reading gender after feminism || who put the "post" in postcolonial?

Who Put the "Post" in Postcolonial?Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction by Leela GandhiReview by: Chadwick AllenNOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 32, No. 1, Reading Gender after Feminism (Autumn, 1998),pp. 144-146Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346065 .

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Who Put the "Post" in Postcolonial?

LEELA GANDHI, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. x + 200, $17.50.

The complexity of postcolonial theory can be surmised, in part, from the variety of forms critics manipulate out of its key term. Most common is the hyphenated "post-colonial," in- dicating an attention to historical periodization, or the run-together "postcolonial," sug- gesting an emphasis on ideological continuity. There is also an ironic "(post)colonial," which employs parentheses to raise the specter of an asserted "post" that is not quite one, and an alternative "colonial/postcolonial," which binds its ostensible Others together across an ambiguous diagonal slash. Moreover, there are additional prefixed forms which forgo the pretense of "post" in order to designate conditions of "neocolonialism," "internal colonialism," and, perhaps most intriguingly, "paracolonialism." But beyond theoretical nuance, this flexibility of forms indicates many individual critics' sensitivity to the all-too- probable disconnect between the Western academy's generalizing theories of postcolonial literary and cultural production and the economic, political, social, and psychological real- ities of specific colonialisms all over the globe-those safely historic, those distressingly resurgent, or those simply ongoing. While the last decade has seen a number of weighty an- thologies and wryly-titled critical studies of postcolonial theory and its applications, few have attempted to chart in a single, brief volume the multiple philosophical and intellectual origins of postcolonialism (the body of theory), that theory's relationship to postcolonial- ity (the condition), and its usefulness for future scholarship. Leela Gandhi makes such an attempt in her Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction.

As she announces in her Preface, Gandhi's book divides into two parts: "the first offers an account of postcolonialism's academic and intellectual background, and the second elaborates the themes and issues which have most engaged the attention of postcolonial critics" (viii). The first part is thus indispensable for understanding postcolonial theory's competing debts to Marxism and to poststructuralism/postmodernism. Gandhi begins this project in Chapter 1 by examining postcolonial theory's relationship to the decolonization process and to the emergence of anti-colonial and "independent" nation-states after colonialism. In this chapter, she also briefly examines early theories for resistance to colonialism developed by M.K. Gandhi and Frantz Fanon that offer alternatives to what these men saw as disabling forms of postcolonial nationalism and postcolonial quests for authenticity.

In Chapters 2 through 4, Gandhi reviews relevant intellectual history by examining where postcolonial theory has been influenced by and where it has departed from the larger concerns of Marxism, poststructuralism, and humanism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the more specific concerns of Edward Said and the critics who emerged after the pub- lication of Said's seminal analysis of colonial discourse, Orientalism, in 1978. Gandhi's discussion of the colonial legacies of Western humanism is particularly salient, as is her analysis of the limits of Said's influential methods. Gandhi argues that Orientalism is "a limited text ... primarily because it fails to accommodate the possibility of difference within Oriental discourse" (79) but also, as Said himself concedes in his later work, because it "fails to theorise adequately the resistance of the non-European world to the material and discursive onslaught of colonialism" (81).



REVIEW I WHO PUT THE "POST" IN POSTCOLONIAL?

Gandhi builds on these critiques in Chapter 5 by focusing on "the discordance of race and gender within colonised cultures" and by asking attendant questions about "the conti-

guities and oppositions between feminist and postcolonial theory" (82). Gayatri Spivak's large body of work receives special attention here, although Gandhi also reviews and critiques relevant works by Trinh T. Minh-ha, Chandra Mohanty, Jenny Sharpe, and Anne McClintock. Of particular note is Gandhi's juxtapositioning of her discussion of the "gendered subaltern" (88-90) with a discussion of "the difficult figure of the female imperi- alist" (91-93). In Chapters 6 and 7, Gandhi further complicates her critique of Said by re- turning to the "vexed discourse" of cultural nationalism, particularly as this discourse has been articulated by writers like Ernst Gellner and Benedict Anderson, and by considering "some grounds for a postcolonial defence of the anti-colonial nation" (102). As part of this project, Gandhi offers a cogent analysis of the limitations of Homi Bhabha's and other the- orists' recent elaborations of the related concepts "hybridity" and "diaspora."

The final chapters, "Postcolonial literatures" and "The limits of postcolonial theory," will be of greatest interest-and will offer the greatest challenge-to literary scholars; and these chapters ought to become required reading for graduate students entering the field of postcolonial literary and cultural studies. Gandhi states up front that the "academic privileging of postcolonial literature [in postcolonial studies] is informed by recent critical attempts to postulate the colonial encounter primarily as a textual contest, or a bibliographic battle, between oppressive and subversive books" (141) and that such privileging works ultimately, "if accidentally, [to] privilege the role and function of the postcolonial literary critic-whose academic expertise suddenly provides the key to all oppositional and anti- colonial meanings" (142). She goes on to rehearse a number of significant "literary-critical accounts of the colonial encounter," including Said's account of "colonial textuality" (143), the "alleged complicity between nineteenth-century colonial ideology and the emergence of English literature as an academic discipline in the colonies" (144), attempts by ac- tivist writers like M.K. Gandhi and Ngugi wa Thiong'o to formulate an appropriate "postcolonial pedagogy" (146), Bhabha's account of "colonial mimicry" (149), the assumption of "contiguity between the anti-colonial novel and anti-colonial nationalism" (151), and the recent privileging of the "migrant novel" for being "entirely explicit in its commitment to hybridity" (153). Gandhi argues that, despite their individual insights, these accounts suffer "from some serious conceptual inadequacies and political evasions" (154). Primary among these, she demonstrates, is "the generalizing assumption that all colonial texts are repressive" (154), a certain obliviousness to "the complex and complicating recep- tion of the English text in the colonial world" (155), a movement toward a "theoretical model where textuality starts to elide the materiality and contingency of the world itself" (157), and the setting up, "albeit inadvertently, [of] an implicit hierarchy between imperial structure/language/culture on the one hand and indigenous process/practice/experience on the other" (175). In order to end on a more positive note, Gandhi concludes her book by emphasizing the potential power of a postcolonial analysis, guided by self-reflection, to supply "the academic world with an ethical paradigm for a systematic critique of institu- tional suffering" (176).

Although it is comprehensive, Gandhi's introduction to postcolonial theory is not a "how to" manual and it includes few close readings of individual literary or cultural texts. This is less a criticism than a note to readers that they will need to go elsewhere to find ex- amples of the critical practices Gandhi describes in the second half of her book. Readers

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146 NOVEL I FALL 1998

who are less specifically interested in colonial India and Africa and their aftermaths- which have been especially generative of postcolonial theory in the English-speaking Western academy and which are Gandhi's primary touchstones-may wish that she had included more extensive examinations of theory developed out of and responsive to the particular conditions of the Caribbean, of Latin America more generally, of settler nations, and of situations perhaps best described as internal colonialism. But these are minor critiques, more a reader's desire that an insightful scholar expand her project than a suggestion that Gandhi's book suffers from too narrow a focus. On the contrary, her admirably concise and well written volume will prove invaluable to readers new to postcolonial theory as well as to readers already familiar with this diverse and often diversely confusing field.

CHADWICK ALLEN, Ohio State University



reading gender after feminism || who put the "post" in postcolonial?

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