Young's Whire Mythologies world by the imperial powers. 1 think it is signifying the whole process of i
(1990), sometimes the only purpose which the post-colonial critique seems to expansion, explomtion, conquest, colonisation and imperial hegemonisation which
serve is as a critique of western philosophical discourse, which, as they observe. constituted the 'outer face', the constitutive outside, of European
-.--.
is like 'merely [taking] a detour lo return to the position of the Other as a resource Westem capitalist riiodci iiity after 1492. - - .-
~. ~~ . ~
STUART H A L L WHEN WAS 'THE P O S T - C O L O N I A L ' ? THlNKTNG AT T H E L l M l T
, ~ .
~~ . ..
'? This re-nanaiivisation displaces the 'story' of capitalistmodernitv froin ii$ Ln this 'post-colonial' moment, these transverse, transnational, transcultural
European cenmng to its dispersed global 'peripheries': from peaceful evolution movements. which were always inscribed in the history of 'colonisation', but
; to imposed violence; from the transition from feudalism to capitalism (which carefully overwritten by more binary forms of narrativisation, have, of course,
j played such a talismanic role in, for example, Western Marxism) to the formation emerged in new forms to dismpt the senled relations of domination and resistance
of the world niarket, to use shorthand t e m s for a moment; or rather to new ways inscribed in other ways of living and telling these stories. They reposition and
! of conceptualising the relationship between these different 'events' - the pcr- dis-place 'differcnce' without, in the Hegeliaii sense, 'overcoming' it. Shohat
i?sid+utside W r s of e m e r g ~ n t c a p i ~ s t t r n ~ e ~ t Y ~ i observes that the anti-essentialist emphasis in 'post-colonial' discourse some-
retrospective re-phraqing of Modernity within the framework of 'globalisation' in times seems to define any attempt to recover o r inscribe a communal past as a
al1 its various m p m l forms and mornents (frorn the Poriuguese entry to the fonn of idealisation, despite its significance as a site of resistance and collective
lndian Ocean and the conquest of the New World to the internationalisation of identity. She makes the very valid point that this past could be negotiated
financia1 markets and informalion flows) which is the really distinctive element differendy, 'not as a static fetishized phase to be literally rcproduced but as
in a 'post-colonial' periodisation. In this way, the 'post-colonial' marks a critical fragrnented sets of narrated memories and experiences' (1992: 109). 1 would
intemption into that whole grand historiographical n m t i v c which, in liberal agree with this argurnent. But; this is to iake t h e , d ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i d s c n p t i&e ~ns"of
historiography and Weberian historical sociology, as much as in the dominant eolonising enc&te-_'~,dialog~~ characier'CfiG alterity, the specific character
traditions of Western Marxism, gave this global dimension a subordinate ;of its'díFfe'ir.;ice'and the centra& of questions of narrative and the imagiory
presence in a story which could essentially be told from within its European
par?m.etcrs.
o
unc!erstood re-reap in this sense, was . intelligible as an
. onlx ~
k m political
c- ' s't e t x i P L i J y - ( f e e . for example, Hall, 1990). However, isn't that
' -
1
a nation-state template. It is in this reconstitution of the epistemic and forwards, there is, of course, no 'single, homogeneous, empty (Western) time'.
powerfknowledge fields around the relations of globalisation, through its various But there are the condensations and ellipses which sise when al1 the different
historical forrns, that the 'periodisation' of the 'post-colonial' is really 1 temporalities, while remaining 'present' and 'real' in their differential cffccts, arc
challenging. However, this point hardly surfaces in any of the critiques. And
j also mpturally convened in relarion to, and rnust mark their 'difference' in terms
when it does (as in Dirlik, 1994). its effects are contradictory for the mn of the i of, the over-deterniining effects of Eurocentric temporalities. systems o f
argument, as 1 hope to demonstrate below. What's more, to jump several stages : representation and power. This is what is meant by placing colonisation in the :
ahead for a moment, ir is precisely bccause of this critical re-lay through the framework of 'globalisation' or rather by the asseriion that what distinguishes
global that [he 'post-colonial' has been able to become so sensitively attuned to 'modemity is this over-determined, sunired and s u b p í i h & r a j charaiter o f i t s
precisely those dimensions which Shohat, for example, finds problematic - i -t-.e m p o i t W e ~ - S Y n C Y E . s mmultidimensional
, temporalities. the double
questions of hybridity, syncretism, of cultural undecidahility and the wmplexities of inscnptions of colonial and metropolitaii tinies. thc two-way cultural traffic
diasporic identification which intempt any 'return' to ethnically closed and characteristic of the contact zones of the cities of the 'colonised' long before they
'centred' original histnries. Understood in its global and transcultural context, have become the characteristic tropes of the cities of the 'colonising', the f o m s
colonisation has madeíelTG¡E ZbYoBgm>an increasingly u ~ t e o a b kcultural of translation and transculturation which have characterised the 'colonial
strategy. It madc the'colonies' themselves, i d even more, large tracts of the relation' from its earliest stages, the disavowals and in-betweenness, the here-
'post-colonial' world, always-aiready 'diasporic' in relation tn what might be and-theres, mark the aporias and re-doublings whose intcrsticcs colonial
thought of as their cultures of origin. The notion that only the multi-cultural cities discourses have always negotiated and about which Homi Bhabha has written
of the First World are 'diaspora-ised' is a fantasy which can only be sustained by with such profound insight (Bhabha, 1994). It goes without saying that they have,
those who have never lived in the hybridised spaces of a Third World, so-called of course, always to be set within and against the over-detemining power-
'colonial', city. knowledge discursive relations by which imperial regimes were stitched or laced
250 25 1
STUART HALL W H E N W A S 'THE POST-COLONIAL'? THINKING A T T H E LIMIT
together. They are the tropes of supplementarity and différance within a dis- ,&$arate identities, of isolated or sepaiable and silf-suffidiékt cult&.G Gd <con&
located but sutured global system which only emerged or could emerge in the , Ges, h e been-obliged to yield toa, variety of paradigms designed to capture thest
wake of the onset of the colonising expansionist process which M q Louise Pratt
calls the Euro-imperial adventure ( Pratt, 1992).
1
.
' differen~hut-
. . ... ..
c .of r d a b n h p . inie~connectionand discontinuityi
This was the distinctive form of dissemination-and-condensation which
Since the Sixteentb Century, these differential temporalities and histories have colonisation set in play. It is in pnvileging this missing or downgraded dimension
heen irrevocably and violently yoked together. This certainly does not mean that in the official narrative of 'colonisation' that the discourse of 'post-colonial' is
they ever were or are the same. Their grossly unequal trajectones, which formed concepmally distinctive. Although colonisation's panicular forms of inscription
the very ground of political antagonism and cultural resistance, have nevertheless and subjection vaJ'ied in almost every other respect from one par< of the globe to
been impossible to disentangle, conceptualise or narrate as discrete entities: another. its general effects also require to be cmdeiy but decisively marked,
though that is precisely what the dominant western histonographical tradition has theoretically, alongside its pluralities and multipiicities. That, in my view, is what
often tried to do. No site, either 'there' or 'here', in its fantasied autonomy and the anomalous signifier 'colonial' is doing in the concept of the 'post-colonial'.
--
in-difference, could develop without taking into account its significant andlor
abjected o t h e r h e very notion of an - i i % Z ~ % ~ $ ~ & ~ ~ % l ' f ~
What, then, about the more trouhling question of the prefix, the 'post'? Shohat,
for example, acknowledges that the 'post' signals both the 'closure of a certain
histoncal event or age' and a 'going beyond . . . commenting upon a certain
intellectual movement' (1992: 101, 108). She clearly prefers the latter meaning to
the former. For Peter Hulme (1995), however, the 'post' in 'post-colonial'
The Other ceased to he a term fixed in place and time externa1 to the system of has two dimensions which exist in tension with each other: a temporal
S identification and became, instead, a symbolically marked 'constituitive outside'. , dimension in which there is a punctual relationship in time between, for
.
,
apositionalig
L-.-. .- of differential marking----.-.,. --
within a discursive, c h a g
It is possible, now, to answer the question posed earlier about the 'post-
example, a colony and a post-colonial state; and a critica1 dimension in
which, for example, post-colonial theory comes into existente through a
colonial's' preoccupation with Eurocentnc time. The Enlightenment retums, in critique of a body of theory.
the discourse of the 'post-colonial', in its decentred position, because it Moreover, the tension, for Hulme, is productive, whereas for Shohat it produces
represents a critica1 epistemic shift within the colonising process, understood in a structured ambivalence. In this respect, she seems to argue that the 'post-
this wider sense, whose discursive, power-knowledge, effects are still in play colonial' is different from the other 'posts' in attempting to be both epistemic and
(how, in western discourses dominated by Science and the Social S*e~~q&d~ chronological. It is hoth the paradigm and the chronological moment of the
-,--.
it fail to be?l.,JJntil ?he E ñ i i $ f e ¡ i i i" i_~_ ~_ .r e ñ c. .e. h a,-d.often
.,. . .been conceptualised
., .. .,.-.. ,,. 'colonial' which the 'post-colonial' claims to be superseding.
h te%s"of different orders of, -* beinp- 'Are they Tme Men? was the question However, it seems to me that, in this respect, the 'post-colonial' is no different
'%id! Sepulveda pui'to Eianholome de Las Casas in the famous debate at from the other 'posts'. It is not only 'after' but 'going beyond' the colonial, as
Vallodolid before Charles X in 1550. Whereas, , -under theuniversalising panoptic
q~ post-modernism is both 'going beyond' and 'after' modernism, and post-
eye of the Enlightenment, al1 formi of human life were biought within the stmcturalism both follows chronologically and achieves its theoretical gains 'on
the backof stmcturalism. The trickier question is whetherin fact these two could
ever be separated, and what such a separation would imply about the way
'colonisation' itself is being conceptualised. 'Colonialism' refers to a specific
historical moment (a complex and differentiated one, as we have tried to suggest);
but it was always also a way of staging or narrating a history, and its descriptive
value was always framed within a distinctive definitional and theoretical
,
- paradigm. The very succession of terms which have been coined to refer to this
process - colonisation, imperialism, neo-colonial, dependency, Third World -
shows the degree to which each apparently innocent descriptive term camed in
(Laclau, 1990; Butler, 1993). '..~
its slipstream powerful epistemological, conce~tual ..,-.and
~. indeedpol!tical baggage:
The argument is not that, thereafter, everything has remained the same - t h ~ " ~ ~ e ~ ~ ~ 6wW<Iei.h
0 i c ; ~ ihaso to be understood discunivelj. Indeed, the
colonisation repeating itself in perpetuity to the end of time. It is, rather, that distinction which this critique se& to be trying to enforce between 'power' and
colonisati'on so refigured the terrain that, ever since, the very idea of a world of
--... . ~. . . . .. . .- ~
'knowledge' is exactly what the discourse of the post-colonial (or rather, what
252 253
STUART HALL W H E N W A S ' T H E POST-COLONIAL'? T H l N K l N G A T T H E 1.IMIT
thinking both 'the colonial' and 'the post-colonial' discursively) has displaced. between a transition which is 'decisive' (which the 'post-colonial'
With 'colonisation', and consequently with the 'post-colonial', we are irrevoc-
. -.- -.-certainly
.
is)
and one which is 'definitive'. To put this another w a y , d & e key conccpts in th2
ably within a power-knowledge field oí force. It is precisely the false and 'post-colonial', as in the general discourse of the 'posts','&e operating, as Derrida /
disabling distinction hetween colonisation as a syitem of Ale, of pow& and would piÚt.it, 'under erasure'. They have been subjected to a deep and thoro"gh_)
-.- ... -
explnitation, anircoknisation as -
.-. ..a .systcm
. of knuwledge and representation, going critique, exposing their assumptions as a set of foundational effects: But
-
HThkfiTs6éiiigFiroaed. l t ' i s hecause the relations wh'ich charactehsed the
-.
'co o n i a r are no ionger in ¡he same place and relative position, that we are able
thís deconstruction does not abolish tbem, in the classic movement of
supersession, an Aufghebung. It leaves them as the only conceptual instniments :
not simply to oppose them but to critique, to deconstruct and uy to 'go beyond' and tools with which to think about thepresent - but only if they are deployed in
them. their deconstmced fonn. They are, to use another, more Heideggerean, formu-
But what exactly might be meant by this 'after' and 'going beyond'? Shohat lation, which Iain Chambers, for example, prefers, 'a presence that exists in
argues that 'The operation of simultaneously pnvileging and distancing the abeyance' (Chambers, 1994).
colonial narrative, moving beyond it, StNctUres the "in-hetween" framework o t In anow-famous exchange about 'thinking at the limit' - which seems t o m e
the "post-colonial"' (1992: 107). She is not very sympathetic to this un-decid- a good description of the status of 'the post-colonial' as an episteme-in-forrnation
ability. But it is possiblc t o argue that the tension between tbe epistemological - Derrida once defined the limit of philosophical discourse as 'tbe episteme,
and the chronological is not disahling hut productive. 'After' means in the functioning within a system of fundamental constraints, conceptual oppositions
moment which follows that moment (the colonial) in which the colonial relation outside of which philosophy hecomes impracticable'. He spoke of 'a necessarily
was dominant. It does not mean, as w e tried to sbow earlier, that what we have double gesture marked in certain places by an erasure which allows what it
called thelC8hz:e'ffects' of'iorsniaí'
~ rum~- have somehow been suspended. It
. ..,.,,. ohliterates to be read, violently inscribing within the text that w h c h attcmpted to
cenainly does not mean that we have passed from a regime of power-knowledge govern it from without' and of trying to respect as rigomusly as possible 'the
intn some powerless and conflict-free time zone. Nevertheless, it does also stake internal, regulated play of philosophcmcs . . . by making them slide . . . lo the
its claim in terms of the fact that some otber, related but as yet 'emergent' nevr point of their non-peifinence, their exhaustion, their closure'.
configurations of power-knowledge relations are beginning to exen their distinc-
tive and spccific effects. This way of conceptualising the shift between these To deconsmct philosophy thus would he to t h h k - in the most faithful
paradigms - not as an epistemological 'break' in the Althusserian/structuralist interior way - the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts hut at the
sense hut more on the analogy of what (iramsci called a niovement of decon- same time to dctcrmine - from a cenair! exterior ihat is unquantiriable or
stmction-reconstniction o r what Derrida. i n a more deconstnictive sense, calls a unnameable in philosophy - what this history has heen unahle to dis-
'double inscription' - is charactenstic of al1 the 'posts'. simulate or forbid. By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent
Gramsci, speaking about transformations in the field of practica1 common circulation hctween the inside and the outside of philosophy . . . there is
sense, observes that they have to he thought as produced a certain tcxtual work . . .
(Demda, 1981)
a process of distinction and of change in the relative weight possessed by
the elements of the old idenlogy . . . what was secondary or evcn incidental When his interlocutor, Ronse. asked bim whether by this means there could be 'a
becomes of primary importante, it becomes the nucleus of a new doctrinal surpassing of philosophy'. Derrida remarked.
and ideological ensemble. The old collective will disintegrates into its There is not a transgression if one understands by that a pure and simple
contradictory elements so that the subordinatc elements amongst tbem can .
landmg into the beyond of metaphysics . .But by means of the work done
develop socially . . . on one side and on the othrr side of the limit, thc ficld insidc is m d i f i c d
íüramsci, 1975, 1979. See also Hall, 1988: 138) and a transgression is produced that consequently is nowhere prescnt as a
What, in their different ways these theoretical descriptions are attempting to .fair accompli . . .
(Derrida, 1981)
ConstNct is a notion of a shift or a transition cunceptualised as the re-
configuration of a field, rather than as a movement of linear transcendcnce The problern, then, is not that the 'post-colonial' is aconvcntional paradigm of a
hetween two mutually exclusive states. Such transfomations are not only not logico-deductive type which erroneously confuses the chronological and the
cnmpleted but they may not be best captured within a paradigm which assumes epistemological. Lying behind this is a deeper choice hetween epistemologies:
that al1 major historical shifw are driven by a necessitarian logic towards a hetween a rational and successivc logic and a deconstnictive one. In this $ense.
teleological end. Lata Mani and Ruth Frankenherg make tbe critica1 distinction Dirlik is correct to pinpoint the question of the post-colonial's relation t0 what
254 255
STUART HALL WHEN W A S 'THE POST-COLONIAL'? T H I N K I N G A T THE LIMIT
can be broadly called 'post-stnicturalist' ways of thinking as a central issue which This may appear to innoeent eyes like recupcrating a good deal of already
its cntics find particularly trouhling. Larger issues are thus 'at stake' in this repudiated temtory, apart from containing in itself some questionable formu-
debate than h e cnticisms which have heen widely signalled sometimes suggest. lations. (Some post-modem critics may helieve that the global has fragmented
Dirlik is particularly femcious in this m a and for rearons which are not into the local but most of the serious ones argue that what is happening is a mutual
difficult to identify. Discovering that the t e m 'post-colonial' is applied to many reorganisation of the local and the global, a very different proposition: see
wnters who do not necessaily agree with one another, some of whom Dirlik likes M s s e y , 1994; Rohins, 1991; 11al1, 1992). Bui Ici that pass. For it is followed, in
and others he does not, he is dnven to the polemical conclusion that the 'post- the second section of the article. by a long. detailed and persuasive account of
colonial' is not the description of anything or anyone in particular but rather 'a some of the main features of what is 'variously' descnhed as 'late capitalism,
discourse that seeks to constitute tlie world in the self-image of intellectuals who flexible production or accumulation, disorganised capitalism and global
view themselves or have come to view themselves as post-colonial intellectuals capitalism'.
[and] . . . an expression . . . of [theirl new found pnwer' in First World Academe. These iriclude: the new international division of labour, the new global
This rather cmde ad hominem and ad feminam name-calling disfigures the information technologies, a 'de-centenng of capitalism nationally', the linkage
argument of a distinguished scholar of modern China and it would perhaps be provided by the transnational corporation, the transnationalisation of production,
wise to think of ii as 'symptomatic'. But of what'! We get a clue to an answer the appearance of the capitalist mode of production, 'for the first time in the
when h e takes Gyan Pmkash's elegant post-stmcturalist defence of the post- history of capitalism' (p. 350), as an 'authentically global ahstraction', cultural
colonial', 'Post-colonial Criticism and Indian Historiography' (1992) a. his fragmentation and multi-culturalism, the re-articulation of native cultures into a
principal staiking horse. Let us leave the many local cnticisms of this article, capitalist narrative (the example here being the Confucian reviva1 amongst the
some of which we have already mentioned, 10 one side. The main burden of the nsing Snuth East Asian capitalist elite), the weokening of h o u n d c e s , the repli-
charge is that the post-colonial. like the post-stmcturalist discourse which pro- cation internally in once-colonial societies of inequalities once associated with
vides its philosophical and theoretical grounding, is anti-foundational and, as colonial differences, the 'disorganization of a world conceived in terms of three
such, cannot deal with a concept like 'capitalism' and with 'capitalism's worlds', the flow of culture which is 'at once homogenizing and heterogenizing'
stmctunng of the modem world' (p. 346). Moreover, the . , ,...-.
.*- 'post-colp~~sl', 1s 'a (p. 353), a modemity which 'is no longer just Euro-Amencan', f o m s of control
culturalism'. lt is preoccupied with questions of,,identi2,& the-s!bject and which cannot jusr be imposed but have to be 'negoiiated', the reconstiturion of
hence cannot give 'an Gc'ount of
., . . .
the world outside the sub&&'
., , , .. . -.....-.,..- ; Attentionis subjectivities across national houndaries, and so on . . .
shifted f~om'nitionalongin to subject position and 'a politics of location takes It is not only an impressive, and impressively comprehensive, list. It also, 1
precedente over politics infomed by fixed categories (in this case the nation, think incontrovenihly. touches at some point every single theme which makes the
though obviously other categones such as Third World and class are also 'post-colonial' a distinctive theoretical paradigm, and marks decisively how
implied)' (p. 336). The 'post-colonial' presents the coloniser equally with the radically and unalterahly diflerent - that is to say. how incontrovenibly post-
colonised with 'a problem of identity' (p. 337). colonial - is the world and the relations heing described. And, indeed, to the
This is al1 going with a remarkable swing for twenty pages when, on page 347, reader's astonishment, this is also acknowledged: 'post-cnloniality represents a
a by now somewhat characieristic 'turn' hegins toreveal itself. 'These cnticisms, response to a genuine need. the need to overcome a crisis of understanding
however vehement on occasion, d o not necessarily indicate that post- produced by the inahility of old categories to account for the world' (p. 353). 1s
colonialism's critics deny it al1 value . . .' The 'post-colonial' discourse, tums out. t h e x a 'post-colonial' critic in the house who would dissent from that judgement?
after all, to have something to say about 'a crisis in the modes of comprehending Two arguments could follow from this second half of the essay. The first is a
the wodd associated with such concepts as Third World and nation state'. Nor, serious one - indeed, the mnst serious criticism which the post-colonial critics
apparently. is it r o b e denied that and theorists have urgently now to face - and it is succinctly put by Dirlik. 'What
is remarkable . . . i s that a consideration of the relationship hetween
as the global situation has become more hlurred with the disappearance of
postcolonialism and global capitalism should be ahsent from the writings 0f
the socialist states, with the emergence of important differences
postcolonial intellectuals.' Let us not quihhle and say of some post-colonial
economically and politically hetween so-called Third World societies and
intellectuals. It is remarkable. And it has becomc scriously damaging and
the diasporic motions of peoples across national and regional boundaries.
disahling for everything positive which the post-colonial paradigm can, and has
fragmentation of the global into the local has emerged into the foreground
the ambition to, accomplish. These two halves of the current debate about 'late
of historical and political consciousness.
modernity' - the post-colonial and the analysis of the new developments in global
(Dirlik; 1992: 347)
capitalism - have indeed largely proceeded in relative isolation from one another,
257
STUART HALL L
W H E N W A S ' T H E P O S T - C O L O N I A L ' ? T H I N K I N G A T T H E LIMIT
and to their mutual cost. It is no1 difficult to understand why, though Dirlik does unwitting spokespersons for the new global capitalist order. This is a conclusion
not seem interested in pursuing this as a scrious quesiion (he d w s have a trivial to along and detailed argument of such stunning (and oneis obliged to say. banal)
answer to it. which is different). One reason is that the discourses of the 'post' reductionism. a functionalism of a kind which one thought had disappeared from
have emerged, and been (often silently) articulated against the practical, political, scholarly debate as a serious explanation of anyrhing, that it reads like a echo
historical and theoretical effects of the collapse of a certain kind of economistic, from a distant, primeval era. It is al1 the more disturbing because a very similar
teleological and, in the end, reductionist Marxism. What has resulted from the line of argument is to be found from a diamelrically opposite position - the
abandonment of this deterministic economism has been, not alternative ways of inexplicably simplistic charge in Robert Young's Coluniul Drsire (1995) that the
thinking questions ahout the economic relations and their effects, as the 'con- post-colonial cntics are 'complicit' with Victonan racial theory because both sets
ditions of existente' of other practices, inserting them in a 'decentred' or of wrirrrs deplqv rhe sume rerm - hybridio - in rheir discourse!
dislocated way into our explanatory paradigms. but instead a massivc, gigantic
and eloquent disavowal. As if, since the economic in its broadest sense, defini-
tively does no!, as it was once supposed todo, 'determine' the real movement of
history 'in thc last instance', it does iiot exist al all! This is a failure of theorisation
so profound, and (with very few, still relatively sketchy, exceptions: see Laclau.
I
I
Here, then, we find ourselves between Scylla and Charybdis, between the devil
and the deep blue sea. We always knew that the dismantling of the colonial
paradigm would release strange demons from the deep, and that ihese monsters
might come trailing al1 sorts of subtesanean material. Still, the awkward twists
1990, but also Barrett, 1991) so disabling, that, in my view, it has enabled much and turns, leaps and reversals in the ways the argument is bcing conducbd should
weaker and less conceptually rich paradigms to continue to flourish and dominate
i alert us to the sleepof reason that is beyond or after Reason, the way desire plays
the field. (Dirlik himself makes, al one point, an interesting ohsewation that he I across power and knowledge in the dangerous enterpnse o í thinking at or beyond
!
prefers 'the world system appmach', even though, like the post-colonial, it the limit.
'locates the Third World discursively' [p. 3461. but this interesting and fmitful iI
line of discussion is not pursued.)
REFERENCES
Of course, it is not simply a matter that the relationship between these
paradigms has been left lo one side. This is itself partly an institutional effect - Barreii, M. 7% Politics of Trurh, Polity, Cambridge. 1991.
an unintended consequence, some would say, of the fact that the 'post-colonial' Butler, J. Bodies ThatMaffer.Routledge, London, 1993.
has been most fully developed by lilerary seholars, who have been reluctant to Bhabha, H. The Localion of Culrure, Routledge, London, 1994.
M.-- .... Chambers, 1. Migrancy, Culrure, Idenlis., Routledge, London, 1994.
make the break across disciplinary (even @st-disciplinary)boundanes required Demda, J. Positions, 1981.
lo advance the argument. It is also because there may well he some conceptual Dirlik, A. 'The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global '
incompatibility between a certain kind of post-foundationalism and the senous Capitalism', Critica1 Inquiry, Winter. 1992.
investigation of these complex articulations. But this cannot yet be accepted as an Foucault, M. 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History', in D. Bouchard (ed.), Language, Counrer-
unhridgeable philosophical chasm, especially because, though they do not memor)., Pracrice. BlackweU. Oxford. 1977.
Frankenberg, R. and Mani, L. 'Crosscurrents, Crosstak Race, 'Postcoloniality' and the
address the question of the conceptual mle which the categeory 'capitalism' may Politics of Location'. Culrural Srudies, 7, 2, 1993.
have in apost-foundationalist 'logic', certain articulations of this order are infacr Gilroy, P. nie Rlock A!la,iric Modernis. nnd Dovble Consciousnrsr, Vcrso, London,
either implicitly assumed or silently at work in the underpinning assumptions of 1993.
almost al1 the post-colonial critica1 work. Gramsci, A . Quademi 1ii (1875). quoied in C. Mouffe. Gramsci und Marxisi Theov,
Diriii has therefore put his finger squarely, and convincingly, on a serious Lawrence and Wishart, London. 1979.
Hall. S. The Hard Road ro Renewal: 7har<:herismand ihe Crisis of rhe Lefl, Verso,
lacuna in the post-colonial episteme. To have concluded with the implications for London, 1988.
the future of the post-colonial paradigm of this critique would indeed have sewed Hall, S. 'Cultural Identity and Diaspora', in Rutherford, J. (ed.), 1drnri.Y. Lawrence and
a very important. timely and strategic purpose. And had this been the coiiclusion Wishart, London, 1990. '-
lo his essay, one could have overlooked the curiously hroken-backed and inter- Hall. S. ' R e Question of Cultural Identity', in Hall, S., Held, D. and McGrew (eds).
nally contradictory natuz of the argument (the second half repudiating in effect Modemis. and lrs Furures, Polity, Cambridge, 1992.
Hulme, P. .including America'. a riel, 26. 1, 1995.
much of the substaiice and al1 ofrhe tone of the first halo. However, it is not. His Laclau, E. New Reflecrions on rhe Revolurion of Our Time, Verso, London. 2990.
conclusion takes the second path. Far fmm just 'representing a response lo a -
McClintock. A. ' R e Mvth of Proeress: Pitfalls of the Term Post-colonialism'. Social
genuine [theoreticall need', he ends with the thought that 'Post-coloniality reson- Text, 3 1/32, 1992.
ates with the pmblems thrown up by global capitalism', is 'attuned' to its issues McCLintock, A. ' R e Retum of Female Fetishism and lhe Fiction of the Phallus', New
and hence senies irs culrural requiremenrs. The post-colonial critics are, in effect, Formarions, 19, Spnng, 1993.
258
STUART HALL
McClintock, A. Imperial Leatker, Routledge, London, 1995.
Massey. D. Space. Place and Gender, Polity, Cambridge, 1994.
Miyoshi, M. 'A Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationaliam'. Critica1
Inquiry, Sumrner, 1993.
Prakash, G. 'Posi-colonial Criticism and Indian Historiography'. Social te^, 3 1/32. 1992.
Pratt, M. L. 'Imperial Eyes'. Traveí Writing and TransculNration. Routledge, London & INDEX
New York,1992.
Robins, K. 'Tradition and Translation: National Cultures in a Global Context' in Comer,
J. and Harvey, S. J. (eds), Enterprise and Heriiage, London, 1991.
Shohat, E. 'Notes On the Postcolonial', Social Tert, 3 1/32, 1992.
Young, R. Wkire Myihologies, Routledge. London, 1990.
Young, R. Colonial Desire, Routledge, London. 1995.