Postcolonial Epistemologies - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Postcolonial Epistemologies

Gurminder K Bhambra

Wednesday 6

th

November, 2013Slide2

Room Change reminder …

Date

Lecture

GKB 3-4

GKB 4-5

NG 4-5

6/11/13

F107

F107

F107 – essay workshop

---

13/11/13

L4

L4

---

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20/11/13

F107

F107

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S0.28

27/11/13

Conference for DTC funded students

4/12/13

S0.21

S0.08

S0.08

S0.28Slide3

Postcolonial Studies

Edward W.

Said’s

Orientalism

;

Homi

K.

Bhabha’s

The Location of

Culture;

Gayatri

C.

Spivak’s

Preface to Derrida’s

Of Grammatology

and

‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’

Said opened

up the question of the production of knowledge from a global perspective

M

ovements

for decolonisation

provoked

a fundamental crisis within

Orientalist/Western

thoughtSlide4

Said’s Orientalism

The errors committed by the

Orientalists were

twofold:

first

, they got things wrong because there was no Orient to depict;

second

, the Orient they described was a misrepresentation.

T

hey created

the Orient, as a general category, and misrepresented what was

observed

.

Provocation

: how is what

we know

framed

as knowledge through particular systems of representation and the practices of colonial governance based upon

them

?Slide5

Spivak: Can the subaltern speak?

Spivak

addresses current Western efforts to

problematise

the subject and questions how the Third-World subject is represented in Western discourse.

In this text she offers an analysis of the relationship between Western discourses and the possibility of speaking of (or for) the subaltern woman.Slide6

Can the subaltern speak? Part 1

Spivak

assesses the contributions of French post-

structuralist

theory

Key issue: the question of ideology is ignored as is the post-

structuralist

theorist’s own implication in intellectual and economic history.

Two forms of representation

‘speaking for’, as in politics;

re-presentation, as in art

The difference is that between a ‘proxy’ and a ‘portrait’ (276)Slide7

Can the subaltern speak? Part 2

Spivak

addresses imperialism and the construction of the colonial subject as Other.

‘It is the slippage between rendering visible the mechanism and rendering vocal the subject’ (285).

The paradigm of the intellectual must involve a recognition of the fact that their privilege is their loss (287).

Deleuze

and Foucault’s silences on the epistemic violence of imperialism would matter less if they did not choose to speak on third-world issues.Slide8

Can the subaltern speak? Part 3

‘a nostalgia for lost origins is detrimental to the exploration of social realities within a critique of imperialism’ (291)

To render the thinking subject transparent is to efface the relentless recognition of the other by assimilation

Spivak

concludes this section by arguing that developing work on the mechanics of the constitution of the Other is more useful than invocations of the authenticity of the Other (294)Slide9

Can the subaltern speak? Part 4

Unlearning would involve a recognition of the ideological formation of the subject as an object of investigation (296)

‘white men saving brown women from brown men’

‘the women actually wanted to die’

These statements in effect legitimise each other and silence / through the silencing of the women’s voice

Between patriarchy and imperialism, the figure of the woman disappearsSlide10

Concluding Thoughts

Concern for the oppressed can hide the privileging of the intellectual

To render thought transparent is to hide the recognition of others through assimilation

Networks of power are heterogeneous and so require a persistent critique

Speaking for and speaking about

They cannot represent themselves, they must be representedSlide11

“To not see is to abnegate responsibility, not to be seen is to be isolated or to be left to perish, a fate that may not be merely individual but collective” (

Sangari

1990: 231).

In the animal kingdom the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined –

Nandy