Hello Friends,
This blog is my response to the task assigned to us by our Prof. Dr. DilipSir in thinking activity on "The Future of Postcolonial Studies: Globalization and Environmentalism." So read, understand and enjoy. Happy Learning!
Summary of Article
CONCLUSION
THE FUTURE OF POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
Dipesh Chakrabarty finds that all his 'readings in theories of globalization, Marxist analysis of capital, subaltern studies, and postcolonial criticism over the last twenty five years' have not prepared him for the task of analysing the 'planetary crisis of climate change' (2009: 199).
In third world countries, people are dependent on environment for their daily bread. Businesspeople in order to earn money and to build larger building projects which includes malls, multiplexes and larger businesses hubs, they destroy the natural environment, cuts large number of forests and replace the small homes of people living or working in those areas. They construct dams in areas of their factory locations and use the water while leaving least for the agricultural purpose.
People who make baskets, handbags, mats, brooms, and many such home industries which are dependent on environment and forests, lose their livelihood when replaced by larger construction of buildings. Apart from that animals and birds also lose their shelter, their homes and then they come to cities, actually if humans will destroy their homes, they are left with no place to live. Actually humans have entered their homes and destroyed the natural environment. This also leads to many environmental changes like global warming, greenhouse gases, disturbance in the natural cycle of seasons. In short, we can only say that human beings may enjoy short term benefits but on a larger scale they are destroying the Earth, the only planet on which humans can survive, so harm is more disastrous than the benefit gained.
"[There is] a prevailing version of postcolonial studies in the United States that so embraces its aura of 'new work' and its dual allegiances to high theory and a rather reified, distanced, and monolithic 'Third World Literature' that it largely estranges itself from the individual and collective histories of several important allied traditions such as American studies, Native-American studies, African-American studies, Asian-American studies, Latino studies, and Gay and Lesbian studies." (Cooppan 1999:7)
INTERESTING ILLUSTRATIONS
In India, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) save the Narmada River Movement led widespread protests against a project, funded by multinational as well as indigenious capital, to build scores of large dams across central India. The protests highlighted not just the ecological damage but the displacement of thousands of tribal peoples all across the Narmada valley. Finally, it was the Indian Supreme Court which ruled that construction of the dams should continue.
Internal colonialism is a feature of the formally decolonised world as well as of formerly settler colonial societies.
Still it is observed that global and local capitalists still continue the to trespass into the natural and human resources to gain more profits at cost of local people and environment.
Postcolonial Theory in the 21st Century: Is the Past the Future or Is the Future the Past? (February 2021): Conclusion: The Future of Postcolonial Theory
Conclusion: The Future of Postcolonial Theory
As detailed above, Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capitalism has garnered immense attention from both postcolonialists and Marxists, generating heated debates that are enlightening in equal measure. The need, nevertheless, is to direct this conversation to productive ends. As mentioned earlier, Watson and Wilder believe a generative dialogue between postcolonial theory and Marxism could not be more urgent, arguing as practitioners of postcolonial theory that it is long overdue for a major shift in focus from culture to politics (or political imaginaries). For Neil Lazarus and Priyamvada Gopal, postcolonialism is missing its materialist heartbeat. They too are critical of the theory’s overemphasis on culture at the expense of structure; as Lazarus has meticulously documented, literature on the Global South throbs louder with the materiality of life than does postcolonial literary criticism.
They are not alone. Aijaz Ahmad, Benita Parry, Timothy Brennan, and Arif Dirlik have long been pushing for postcolonialism to engage with what (as mentioned earlier) Christopher Taylor calls the letter M—Marxism and materialism. As Lazarus persuasively argues in The Postcolonial Unconscious, life in a materialized world is constantly challenged by unavoidable material problems. The challenges of climate change, environmental decline, habitat destruction, and their consequences in the conflagration of viral eruptions (e.g., the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, but also all past and potential viral eruptions induced by global climate change) require postcolonial theory to retool its assumptions and methodologies to address these existential issues. It is heartening to see that some of the leading lights of postcolonialism—see, for example, Chakrabarty’s 2009 essay in Critical Inquiry, “The History of Climate Change: Four Theses”—have begun to pay attention to “the theoretical mal-condition,” begun in the late 1970s, that led to “the absence of any serious or legitimate ‘leftist’ thought,” what Aijaz Ahmad once termed the “token and flabby forms of ecologism and ‘third worldism’” (cited in Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, p. 70).
Postcolonial theory thus needs to reconsider its view of postcolonialism to include the contemporary forms of occupational colonialism that Edward Said, in Orientalism, calls the neocolonialism and neoimperialism of globalizing agents, such as the IMF and World Bank. This will require postcolonial theory to address the contemporaneity of racial and social justice movements like Black Lives Matter, and to reconsider what Lazarus calls the struggle-based model of politics. Equally importantly, postcolonial theory must redirect its geographical attention to places it has long ignored, like the Middle East and Latin America, where its intellectual roots germinated, bolstered especially by such seminal thinkers as Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said. Ironically, theory has turned away from both regions, as expressed in The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East, edited by Ball and Mattar, and in Jose Bortoluci and Robert Jansen’s 2013 essay “Toward a Postcolonial Sociology: The View from Latin America.” Returning to these material and geographical roots will help postcolonialism reimagine colonial and imperial depredations beyond cultural discourses.
As Chibber has forcefully argued, postcolonial particularism must be balanced with Enlightenment universals to avoid replicating the essentialism and orientalism that Said feared and that postcolonialism so vehemently denounces. This shift is in line with the arguments for Watson and Wilder’s suggested “political turn” and the material heartbeat that Lazarus and Gopal pinpoint as missing in postcolonial theory, a theme that also arises in Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies, edited by Crystal Bartolovich and Lazarus. For its part, Marxism needs to come to terms with the postcolonial emphasis on culture as part of the Marxian ideas of base and superstructure, consciousness and class, idealism and materialism, and economy and society. Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, seized on cultural Marxism and built on his ideas to make sense of the ideologically driven world, as evidenced by his Prison Notebooks. It is no wonder, then, that postcolonialism is so in tune with Gramsci.
Yet, superstructure without base is fiction, and material challenges need ideational representations to be socially understood, as one is predicated on the other. If postcolonialism resides in language and literature, then its exclusive focus on literary criticism and culture is understandable. But, if it aspires to become a social science, then postcolonialism must move past its current trajectory to embrace material realities beyond discursive ones. At the same time, its detractors, especially Marxists, need to appreciate the tremendous contribution postcolonial theory has made to help further understandings of the Global South and its underdevelopment, while in the process building a vast regime of literature and specialized vocabulary. In fact, the latter required Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffith, and Helen Tiffin to compile Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts, a sizable dictionary. This treasure trove of advanced intellectual labor deserves to be conserved, if not preserved, for the crucial project of reimagining post-colonialism.
Globalisation through a post-colonialist lens: understanding our past is key to our present
What exactly is globalisation and how does it work? Globalisation is best understood as a process by which people and societies become increasingly integrated or interconnected. Technology is at the heart of this process but so are imaginaries, the unexamined ways through which people make sense of their changing world, establish their values and tell their stories. As a result, globalisation is characterised by both frictions and flows, new sensitivities to risks, and changing understandings of home. The development of the internet, portable communication devices (phones and tablets) and the twentieth century development of air travel have enabled significant changes to the ways we connect. A vital part of this relates to speed. Applications such as Skype have the potential to transform the experiences of immigrants: a loved one living thousands of miles away can be contacted as easily as someone living in the same town. It is as participants of such processes that we find Professor Diana Brydon’s contributions so illuminating; throughout her academic career she has challenged the notion that globalisation is solely a homogenising and economic force. Her research goals are to evaluate and advance the study of globalisation and cultural practices in order to broaden trans-cultural understanding, challenging all the time the Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism of many disciplinary practices which have until this point excluded and marginalised women, cultural and ethnic minorities and Indigenous Peoples.
The role of the imagination in contemporary life
Professor Brydon’s belief that the history and continuing impact of colonialism show us the many ways in which the research imagination has shaped the daily lives of people throughout the world is at the root of her work. She looks to literature, in particular, for insights into the ways individuals and communities negotiate belonging during times of change. Since her early research on the nature of Australian expatriate fiction, Brydon’s work has studied the mobilities of people and ideas across borders of various kinds. Research into Canadian settler colonialism is involving her in a very current dialogue about Canadian culture, history, and possible futures. Her country is rethinking its colonial past and her city is the home of a new national centre of learning, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, established in Winnipeg in 2014, with its mission statement to ‘build […] a new era of global human rights leadership’ and take visitors ‘on a journey to erase barriers and create meaningful, lasting change.’
This suggests a sea change in thought and a desire to not just bring people together now, but to make sense of how existing cultural rifts came to be, and how they might be healed.
Indigenous voices have been silenced in the historical record [and] Indigenous groups are woefully under-represented by scholars in academic institutions
Much of Brydon’s research which has aimed to penetrate the entanglement of Canada’s colonialist history within global systems has been done through collaboration with scholars, creators and students, highlighting the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to post-colonial studies. By shining a light on the literature of colonised peoples, she presents the world with a new resource by which to better understand – and learn to respect – the perspectives of others. In placing Canadian literature in settler colonial, post-colonial and international contexts, Brydon has also advocated for the study of Canadian literature with postcolonial reading strategies and decolonising imperatives. Her current research examines how speculative fictions from around the world enable readers to imagine a future beyond the limits of the present.
Colonialism and research practices
The forces that led to globalisation may be reaching their limits. By its act of ‘shrinking’ the world, colonialism has since the fifteenth century oppressed and eradicated minority cultural practices and groups while also preserving records that may be consulted with new sets of questions posed from the perspectives of the previously colonised. The legacies of such globalising processes in the twenty-first century include institutionalised misogyny and racism, a dearth of opportunities for young people and a widespread societal ignorance of Indigenous culture. There has been positive action more recently; active resistance to such oppression led to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, which not only affirms that any doctrine advocating the superiority of any peoples based on culture or ethnicity is socially unjust but acknowledges that the suffering of Indigenous Peoples historically has prevented themselves and their cultures from developing in accordance with their own needs and interests. It is time to listen to their stories and attend to their visions of the future.
Indigenous voices have been silenced in the historical record. In addition, Indigenous groups are woefully under-represented by scholars in academic institutions. As Brydon’s research has pointed out though, it is these voices that are critical to coming to terms with what it means to be, for example ‘Canadian’, today. Indigenous story-telling is changing the literary landscape and shifting understandings of land. Brydon’s research has consistently advocated for increased transnational and trans-cultural engagement in cultural studies, arguing that Indigenous resurgence, multiculturalism and globalisation can best be understood through contextualisation of their entanglements at local, national and global scales.
Her work is highly relevant in a world that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with its past and anxious about its future
Imagining otherwise
Professor Diana Brydon has been a force in post-colonial studies of globalisation and Canadian and international culture, grappling throughout her career with the idea that our understanding of history and the world today can only be improved by acknowledging and considering previously (and often still) marginalised perspectives. Her work is highly relevant in a world that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with its past and anxious about its future. Our best chance at co-existing in our progressively integrated society is tied up with our willingness to reflect on our past and listen to the stories we have been previously unable to hear.
2,293 Words.
Works Cited
1. Allison, Rachel. "Globalisation Through a Post-colonialist Lens: Understanding Our Past is Key to Our Present." Research Outreach, 25 June 2018, researchoutreach.org/articles/globalisation-through-post-colonialist-lens/.
2. Niazi, Tarique. "LibGuides: Postcolonial Theory in the 21st Century: Is the Past the Future or Is the Future the Past? (February 2021): Conclusion: The Future of Postcolonial Theory." LibGuides at ALA Choice, 21 Apr. 2021, ala-choice.libguides.com