Navigating Modernity: Postcolonialism, Identity, and International Relations 9781685857103

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Navigating Modernity

Critical Perspectives on World Politics R. B. J. Walker, Series Editor

Navigating Modernity Postcolonialism, Identity, and International Relations Albert J. Paolini edited by

Anthony Elliott Anthony Moran

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com

and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB www.eurospanbookstore.com/rienner

© 1999 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Paolini, Albert J., 1963– Navigating modernity : postcolonialism, identity, and international relations / Albert J. Paolini, edited by Anthony Elliott and Anthony Moran. p. cm. — (Critical perspectives on world politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55587-875-7 (hc : alk. paper) 1. International relations and culture. 2. Postcolonialism. 3. Developing countries—Foreign relations. I. Elliott, Anthony. II. Moran, Anthony. III. Title. IV. Series. JZ1251.P36 1999 327.1'09'045—dc21 99-19297 CIP British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

∞

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

For Adele Elizabeth Frassoni Paolini

Contents

Foreword, Anthony Elliott Acknowledgments Editors’ Note

ix xiii xv

1

Introduction

1

2

Beyond the Discourse of International Relations: Culture, Identity, and North-South Relations

29

PART 1 POSTCOLONIALISM AND THE THIRD WORLD 3

The Genealogy of Postcolonialism

49

4

The Politics of Resistance and Difference

63

5

Inscribing Ambivalence and Hybridity

91

PART 2 GLOBALIZATION AND MODERNITY IN THE THIRD WORLD 6

Mapping Globalization

129

7

Globalizing the World and Incorporating the Third World

147

vii

viii 8

CONTENTS

The Consumption of Modernity and the Politics of the Everyday

169

Epilogue

201

Bibliography Index About the Book

209 219 227

Foreword Anthony Elliott

Contradiction, ambivalence, ambiguity, turbulence, and dispersal: These are key defining features, suggests Albert Paolini in Navigating Modernity: Postcolonialism, Identity, and International Relations, of intersubjective connections and affective ties in current social relations and global political processes. The intertwining of intersubjectivity, modernity, and globalization are central to Paolini’s analysis of postcolonialism and the status of the Third World in the multinational world system of late capitalism. For Paolini, what is at stake in recent debates about modernity and postmodernism is not simply the navigation and renegotiation of ideologies of power but rather a profound reflexive encounter with the ontological and epistemological coordinates of the social-theoretical discourses that have underpinned the disciplinary terrain and political practice of international relations itself. In this sense, Paolini’s book is deeply challenging: the sheer imaginative sweep of his argument advances beyond formulaic pronouncements about the “Westernization of the world” or the “end of history,” and instead addresses head-on the momentous subjective and institutional transformations of individual life and collective experience in an age of thoroughgoing globalization. Navigating Modernity is at the same time a work of international relations and social theory. Paolini writes passionately and with deep insight about the repressions and evasions that have marked the disciplinary boundaries of international relations; his focus is on questions of identity, subjectivity, and modernity, particularly as they apply to postcolonial discourses and the status of the Third World. In the process, he sets forth an outline for a reflexive, postmodern approach to international relations that can locate and map forces of globality, hybridity, and ambivalence in the structuring of the Third World and its relations to world politics. The revision of international relations that Paolini calls for may be defined as an interdisciplinary, critical, imaginative investigation of aspects of daily ix

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FOREWORD

political life, with a particular emphasis on the problem of ambivalence and resistance—that is, the ways in which individuals and groups develop strategies of appropriation and distance in response to modernity and its structures of domination. Paolini challenges the discipline of international relations with the surprising claim that our reflexive understanding of society and politics— the practical social theory we all deploy as social agents—is essential to the ways in which we cope with the demands and dreads of contemporary political life. What this critical stance implies, in effect, is that international relations and political theory can no longer stand apart from society (as attempted in the high modernist tradition of academe), nor can they satisfactorily content themselves with offering generalized, universal pronouncements (an abstract system of impartial political knowledge) on the state of “world politics.” Drawing from the theoretical current known as poststructuralism, especially the work of Michel Foucault, Paolini intends to show that power and knowledge always imply one another: “The study of power configurations must incorporate within its ambit the production and application of ideas, ideologies, moral world views, even accepted notions of power itself, as central to the operation of power. Given that dominant forms of discourse (language, knowledge, communication practices) create identities for people and define fields of action, they play a pivotal role in determining what can be thought or accepted as legitimate in politics.”1 Developing upon this poststructural approach to the relations between power and knowledge, Paolini elucidates the intersubjective and political conditions for globality in the context of postcolonialist and Third World discourses. I have said that for Paolini ambiguity and ambivalence are central to the postmodern political condition. In social-theoretical terms, Paolini analyzes the ambivalences of modernity through a subtle interweaving of critical theory, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, sociological inquiry, and postmodernism. Beneath this theoretical complex, however, one can also discern a deep personal curiosity that informs his mapping of the individual and social challenges of ambivalence and its rooting and repression in contemporary political life. Shortly after commencing work on this project, Albert Paolini was diagnosed with acute leukemia. The medical outlook was that he would be lucky to survive for six months. In his long and difficult struggle against the disease, he in fact lived for another six years. He died on September 30, 1996, at the age of thirty-three, some weeks after completing work on this manuscript, for which he was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Melbourne. Writing a doctoral dissertation under the pressure of a terminal illness was impressive in itself; but what was even more astonishing to me—as his friend and colleague—was the manner in which he sought to

FOREWORD

xi

connect his personal circumstances to his broader intellectual and political interests. The fear, anxiety, and pain that he experienced in his journey with cancer operated, in part, as a stimulus for a deeper engagement with and reflection upon the multiple and shifting identities emanating from postcolonialism. Many writers have, of course, underscored the role of fragmentation, ambivalence, hybridity, and heterogeneity in modernist encounters between the West and its others. Stuart Hall of the Birmingham cultural studies movement writes, for example, of “the traumatic character of ‘the colonial experience.’ ” It is this traumatic dimension of colonialism and postcolonialism as a process and discourse that Paolini firmly fixes his attention upon; he highlights the psychic stakes of resistance and opposition in African responses to globalization and modernity. “Postcolonialism,” writes Paolini, “has ridden the crest of an academic wave which has established the issues of identity and culture as central in the humanities and social sciences.”2 The political issue, he insists, is not whether it is possible to comprehend the postcolonial experience from the vantage point of a negative and simplistic antagonism that locks subaltern responses into a rejectionist mode. What are required instead are theories that allow scholars to analyze the constitution of the sociopolitical field around the issue of identity formation, theories attentive to the constantly shifting and ambiguous realm of Third World cultures and peoples, and an understanding that cultural processes of both incorporation and resistance are continually unfolding, evolving, and ambivalent. In Navigating Modernity, Paolini provides suggestive conceptual pointers (ranging from the sociology of “global culture” [Roland Robertson, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman] to intersections in poststructuralism and postcolonialism [Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak]) and uncovers promising sites (via readings of African studies and novelists) for mapping agency and structure and identity and difference in the colonial and postcolonial context.

NOTES 1. Albert Paolini, “Foucault, Realism and the Power of Discourse in International Relations,” Australian Journal of Political Science, 28 (1), 1993, p. 111. 2. Albert Paolini, “The Place of Africa in Discourse About the Postcolonial, the Global and the Modern,” New Formations, 31, 1997, p. 85.

Acknowledgments

First, I owe an enormous debt to the tutelage of Phillip Darby, Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne; my research has benefited greatly from his generous comments, criticisms, and suggestions. I would like to thank Grant Parsons and Michael Kantor for reading parts of my work and for their feedback. I am particularly grateful to Anthony Elliott for reading the entire draft and for his vigilant dedication to seeing the research through to its completion. His guidance on aspects of contemporary social theory was especially appreciated. I am also grateful to the School of Politics, La Trobe University, especially Joseph Camilleri, Robin Jeffrey, and Talis Polis, who have displayed uncommon patience and generosity during my extended leave of absence, allowing me the time to continue my academic pursuits. Also a special note of thanks to Liz Byrne at La Trobe for her frequent computer troubleshooting and to Marilu Espacio for all her assistance. The medical and nursing staff in the 3 West and 5 East wards at the Royal Melbourne Hospital deserve a special mention for keeping my body together over the last five years. As for my soul, my closest friends and family have been instrumental in providing the emotional support and encouragement (and in the case of family, material support) necessary for the completion of my research. I would like to thank in particular my mother, Lina Paolini, my grandfather Giuseppe Maccarrone, Alberto and Adalgisia Frassoni, Silvia Frassoni, Michael Kantor, Deborah Frassoni, Phillip Darby, Nicola Geraghty, Simone Skacej, Fiore Inglese, Michael Montalto, Marissa Liistro, Joe Genovesi, and, before she departed planet Earth, Rosa Frassoni. My greatest thanks go to my daughter, Adele Elizabeth Frassoni Paolini, to whom this book is dedicated. Parts of Chapters 6, 7, and 8 were published previously as “Globalization” in Phillip Darby (ed.), At the Edge of International Relations: Postcolonialism, Gender and Dependency (London and New York: Pinter, 1996). Albert J. Paolini xiii

Editors’ Note

The editors would like to thank Rob Walker for his assistance in the publication of this book. His comments and advice on the manuscript have been invaluable, and we are grateful for his guidance. We would also like to thank Lynne Rienner, both for her commitment to this project and for encouraging us to complete the book. The Department of Politics at La Trobe University provided financial and administrative support. Albert’s colleagues in that department, in particular Liz Byrne, Joseph Camilleri, Dennis Altman, and Robin Jeffrey, supported and encouraged us throughout. Anthony Elliott Anthony Moran

xv

1 Introduction

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the death and burial of a Kenyan lawyer, S. M. Otieno, developed into an intense national and at times international drama. The drama centered on what became a battle for Otieno’s body between his Luo tribe and his wife and children. “The case,” wrote Blaine Harden in The Independent Monthly, “cut to a fundamental fault line in the African psyche: the rub between tribal tradition and modern, mostly Western values.”1 This was not only the view from the outside: Kenyans and Africans themselves interpreted the predominantly legal struggle over Otieno’s body in much the same terms. J. B. Ojwang, for instance, viewed it as a cultural phenomenon that transcended narrow sectional interests. The struggle revealed in “unparalleled fashion” the ferment, conflicts, contradictions, and competing norms of contemporary Kenyan society and indicated that “we are at the crossroads.”2 H. Odera Oruka believed the case demonstrated that Kenya was at a crucial cultural transition between traditionalism and modernity. He noted incisively that “we cannot be sure that everyone in Kenya is sure what these important concepts really mean.”3 Otieno had left behind—indeed renounced—his Luo heritage. He had practiced law and lived in Nairobi with his feminist wife (who, incidentally, was from the Kikuyu tribe) and his children who were brought up according to Westernized values, not tribal traditions. Otieno’s will carried explicit instructions that, upon his death, he was to be buried on his Upper Matasia farm, Ngong, outside of Nairobi—and not, as is the Luo custom, in the Nyamila village of Nyalgunga. Yet when his widow and children attempted to carry out his wishes, the Luo clan arrived to claim the body. “Tribal custom,” writes Harden, “was explicit. . . . The clan owned the body, and neither the burial wishes of the late lawyer nor the feelings of his widow and children are relevant.”4 The case went to court and became a daily spectacle, which most of Kenya tuned into. Traditional Africa and 1

2

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modern Africa were forced to confront themselves in a manner that not only crystallized many key issues (such as tribal rights and widows’ rights) but unsettled the modern reality of Africa’s accommodation with the West and brought to the fore anxieties and ambivalences at the nub of contemporary African identity. As Harden observes: “The burial dispute, not suprisingly, was instantly recognized by Kenyans (and Africans reading newspapers across the continent) for what it was: a public acting-out of a private war, an allegory for the most wrenching conflict of modern African life.”5 The struggle over Otieno’s body became a subterfuge for unresolved conflicts. First, there was the desire by the minority Luo tribe to claim a victory over the dominant Kikuyu tribe. In the words of Harden once more: “They wanted what they had never had since Kenya’s independence: a decisive, public humiliation of the Kikuyu.”6 Thus, the trial became a tribal dispute between traditional rivals over issues of property, justice, and power, which was in turn manipulated by President Daniel arap Moi to reinforce the need for a strong central hand. A second and related conflict revolved around competing representations of identity between nationalist conceptions and tribal loyalties. This issue was brought to the fore in the testimony of Otieno’s U.S.-educated son Jarius, who declared to the court that he was a Kenyan rather than a Luo. “I believe,” he commented, “that when Kenya became a nation, ethnic groups were pushed to the background. As such, I do not think of myself as of one tribe or the other.”7 This testimony first struck Harden as “impressively modern,” yet he was forced to concede that it must have sounded like nonsense to most Kenyans, who live with the reality of tribal conflict. Moreover, the son had explicitly insulted his elders in public and, by extension, every Kenyan who feels a “guilty devotion to follow tribal ways,” and he had elevated himself and his mother to a “superior (perhaps even non-existent) category: the nontribal African.”8 A third conflict involved the rights of the widow, particularly over property and inheritance. The subtext involved the competing claims of traditional African beliefs and Western feminism. The Luo claim over Otieno’s body was “infected by sexism,” and aside from the dictates of traditional practice, there was a conscious attempt to teach this modern, feminist wife a lesson and put her in her place.9 Gender politics, in particular the perceived imposition of Western feminist values on African women, gave the dispute between Otieno’s Luo family and his wife a pronounced intensity. Her evident scorn for Luo custom only intensified male hatred toward her. In fact, the widow convened press conferences challenging the Luo clan and casting the battle for her husband’s body as a test case of women’s rights in Kenya. These three conflicts were underpinned by two divisions in Kenyan society that bestowed the Otieno case its primary symbolic value for not

INTRODUCTION

3

only Kenyans but Africans in general. The fundamental subtext of the tribal dispute between the Luo and the Kikuyu was the continued relevance and indeed resilience of traditional African culture and heritage. What was the place of the Luo in contemporary Kenya? To what extent did tradition and custom still serve as an effective anchor against change and modern values? As expressed by J. N. K. Mugambi, a key question for many Kenyans during the case was “whether the African cultural and religious heritage could serve as the basis for resolving the crisis of identity in a nation undergoing rapid social transformation.”10 The second fundamental issue, evident particularly in the strong stand of Otieno’s wife and the original wishes of Otieno himself, was the clash between communitarian and collective traditions and the modern ethic of individualism.11 To what extent did the individual African, regardless of standing and belief, have the right to be buried according to his or her wishes rather than tribal custom? “The relatively short history between a full traditional life, and the more centralized economy, marked by urbanization, mechanization and paid employment,” according to Ojwang, “allows the prevalence of communitarian social orientations whose philosophy remains resilient, even in the urban context.” Thus, the case marked one stage in the uneasy passage from the communitarian to a more individualistic ethic in African societies.12 The debate illustrated the complex negotiations of identity at play in Africa and the differing attempts to map what it is to be African in the contemporary world. Although the case was eventually settled on appeal in favor of the Luo tribe (President Moi clearly manipulated the outcomes, mostly to defuse a volatile public situation: putting Otieno’s modernized wife and children in their place was safer than insulting a whole tribe), the irony of this victory of tradition was not lost on Harden. At the eventual burial in the Nyamila village, a traditional Luo priest arrived aboard a Kawasaki motorcycle “dressed in animal skins and carrying a fourpronged spear” and proceeded to deliberate at the burial flanked by two Luo Anglican bishops.13 The widow, despite the loss of her husband’s body to the Luo clan, managed to forge a platform for women’s rights and, much to the anger of a great many Kenyan men, raised awareness across Kenya of women’s inheritance rights under law. More immediately, she forced the Luo clan to renounce any claim to Otieno’s property after arguing publicly that, under the pretext of custom, they were really after her husband’s material wealth. On the day of her husband’s Luo burial, she held a press conference in Nairobi and vowed to fight for “women’s liberation worldwide.” Together with her children she deployed the term “modernity” to bolster her place in a patriarchal society. The Luo clan had gained a symbolic victory over modernized Africa (but perhaps more to the point over the Kikuyu and feminism), yet this was undercut somewhat by the reality of indigenized modernity and Westernization in Kenya: from

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the British trappings of the courts to the Kawasaki-driving traditional priest aided in the Luo burial rite by the Anglican bishops. Even the judge who argued in favor of the tribe conceded that “times will come and are soon coming when circumstances will dictate that the Luo customs with regard to burial be abandoned. . . . Change is inevitable, but . . . it must be gradual.”14 Overall, the case highlighted the shadow lines between modernity and tradition and the constant reconstitution of identity that occurs in this contested space. As Harden shrewdly concludes: “The Otieno trial burned itself into Kenyan consciousness because few Africans are as fanatically traditional as the Luo elders or as ferociously modern as the widow. They live, as Otieno died, in the unsettling embrace of fading tradition and mushrooming Western responsibility.”15 It is in this twilight zone, in the “unsettling embrace” of tradition and modernity, experienced as a crisscrossing of connections and misconnections, backfirings and compromises, that one is able to theorize the process of intersubjectivity between Africa and the West. Africa is mostly consigned to the margins in the new configurations of knowledge. On one level this is not surprising, given the Western lineage of the discourses surveyed in this book. Yet what is ironic is that many of the new ideas revolving around notions of globality, hybridity, and ambivalence are self-consciously revisions of older approaches evident in international relations or dependency theory. In attempting to go beyond what came before, postcolonial and globalization discourses too often carry with them some of the concealments and repressions of that which is superseded. For all their blind spots, however, these discourses provide certain clues that are useful in understanding the dynamics of contemporary identity in sub-Saharan Africa. The postcolonial redirects our attention to the edges of the Western gaze no matter how amorphous the conception of the Third World. The global invites us to view a world in which, because of the penetration of the outside, the local is always other than where it is. Both provide modernity as the overarching framework within which identity, subjectivity and intersubjectivity are situated.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN A NEW FRAME The international relations narrative that unfolds in this book is decidedly unconventional. The choice of what many would consider foreign subject matter partly accounts for this unconventional narrative. More important, however, is my concerted effort to make international relations transparent: to look directly through its received categories of analysis and assumptions onto hitherto unrecognized territory; territory inhabited by unsettling issues and strange places. It is as part of this estrangement of

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international relations that the place of Africa is brought squarely into view. This book began in a series of reflections on the difficulty of locating the place of Africa in world politics, using the conventional categories of international relations theory. Yet, in setting out on such an ambitious endeavor, it became clear to me that the ostensible starting point for such an exercise, the discipline of international relations, would not adequately address the sorts of issues that are crucial to an understanding of African identity and Africa’s place in the global system. Initially, this realization gave way to a questioning of the material itself: What legitimate place did issues such as African identity and modernity have in a study of international relations? This very questioning became the impetus to look beyond the confines of international relations and ask instead: Why is it that international relations, a discourse that sets out to explain the character of contemporary world politics and theorize the behavior of states, makes so little space for questions of identity, subjectivity, and modernity, particularly as they apply to non-Western places such as Africa? Why do we need to make sense of world politics by referring to abstract concepts such as the state, sovereignty, order, and power rather than delving into the elementary human realm of culture and identity, which underpins the privileged categories of international relations? In striving to prise open the boundaries of international relations, it became necessary to reach out to other discourses that would help answer these questions. Consequently, international relations becomes both the departure point for some of the newer discourses— in particular, postcolonial and globalization discourses, which directly address questions of identity, subjectivity, and modernity—and the bedrock against which they are ranged. There are thus two broad movements in this book: moving beyond the limits of international relations and critically engaging with postcolonial and globalization discourses. The movements are informed by two broad aims: to re-people an account of world politics; and, more to the point, to bring previously marginalized peoples and identities, especially those of Africa, to the fore of analysis. Why postcolonialism and globalization— particularly the latter, which tends to share a similar Western sensibility with international relations? Postcolonialism and globalization have come to prominence in contemporary academic inquiry, and both are beginning to make important inroads into the study of politics. Not only do they explicitly engage issues of identity, subjectivity, space, and modernity not undertaken in traditional international relations, but their insights and key themes speak directly to the nature of identity in the Third World. Postcolonialism, born out of literary and social theory and the study of Third World literature, posits notions of difference and resistance in relations between the West and the Third World. The focus on resistance has

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proceeded alongside an emphasis on hybridity and ambivalence, capturing the more poststructural sensibility of the discourse. This at times uneasy union is indicative of the inherently chameleonlike nature of postcolonialism in general; it is difficult to map precisely. Such difficulty is partly due to the relative youth of postcolonialism, but mostly because it has tended to define itself by a process of expansion and open-endedness, a self-conscious tendency to float freely across many disciplines and concerns. Despite its evident postmodernist hue, postcolonialism can still be characterized by an oppositional stance and frame of reference in its mapping of identity in, through, and beyond the colonial encounter. It is a celebration of the particular and the marginal that envisages peoples of the Third World carving out independent identities in a de-Europeanized space of recovery and difference. In contrast, globalization assumes an increasing homogenization of the world in which Third World cultures (rarely confronted directly in the literature) lose their specificity and become absorbed in a global (that is, Western) culture. The category of the “global” becomes possible only in the historical context of late modernity or postmodernity, an intensification of modernity’s reach into all parts of the world. Although the majority of globalization discourses tend to address the Third World merely as an afterthought, the very focus of their analysis, that is, of an emerging global culture, leaves one with the distinct impression that the many cultures of the Third World are part of this global space. This is not true of the various critiques of globalization that have arisen of late, mostly from a Marxist or Third World perspective, which attempt to account for the specific place of the Third World in globalization. In these critiques, the material dimension of globalization is given prominence, and the contrast between the subjective and material approaches to the nature of the global-local encounter makes for a crucial dynamic in the literature, which, in turn, is a key concern in this book. These discourses provide the framework within which modern African identity is explored. The interface between modernity and identity, particularly as it is played out in the African context, is the central focus of this book. Modernity is the pivot of analysis throughout precisely because any account of contemporary African identity needs to come to grips with the impact of the modern or the late modern world. More generally, modernity is also implicated in any move toward an exploration of intersubjectivity, particularly as it touches on North-South relations. Although there is a tendency to understand the concept of modernity as a uniform process or phenomena, it is beset by a certain impreciseness. In this respect, I will make some attempt to delineate the various guises and formulations of modernity, particularly as it bears on specific contexts and locales across the Third World. Thus, in any discussion of Africa it will be necessary to distinguish a historically specific colonial modernity that takes into account

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imperial and colonial practices, as opposed to a more generalized understanding of modernity informed by uniquely twentieth-century processes. International relations has been largely silent and evasive on the whole question of modernity and its relationship to world politics, and indeed to the politics of individual states or nations. Postcolonial and globalization discourses, however, have tended to probe more extensively into issues of modernity. Indeed, these discourses are, fundamentally, commentaries on the consequences and implications of modernity for contemporary identity, albeit from opposite poles. Although their starting points differ (the former is concerned with the onset of modernity in the non-Western world through imperialism and colonialism, the latter with the world of late modernity), they both explore some of the dilemmas and manifestations of modernity: the universal versus the particular; the passage of individual subjectivity in a world of collective organization, and the shifting sands of identity and culture in the late modern or postmodern age. In globalization discourses, the global is revealed as the latest stage in the evolution of modernity. Whether it is characterized by a postmodern unease or deconstructive urge to render visible its contradictions or a more modernist celebration of its possibilities for human governance, the global, to paraphrase the literary and cultural critic Fredric Jameson, is the cultural logic of late modernity. 16 For its part, postcolonialism can be interpreted as a Third Worldist discourse about modernity critically received. The postcolonial is revealed as the meeting ground of the modern and the traditional; a site of contestation where the two faces of modernity, imperialism and Westernization, underpin the case for cultural resistance and give voice to the marginal and the dispossessed. Because postcolonialism draws heavily on European social theory, in particular postmodernism, an intensified note of negativity has been inherited. Postcolonialism has been mostly skeptical about and oppositional toward modernity. Thus, there are distinct portraits concerning the space of modernity and the implications for identity in the non-Western world that tend to revolve around the axes of difference and sameness, heterogeneity and homogeneity, and universalism and particularism. Within these discourses we have certain writers who have begun to question the respective pull of these axes, carving out instead a more intermediate position. In this context, this book, by departing from the limits of international relations, becomes a critique of both the postcolonial and globalization paradigms and argues for a nuanced sense of intersubjective identity that focuses on a syncretic and fluid postcolonial condition in Africa that still allows space for agency and subjectivity. In the course of a critical engagement with the various constructions of Third World identity within the two discourses at hand, this involves an interrogation of key debates, some of which speak directly to Africa and many of which bear on the African situation indirectly. These

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debates include subaltern studies; the “invention of tradition” debate within imperial history; the “enculturation” perspective regarding African Catholicism; the debate of the “gnosis” of African philosophy among African philosophers and anthropologists; and a consideration of important African fiction writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugui Wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, B. Kojo Laing, and Dambudzo Marechera. I also critique theories about globalization and global culture and the processes of identity formation in social theories about modernity and postmodernity perspectives as they impinge on the Third World.17 These debates and perspectives within and outside the two larger discourses form the conceptual foreground of the exploration of African postcolonial identity. My specific focus, as such, is on the African context, though at times my analysis centers on the Third World as a point of comparison. Grappling with identity in the contemporary world involves a recognition of the fluidity of the modern boundaries of political space. One cannot begin to make sense of broader processes involving the global, the modern, and the postcolonial if the binarisms of universal and particular, center and periphery, and self and other continue to be reinscribed without critical reflection. Exploring questions of identity, subjectivity, and culture is also a recognition that international relations has become inadequate at understanding the deeper ravines of the late modern world and that a reliance on conventional categories of analysis will no longer suffice. Distinctions between modernity, late modernity, and postmodernity are difficult to delineate and sustain.18 Such distinctions are necessary not simply for the purposes of semantic clarity, however, but because appropriate characterization has important implications for an analysis of identity in the Third World. Too often assumptions about late modernity or postmodernity relevant to the West are carried over into parts of the Third World, where similar conditions of “hyper”-modernity may not exist. The systemic component of the categories under consideration—that is, global capitalist networks of trade, production, and investment—can be left out of accounts in a critique of modernity in the Third World (particularly in some postcolonial accounts). I will return to these issues later. For the moment, it is useful to distinguish the terms set out.

MODERNITY AND POSTCOLONIALITY: REIMAGINING AFRICA Modernity has been variously characterized as a condition of risk by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck and self-reflexivity by the British social theorist Anthony Giddens; as an “unfinished project” by the German critical theorist Jürgen Habermas; and as an “impossibility” marked by an

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endemic ambivalence by the European cultural theorist Zygmunt Bauman. The metaphors and prescriptions may differ, but aside from certain postmodern accounts that confidently posit its demise, modernity is very much seen as a dynamic process that is open and changeable.19 Even Bauman argues that modernity produces a constant drive to attain its impossible tasks, a principal one being the striving for order.20 “Modernity,” according to Bauman, “is what it is—an obsessive march forward—not because it always wants more, but because it never gets enough; not because it grows more ambitious and adventurous, but because its adventures are bitter and its ambitions frustrated. The march must go on because any place of arrival is but a temporary station.”21 I argue that we need to see modernity as a framework of possibilities. These possibilities are simultaneously enabling and destructive. Modernity—that all-pervasive phenomenon of contemporary societies (and indeed of the twentieth century as a whole)—is very much the pivot of experience in many cultures of both North and South, although this modernity is of variable nature and intensity, depending on the context and position of a particular society within the global system. Modernity is also at the center of the two discourses that have provided the conceptual foreground for the analysis of African identity—postcolonialism and globalization. At the risk of oversimplification, both discourses are a product of and response to modernity. Postcolonialism has attempted to recover a critical space for marginalized societies and peoples within the inescapable embrace of modern processes and ideas. At times, this endeavor has led to untenable positions outside or against modernity. Although resistance has proven an effective tool for certain groups and individuals within the Third World, this resistance must be seen as part of an overall process of negotiation and accommodation to the inevitable march of modernity. For all its focus on difference and otherness, postcolonialism has been prone to overlook the differences generated by modernity itself and the self/other nexus that underpins all encounters with the modern. As Bauman and other theorists have argued, modernity is a restless quest to overcome otherness and strangeness. In spite of the drive for order and certainty, it produces only difference and ambiguity. Much the same process can be seen in globalization discourses. These are, self-evidently, narratives about late modernity. Not only are they deeply Western accounts of this modernity, but they tend to repeat the quest for order and sameness theorized in Bauman’s account. Inevitably, such attempts are doomed to expose ever more traces of the other, the strange and the ambivalent in the global spread of modernity. Modernity is a framework of possibilities because it is not simply a systemic phenomenon. It provides a theater of action and reaction for a whole series of agents and groups it encounters along the way. Not only does it force people to engage with otherness, it requires them to examine

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their own circumstance and worldview in its march forward, turning the forward back upon itself in the process. In this respect, modernity is an intersubjective process. On the one hand, subjects (in groups, societies, communities, cultures, and as individuals) interact with each other more and more under late modernity in the new international space theorized by postcolonial thinkers like Homi Bhabha: migration, diaspora, exile, refugees, multiculturalism. Such interaction is a contemporary aspect of modernity. On the other hand, subjects engage with ideas, systems, processes, and changes that come from elsewhere yet become localized and part of self-experience. This has been the case from the onset of imperialism and colonialism and has gathered pace in the Bretton Woods era of economic globalization and its attendant cultural and informational influences. This context is evident in the struggle over the body of S. M. Otieno described earlier in this chapter, and indeed in the various episodes of Africa’s navigation of modernity that I explore in Chapter 8. At this point, though, let me concentrate on the terms modern, late modern, and postmodern. If modernity refers to the processes of change and transformation evident from the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism, then late modernity is marked by the intensification and acceleration of such capitalist processes in the multinational, globalized era of the late twentieth century, attendant by a greater reflexivity regarding the nature of modernity. Postmodernity is most often used to describe conditions of dislocation and fragmentation, an unraveling of time and space brought on by the acceleration of modernity that ushers in an era of uncertainty and contingency. Indeed, certain theorists view it as a break with modernity. Some prefer to label late modernity postmodernity; that is, a condition of flux and contradiction we are currently passing through. Jameson provides a more economic dialectic: postmodernity as late capitalism. In some respects the distinction between the late modern and postmodern is one of emphasis and disposition; each refers to the same period and the increased speed and reflexivity of modernity. However, postmodernism draws certain conclusions from contemporary developments to characterize political and social relations that more strictly modernist thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, Marshall Berman, and Anthony Giddens would not share.22 These authors prefer to interpret postmodernity as a series of theoretical postulations rather than descriptive observations. Mindful of these distinctions, I have no doubt that in the latter half of the twentieth century we are witnessing transformations in the capitalist mode of production that condition contemporary social experience and call into question conventional wisdom and certainties. International relations, which has hardly come to grips with the complexity and Janus-faced nature of modernity itself, is also unlikely to grasp “all the dislocations, accelerations and contingencies of a world less and less able to recognize

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itself in the cracked mirror of Cartesian coordinates.”23 Yet despite the inevitable focus on recent transformations, we need to be mindful that modernity has been with us for several centuries and that for many societies that fall under the rubric “Third World” this modernity has unfolded along a particular trajectory informed by certain imperial and colonial imperatives. Some notable examples are the changes in built environment in the ancient cities of Cairo or Delhi, which have been reshaped into modern, imperial cities and urban centers. Thus, modernity has carried with it certain implications for culture and identity in the non-West for a much longer period than current debates over modernity or postmodernity would attest to. Much of the literature on modernity is based on the idea that modernity and postmodernity (as descriptions of a social reality) are synonymous for the entire world, that postmodernity is merely the latest manifestation of modernity everywhere. There is little attempt to delineate the precise nature of modernity in the many Third World contexts. Yet modernity and postmodernity are hardly collapsible terms when applied to Africa or the South generally. The new world of computer superhighways and the older world of the transistor radio are hardly one and the same thing. To put it another way, the modernity ushered in by imperialism and colonization tends to be more pressing in Africa than the conditions usually theorized under the label of late modernity or postmodernity, although, of course, aspects of the latter (multinational capital in particular) are also present. Jameson’s treatment of late capitalism and postmodernity illustrates the point well. Jameson approaches the broader phenomena of modernity in a similar fashion to Bauman, although his dialectic is more centrally economic. He views modernity as the way “modern” people “feel about themselves”: “This modern feeling now seems to consist in the conviction that we ourselves are somehow new, that a new age is beginning, that everything is possible and nothing can ever be the same again, we want to ‘make it new,’ get rid of those old objects, values, mentalities, and ways of doing things, and to be somehow transfigured.” 24 Modernity is “something we do” or, as I posit in Chapter 7, an active process of consumption. Jameson crucially adds that one knows and experiences modernity “only because the old and the traditional are also present.”25 So far, the characterization is unprovocative. However, according to Jameson, modernity undergoes a distinct change in the contemporary period. As the third and latest stage in the evolution of capitalism, postmodernism represents the globalization of capital and the mode of production. The “totality” of late capitalism consists in “the world space of multinational capital.”26 Late modernity has certain effects across the globe that distinguish it from what came before. According to Jameson, the new space that emerges is truly global in that it

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involves the suppression of distance . . . and the relentless saturation of any remaining voids and empty spaces, to the point where the postmodern body—whether wandering through a postmodern hotel, locked into rock sound by means of headphones, or undergoing the multiple shocks and bombardments of the Vietnam War . . . —is now exposed to a perpetual barrage of immediacy from which all sheltering layers and intervening mediations have been removed.27

Further, this postmodern totality works to leave the “older city” and even the nation-state itself “behind as ruined and archaic remains of earlier stages” in the development of capitalism.28 In the light of this prodigious expansion of late modernity, Jameson calls for a “global cognitive mapping” that endows “the individual subject with some heightened sense of its place in the global system.”29 The sense of a more globalized space through which modernity increasingly connects the local and the global captures a key element of the contemporary world. In this respect, Jameson rightly points to a distinctive feature of late modernity. Yet Jameson’s overly First World perspective glides over the still differentiated nature of modernity across the world. The distance between “the postmodern hotel” (to cite Jameson’s favorite, the Bonaventure in Los Angeles) and the Vietnam War is vast, to say the least, even in spatial terms. To claim that the nation-state and the “older city” have ceased to play a central role in modern life is as far removed from African society as one could imagine (indeed, many would make the same claim for Western societies). The very term older city could be coined only from the point of view of a postmodern metropolis like Los Angeles. The cities of Dar es Salaam, Accra, or Calcutta for that matter may be “ruined and archaic,” but they are an important reference point for their many inhabitants. The cognitive mapping that pertains to the lives of the subjects in such late modern cities (late modern in the sense that they are present in the contemporary world) is not necessarily attuned to a sense of their place in the global system. They may come into contact with global processes in their everyday lives (whether at the level of Western consumerism, technology, or social movements), but their immediate concerns may relate to an older modernity in which the tensions between city and village life within the state may predominate over the difficulties of coming to terms with a postnational crisis of identity. It is in the ambivalently traditional and modern space of such Third World cities that the “sheltering layers” and “intervening mediations” that Jameson claims have been eliminated under late capitalism are dynamically present, whether in Kojo Laing’s Accra, the Sape culture in Zaire and Congo, or women’s cooperatives in Zimbabwe. The modern African city provides a particularly instructive point of contrast to Jameson’s characterization of modernity. It is precisely in the

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contemporary cities of Africa that the “sheltering layers” between the modern and the traditional are visible. Indeed, it may be that a focus on such cities can lead to a recasting of notions of politics and resistance. A recent study by Alessandro Triulzi (building on the work of Achille Mbembe and, to a lesser extent, James Scott) points to the African city as the “visual symbol of postcolonialism” in that it forms the locus for a vibrant, nonformal expression of politics in which people, through their everyday activities—such as scrawling graffiti, listening to “pavement” or street radio, or simply spreading rumors—take “revenge on the State” and partake in new battlegrounds for registering dissent and constituting subjectivity. Working against the grain of conventional state politics, people and groups in the city have managed to effect a “negotiating power” in activities and actions that tend to take place beyond the gaze of state institutions yet still manage to reach such targets.30 Yet the modern African city presents two faces—two expressions of postcoloniality. On the one hand, it works as a liberating site for identity formation in that it acts as space for the “challenge to the political and at the same time the locality for negotiation and agreement where new freedoms, new services, autonomous spaces and the delegation of previously centralized powers can be gained.”31 On the other hand, the African city is also subject to the exigencies of the global system and the colonial legacy, and in this material space it is a fractured site for migration, poverty, and hunger owing to the flux of large numbers banished to it by the breakdown of agricultural production in the rural economy.32 Yet even in these circumstances it tends to call forth new forms of survival and pressures for adaptation. The overall effect of this Janus-faced metropolis may be chaotic in Mbembe’s sense, yet Triulzi points to something more fundamental in these new urban sites that have opened up at the juncture between modernity and tradition. Urban movements and local street idioms in African cities express new and evolving strategies of constituting identity that encompass a dynamism and spontaneity that neither the state nor global processes can completely capture and control. The very immediacy and street character of these expressions also make them difficult to interpret from the outside. Yet the myriad of examples put forward by Triulzi—from the youth “Set/Setal” movement in Dakar to the urban graffiti of Mogadishu and the “pavement radio” of Kinshasa, Cameroon, and Togo—indicate that the “street buzz” of urban life in these African localities not only defies easy classification but also typifies the flux and incessant movement of intersubjective relations shaping contemporary African identities and marks out an important location for their exploration. Consequently, in what might be termed the crevices between the modern and the traditional, modernity is constantly mediated by a range of different actors in specific locales. In the process, it invariably unsettles and

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refashions identity. Identity, like modernity, is forever marching forward. It is shifting and never complete.33 It is invariably challenged and thus must be renegotiated anew.34 It is relational in the sense that subjects are always interacting with others, both inside and outside their communities and societies, and with broader processes of change. Thus, context, place, and location are key ingredients. In this respect, postmodern geography has made a valuable contribution to the conceptualization of globalization. It has pointed to—though it has not always followed up its own leads—a variegated landscape in which the Third World encompasses a series of distinctive places. By focusing on the street life of modern African cities, for example, we may be able to tap into an alternative politics that tells us something distinctive about the negotiation between the modern, postcolonial, and global.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND THE POLITICAL Another term that needs to be defined is intersubjectivity, which I take to mean no less than the self learning to live with its various others, without predetermined paradigms and rational coordinates. This is a substantial departure from the type of reductive account of intersubjectivity given by Jürgen Habermas in his theory of communicative action and rationality. Habermas offers a highly idealized reading of intersubjective relations. In his account, the relation-to-self is constituted in intersubjective contexts that are almost purely cognitive and linguistic in nature. Subjects draw from certain norms and forms of universal community, affirming a normative basis for modernity. The “lifeworld” of the individual is focused on striving toward rational action and thought, working with various “validity claims” (truth, justice) that are universal in their realization. Indeed, such claims are inherently “transcendent” in that they are believed to outstrip any local context from which they may spring: “The transcendent moment of universality bursts every provinciality asunder.”35 What is especially revealing in Habermas’s theory of intersubjectivity is that it is couched in terms of a return to “what a modernity reassuring itself once meant by the concepts of self-consciousness, self-determination, and self-realization.”36 Further, the “rationalization of the lifeworld” of the subject works to tame difference and otherness. It signifies, in Habermas’ terms, “differentiation and condensation at once—a thickening of the floating web of intersubjective threads that simultaneously holds together the ever more sharply differentiated components of culture, society, and person.”37 Intersubjectivity can be understood as a trope of mastery or control over the endemic and unsettling ambivalence of everyday life.

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The notion of intersubjectivity I develop here, however, is substantially distinct: The relation-to-self does not necessarily hold together differentiation; the local is not merely transcended; subjects do not act purely on the basis of some communicative rationality (the imaginary, in Habermas’s schema, is a significant silence). In short, modernity does not reassure. I argue that intersubjectivity signifies the capacity of individuals and societies to live with, work through, and manage the anxieties, uncertainties, and contingencies of modern living, without some overarching universal code or rationally constituted lifeworld. For this notion of intersubjectivity to have direct relevance for Africa, it must incorporate the following two elements: an acceptance that modernity, in a constant tussle with the premodern, produces ambivalence and opens up various spaces and possibilities for action and reflection; and a serious consideration of the permutations and particularities of place and context. Both of these elements build on and extend key insights of postcolonial and globalization discourses: the former in allowing for subjects to actively navigate ambivalence (and here I seek to move beyond the dead ends of Lacanian thought); the latter in anchoring notions of space and globality in everyday practices and localities and thus exploring space and place as a meeting ground. These elements frame the intersubjective process in Africa (and the Third World) and provide the conditions for its expression. Interacting with premodern factors (tribalism, for instance), modernity has introduced greater costs and opportunities in this intersubjective space that at times intensify traditional factors and add a new twist to their trajectory. Within this contested terrain of intersubjectivity and modernity in Africa, the relevance of postmodernity remains an issue. I have already addressed the differences between modern and postmodern (and late modern) accounts of globalization as descriptions of what is taking place in the world. Yet to what extent is a distinctly postmodern condition theorized overall when a concept of the modern as open and malleable is employed? If, as Bauman maintains, modernity is indeed impossible and can never attain the order and certainty it strives for (in Africa and beyond), is that not actually a description of a postmodern experience at the heart of contemporary intersubjective relations? If postmodernity, as commonly deployed, has an application in an African context, it is only partly in the acceleration of modernity in the latter part of the twentieth century: the greater incorporation of the margin within the orbit of the North. Yet at the epistemological level, at least, postmodernity can be understood in a different way that proceeds not from a view of modernity and postmodernity as distinct phenomena but from a perspective that sees postmodernity as providing a radical explanation of

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modernity itself. Bauman provides a crucial lead when he observes that postmodernity is simply the modern looking at itself critically and recognizing its limits as well as its pleasures: “Postmodernity is modernity that has admitted the non-feasibility of its original project. Postmodernity is modernity reconciled to its own impossibility—and determined, for better or worse, to live with it.”38 Building on Bauman, social theorist Anthony Elliott provides a novel account of this imbrication of modernity and postmodernity by linking it back to imaginary and intersubjective processes. It is worth exploring Elliott’s reading and relating it to an understanding of Africa’s place in intersubjective relations. In Elliott’s explanation, postmodernity constitutes a modernity that monitors itself; a “modernity in reverse,” one that is constantly going back over its ground. This modernity, rather than successfully banishing the strange and the uncanny outside and away from the self, cannot help but accommodate self and other. It accepts the impossibility of the Enlightenment’s grand visions and designs and marks an attempt to live with a pared-down modernity that accommodates its inevitable ambivalence and contingency. Because postmodernity accepts this impossibility, subjectivity is open to the “uncertainty of mind and world.” “This means,” writes Elliott, “proceeding in personal and cultural life without absolute guidelines and definitive authority, tolerating uncertainty and confusion, and attempting to think the unthinkable within the turbulence of contemporary social processes.”39 The very open-endedness of this self-critical modernity allows a space for what Elliott terms a “reflexive mapping of ourselves, a mapping of selves multiple, other and strange.”40 Although this openness to uncertainty is at once a generative space because it interpenetrates with the inner world of the imaginary, it also unleashes fears, anxieties, and strategies of containment that attempt to dispel ambivalence. Herein lies the break with previous accounts of modernity and postmodernity: what we witness in society is a simultaneous embrace and avoidance of ambivalence that evokes both the modernist drive for order and what has come to be seen as the postmodernist tolerance for difference and plurality.41 Subjectivity and intersubjective relations are characterized by a continual struggle for meaning and a contest over representations; a demand for certainty yet a forging of something different and new in the discovery of the impossibility of this certainty. Within this context, the self and social world are joined in an experience of ambivalence. Ambivalence resides in the unconscious, imaginary realm of selfhood: “The subject creates meaning in the moment of differentiation of self to other.”42 The self always encounters the other, and this other, as such, resides in the self’s experience of the wider social world. The effect of ambivalence is especially heightened by the promise of modernity or, more to the point, the illusion of its promise of mastery, order, sameness, and certainty. This is

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captured in Bauman’s view of postmodernity as modernity without illusions. Elliott points out the significant implications for subjects resulting from this awareness of modernity’s illusion: “The postmodern subject is preoccupied, among other things, with creative and pragmatic living, free of the distortion of unrealistic hopes and aspirations, of unrealizable goals and values.”43 Lest this account of subjectivity and intersubjectivity be written off as too inscribed with a First World sensibility (and Elliott and Bauman certainly fashion their reading of postmodernity predominantly from the fabric of late modern, Western society), the important insight it affords is the reinterpretation of modernity as containing within it what is normally attributed to postmodernity: an experience of plurality, contingency, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Any engagement with it is thus bound to elicit ambivalence and encourage improvised living and shifting and conditional identities. This is as true of Africa as it is of the more hypermodern experience in the West. The reflexive scanning of modernity, the holding in view of the ambivalent and the contingent, the exposure to strangeness: These not only are tied to the conditions of late modernity or postmodernity but are resident in the very nature of the modern in the Third World. Indeed, one could argue that such factors are all the more obvious in Africa precisely because people and cultures have to sift through the modern and the traditional simultaneously. In the words of Achebe, Africans need to sing “the song of ourselves, in the din of an insistent world and song of others.”44 This mapping of multiple selves and others is not always conducive to psychic harmony or effective social strategies for living, as the case of Marechera—which I discuss in detail in Chapter 5—indicates. What, then, is the place of Africa within this theory of intersubjectivity and how does it relate to my initial starting point—Africa’s location in global politics? Africa resides within a global system not of its choosing and decidedly out of its control, as a range of Third World critics, such as Aijaz Ahmad and Arif Dirlik, have argued. Individuals (as part of a nation, state, community, or culture) within this marginalized continent are hemmed in by obvious material barriers and a limited range of opportunities. It would be foolhardy to deny the destructive realities that are evident in this marginalized space: starvation, underdevelopment, AIDS, tribal genocide, and political repression. Yet despite this bleak landscape, Africans get on with the task of living, all the while cognizant of the limitations and openings that exist in the unsettling embrace of modernity and tradition. There is an everyday scanning and monitoring of modernity that takes place. Africans cope with the conditions of modern living and make do. They chart their own passage in uncertain and risky waters. At times this passage is fragmented and disjointed, but they push on regardless and find their own niche. Mostly, this action is far removed from the grand narratives of

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resistance in postcolonialism and equally distant from projections of homogeneity in globalization. In many respects, as writers such as Achille Mbembe, T. Abdou Maliqalim Simone, David Hecht, and Alessandro Triulzi and novelists such as Nuruddin Farah have highlighted, these navigations of modernity and identity take place outside the formal province of the State and politics, embracing instead new urban strategies and unconventional modes of action. Along the way African subjects encounter the outside and the strange, the new and the threatening—including the Western other, which comes in the form of commodities, knowledge, and principles of governance. This outside tends to be located under the rubric of “modernity,” although of course modernity becomes as African as it is distinctly Western in the course of its indigenization. It is in this encounter, in this intersubjective give-and-take, that Africans shape their identity and navigate the inside and outside, self and other. This notion of intersubjectivity thus centers on the subjective refashioning of modernity and the constitution of identity at the local, everyday level of interaction between people and structures. In so doing, it forms a missing dimension in the standard accounts of international politics. The concept of intersubjective relations is by no means a substitute for the established terrain of international relations, but it does speak to a crucial set of relationships and processes below and above this narrow terrain. More to the point, it provides body to an understanding of factors normally beyond the comprehension of mainstream international relations. What is required is a reconstitution of what is understood by the “international” in an account of politics. As John Gerard Ruggie points out, scholars need to go beyond merely describing what is already in place and showing how existing structures and actors work—the bread and butter of contemporary international relations. They need to give some ontological flesh to factors and movements within and beyond the domain of international politics and seek to apprehend fundamental processes of change and transformation in the contemporary world, particularly in the shifting nature of modernity.45 I have stressed how a lack of focus on the human dimension in international relations has hindered such an endeavor. Ruggie points to two other limitations in international relations scholarship that confirm the need for an intersubjective approach. First, international relations lacks a concept of differentiation with which to account for the nature of modernity, in particular that which is historically specific and salient and hence prone to alteration and renewal.46 To this could be added a sense of place and context that enables one to view difference and particularity in the matrix of modernity. Second, international relations lacks a notion of what Ruggie terms “social epistemes,” the process whereby a “society first comes to imagine itself, to conceive of appropriate orders of rule and exchange, to symbolize identities,

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and to propagate norms and doctrines.” In short, “the mental equipment” that people draw upon and utilize in imagining and symbolizing forms of political community.47 In the contemporary African context, this is as likely to reside in the form of cultural movements, urban graffiti, and indigenous publishing outlets as it is in more conventional outlets of political expression. Without an account of differentiation, of the role of the imaginary and the epistemological, of people themselves in the course of their everyday life strategies and interaction with forces and pressures that are at once global, modern, and local, all that is left is a static, inadequate chronicle of international politics. The central ideas that float throughout this book, borrowed with certain caveats and reworkings from postcolonial and globalization discourses—agency, ambivalence, hybridity, difference, consumption, and spatiality—serve to map a theory of intersubjectivity that is able to locate the place of marginalized societies such as those in Africa along the global spectrum.

IDENTITY, CULTURE, AND MODERNITY: AFRICAN DILEMMAS There is little doubt that modernity, whatever its guise, has brought about dislocations and contingencies in the realm of identity, be it cultural or psychological. Given that notions of identity, subjectivity, and culture are central to this study, some attempt at definitional elaboration is necessary. Without engaging in the many debates and controversies regarding these inherently contentious concepts, culture and identity can be understood as referring to “the symbolic-expressive aspect of human behaviour.”48 This includes what anthropologists refer to as the dramatizations and rituals of everyday life (the social dimension) and what poststructuralist writers such as Michel Foucault see as the constructivist basis of social life (discursive formations around knowledge and language that determine the individual’s scope for thought and action).49 Importantly, these rituals and discursive formations are underpinned by what Cornelius Castoriadis terms the “social imaginary,” the psychic basis of signification that springs from conscious and unconscious processes of self-constitution. 50 It is against the backdrop of this conception of radical imagination that traditional notions of subjectivity (the individual’s capacity to act and think in relation to the self and others) have been deficient; they have elevated the rational over the imaginary and hence have ignored the creative capacity for selftransformation in subjective and intersubjective relations. 51 It is this explicitly human element that forms the fabric of culture and identity, but, as I will argue throughout this book, this symbolic-expressive nature of culture and identity is not divorced from the material realm.

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As to the nature of culture and identity, one cannot help but be guided by Raymond Williams’s classic formulation of culture as dynamic, reproducible, and never fully realized or known because it consists of residual, emergent, and dominant elements that interact at any one time.52 George Marcus has extended Williams’s concept of culture to include an understanding of identity and added the variable of the “possible” to Williams’s triad.53 Williams’s fluid and varied understanding can be complemented by the critical anthropology of James Clifford, who views culture as relational, mixed, and inventive, a hybrid formation that is inherently adaptable and innovative.54 It is in this crucial sense that culture and identity are “always in the making.”55 Marcus views this nonessentialist understanding of culture as the particular contribution of a modernist ethnography that departed from traditional readings steeped in notions of authenticity. Certainly, under the intensified conditions of late modernity and postmodernity, such a perspective is all the more appropriate, particularly at the postcolonial intersection between tradition, modernity, and globalization wherein identity always “is,” but has only “just become so” and is already always evolving.56 Identity and culture in Africa is approached with this nonessentialist, nonauthentic reading. Building on this reading, postcolonial identity can be viewed as mediated through a sense of difference, as an “already-divided relation of self/other” that is always contingent.57 Further, as Achille Mbembe argues, postcolonial subjects mobilize several “fluid identities” in a private and public space in which they learn to “continuously bargain and improvise” these identities.58 Needless to say, such identities inevitably navigate a whole field of material factors and processes such as the state or the economy and are consequently constituted in an ongoing interaction with the structural features of modernity. Modernity thus frames the parameters of the various discourses and situations under which identity evolves. Political space has become increasingly globalized through the intersecting processes of capitalism, communications, and technology. Although this appreciation of a globalized space should not necessarily lead to a homogenized interpretation of subjectivity or a historically myopic understanding of modernity itself, it nevertheless invites us to make sense of identities in various parts of the world only in relation to one another, hence the emphasis on intersubjectivity throughout this book. This approach renders the defining dualisms of international relations problematic, for we live in a world in which it is no longer possible to view various others as merely extensions of the Western universal. Rather, we inhabit a world in which the cultures of the Third World not only absorb Western discourses and systemic processes but, at times, act upon, reorient, and transform them in an increasingly creolized space that occasionally rebounds on the supposed center. It is my contention that we all maneuver, in differing degrees, within the modern and the global as a condition of living in the accelerated context

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of the late modern world. However, the transformations and dislocations that affect contemporary identities are both of a different cast and more intense and perhaps contradictory at the postcolonial intersection precisely because it is in this cultural and historical situation that we witness a “consumption of modernity”59 constituted by interacting processes of tradition, imperialism, colonialism, resistance, difference, hybridity, and ambivalence. There has been an unfortunate tendency in some intellectual circles, particularly in debates about globalization and postmodernity, to flatten the effects of contemporary cultural processes on identity so that assumptions about developments in the Western world are too easily carried over into the Third World generally, often as an oversight. Even the understanding of the Third World is not sufficiently sophisticated in this context; characterizations relevant to large, mostly developed (albeit unevenly) “Third World” states such as Brazil, Mexico, or India are imported into vastly different situations such as those that exist in most of sub-Saharan Africa.60 In this respect, it is becoming increasingly difficult to speak of a “Third World” or the “South,” even as convenient shorthand. Certainly I advance no broader claims on behalf of the “Third World,” although the rubrics of “Third World” and “South” are often deployed in the sense that they are used, mostly without much reflection, in contemporary academic discourse. Even the term postcolonial is inherently misleading and slippery, and its usage in the various postcolonial discourses has tended to mirror the fate of Third World and South.61 Yet to the extent that the “Third World” still carries meaning as an expression for the multitude of cultures and identities that remain marginalized, dispossessed, and increasingly insignificant in the late modern age, it is indispensable in any attempt to understand the nature of modernity and identity in the contemporary world, if only to remind us that the world does not end at the Tropic of Cancer. With these caveats in mind, I have limited the analysis of identity mostly to sub-Saharan or “Black” Africa, although one should be careful not to conflate the various cultures and societies under one simple category. Under the refashioned rubric of “intersubjective relations”—that is, interactions between various subjectivities and identities in world politics (of which the state and other systemic processes are not the sole determining features but important components)—my intention is to focus on Africa in order to make sense of how modernity, postmodernity or late modernity, and globalization have influenced the formation of identity. More specifically, I explore how the postcolonial and globalization discourses approach the question of identity and subjectivity in the Third World generally and Africa in particular. These discourses have profound implications for an understanding of identity and intersubjective relations. It is precisely because international relations has so conspicuously failed to address these issues that it is necessary to reach out to other discourses. However, my intention is not merely to embrace and incorporate these discourses

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uncritically, but to enter into a critical dialogue with them, to use them to rethink international relations by focusing on intersubjective relations, and in turn to rethink the claims and agenda of the postcolonial and globalization discourses. This book is framed by the following key questions and issues that serve to form a link between the various items and material considered in the discussion of intersubjective relations and the place of Africa. First, to what extent have problems associated with culture and identity increasingly come to displace more traditional concerns with economics and politics narrowly defined as the focus of inquiry into the Third World? To put this another way, how does one approach the vexed relationship between subjective or cultural factors and material processes in any consideration of African and Third World identity? The wide currency of the postcolonial discourse is certainly a strong indication of the ascendancy of a cultural focus. That so prominent an economist as Immanuel Wallerstein has come to speak of “geoculture” as the underpinning of the world system, particularly as it relates to North-South, is also illustrative of this shift in focus.62 Mike Featherstone argues that taking culture and cultural theory seriously is unavoidable in an age marked by increasing cultural diversity, the shift in focus from conceptualizing universalism and unities to particularlism and difference, and the increasing transsocietal flows of images, information, commodities, and people that accompany globalization.63 Although there is much in this turn to culture that works as a corrective to traditional understandings of politics, it can be argued, particularly in relation to postcolonialism, that an overemphasis on cultural factors may obscure the enduring material processes that attend modernity and globalization in the Third World. In this respect the line of Wallerstein’s argument is worth exploring in its attempt to integrate culture and economic processes in the context of the Third World’s place in the world system. Second, a central focus in much of the literature on modernity and globalization revolves around notions of space and spatiality as key indicators of the nature of politics in the late modern world. In the wake of Foucault and postmodern geographers such as Edward Soja and David Harvey, space has come to displace time in accounts of identity and modernity in social theory and beyond. Yet to the extent that space takes us some way toward understanding the relational and interlocking nature of contemporary processes and interactions between peoples and societies, it leaves unanswered more precise questions regarding the relationship between broad, global movements and local responses. Thus, how does a focus on space relate to more specific notions such as place and context? What happens to the understanding of political space, in particular global space, when analysis is grounded in particular locales? In this respect, the material on space and spatiality needs to be ranged against everyday practices at

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the local level; it needs to be juxtaposed with place in order to elucidate the range of different responses and adaptations that occur on the ground in Africa and in the Third World generally. Consequently, although intersubjective relations between North and South may in the first instance unfold along the global conjuncture of modernity, their precise significance can be understood only when this global space is effectively unpacked to reveal particular fissures and novel manifestations. Third, so much of the present analysis revolves around the constitution of identity and subjectivity in the meeting place between the modern, the global, and the postcolonial. Identity is shaped in the context of contemporary processes, the imaginary aspect of the individual’s psyche, and interaction with other societies and discourses. Although the search for identity in the Third World has supposedly gone beyond much of the traditional nationalist concerns with unity, common purpose, and cultural essence from an often invented past and for the purposes of state building, many writers of the postcolonial discourse fall into a similar trap of romanticizing the premodern and essentializing the self in opposition to the West, focusing too narrowly on rejection. In this context, a key question is, Does ambivalence and adaptation more effectively capture the process of identity formation in Africa? Ashis Nandy suggests an answer: Total rejection of the West is impossible because it is akin to denying a key part of the self.64 To what extent is it necessary to move away from binary understandings of identity so that key motifs such as resistance in postcolonialism and homogeneity in globalization are substantially revised? African postcolonial identity, as an instance of intersubjective relations in the contemporary era, can be viewed as a dialectic process involving these contending motifs of resistance and globalization. An obvious implication of the globalization discourse is the futility of resistance and hence the limited scope for agency at the so-called periphery. If the world has become increasingly homogenized and is indeed heading toward a global culture, then much of the emotional and intellectual energy of resistance is regressive and, indeed, the possibilities for African postcolonial agency and subjectivity are closed off. Ironically, the same charge can be leveled at the poststructural suspicion of subjectivity in postcolonial analyses. However, the relationship between globalization and difference and resistance can and should be reconceptualized if the universalist assumptions of globalization and the particularist essentialism of postcolonial sensibilities are subjected to critique. Thus, although late capitalist, modern society has undoubtedly carried forward certain globalizing effects (communications, technologies, markets), this by no means negates a distinctive, syncretic African space that combines both resistance and adaptation to modernity. Globalization does not totally consume Third World identities, nor does it lend itself easily, as

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an inevitable manifestation of modernity, to opposition and rejection. In this sense it may be wise to escape the type of view encapsulated in Fredric Jameson’s characterization of the Third World as either “eliminated” by the cultural logic of late capitalism or as somehow untainted and oppositional to this same process.65 This type of characterization is too orderly to capture the more subtle interplay between the global, the modern, and the postcolonial in the formation of identity and subjectivity in Africa. The notion of resisting the West and the broader process of modernity has come to the fore of intellectual and fictional thinking in much of the Third World. The West and modernity are broadly viewed as intrusions to a sense of cultural distinctiveness and self-identity. Yet what is fascinating about the generally negative response to the West, and indeed the alternate assumption that it carries all before it on the tidal wave of modernity, is that the certitude with which such images are constructed mask a more deep-seated ambivalence to what is ostensibly cast in terms of the self and other. The standard self versus other construction that has pervaded much of political and international thinking provides a window on identity only to the extent that it obscures a more fundamental attempt to accommodate the other in the self. A central issue throughout this book, therefore, is that self in other may provide a more fruitful avenue of analysis than the mostly self versus other perspective that pervades much of the postcolonial discourse and that conditions thinking on the inevitability of a globalized space that is inherently Western and homogeneous. Not only do ideas of resistance and difference need to be deromanticized, but the valid category of the global needs to be decoupled from an inverse triumphalism of the Western self.

NOTES 1. Blaine Harden, “Battle for the Body,” Independent Monthly, December 1991/January 1992, p. 33. 2. J. B. Ojwang, “Death and Burial in Modern Kenya: An Introduction,” in J. B. Ojwang and J. N. K. Mugambi, eds., The S. M. Otieno Case: Death and Burial in Modern Kenya (Nairobi: Nairobi University Press, 1989), p. 3. The interesting feature of this volume is that, aside from the legal focus, the editors bring together essays on the geographical, anthropological, sociological, linguistic, ethical, cultural, and religious aspects of the case, indicating a keen awareness of the myriad of issues at the heart of the Otieno saga. 3. H. Odera Oruka, “Traditionalism and Modernization in Kenya: Customs, Spirits and Christianity,” in J. B. Ojwang and J. N. K. Mugambi, eds., The S. M. Otieno Case, p. 79. 4. Harden, “Battle for the Body,” p. 33. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 34.

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7. Ibid., p. 36. 8. Ibid. As Harden goes on to note, not even corrupt African politicians assume this posture. Indeed, even as they drive around in their Mercedeses and live in luxury, they are eager to portray themselves as men of the people. 9. Ibid., p. 34. 10. J. N. K. Mugambi, “The African Heritage: Change and Continuity,” in Ojwang and Mugambi, eds., The S. M. Otieno Case, p. 165. 11. This is the view of both Ojwang, “Death and Burial in Modern Kenya,” p. 5, and Oruka, “Traditionalism and Modernization in Kenya,” p. 86. 12. Ojwang, “Death and Burial in Modern Kenya,” p. 5. 13. Harden “Battle for the Body,” p. 37. 14. Justice S. E. O. Bosire cited in Harden, “Battle for the Body,” p. 36. 15. Blaine Harden, “Battle for the Body,” Independent Monthly, December 1991/January 1992, p. 35. 16. See Fredric Jameson Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991). 17. Here the focus will be on the writings of Roland Robertson, Bryan Turner (and other theorists of globalization who write in the principal sociological organ of this discourse, Theory, Culture and Society), Immanuel Wallerstein, Jonathan Friedman, Ulf Hannerz, and Anthony Giddens. 18. For some of the major statements and differing positions on this issue, see Jameson, Postmodernism; William Connolly, Political Theory and Modernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988); Zygmunt Bauman, Imitations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992); Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1990); and Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 19. Jean-Francois Lyotard speaks of “open space/time transformations” in which modernity is always already transformable and transformed. See Preregrinations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 31–32. 20. For Bauman, the desire for order lies behind the modern drive to dispel uncertainty and ambiguity. The task of order is “the least possible among the impossible and the least disposable among the indispensable.” Modernity makes itself impossible because it seeks primarily to overcome ambivalence. It “makes itself impossible through setting itself an impossible task. It is precisely the endemic inconclusivity of effort that makes the life of continuous restlessness both feasible and inescapable, and effectively precludes the possibility that the effort may ever come to rest.” In Modernity and Ambivalence, (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), pp. 4, 10. 21. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 10. 22. See Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987); Marshall Berman All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982); and Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity. 23. R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 162. 24. Jameson, Postmodernism, p. 310. 25. Ibid., p. 311. 26. Ibid., p. 54. 27. Ibid., pp. 412–413. 28. Ibid., p. 412. 29. Ibid., p. 54.

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30. Alessandro Triulzi, “African Cities, Historical Memory and Street Buzz,” in Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, eds., The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons (London and New York: Routledge, 1996) p. 80. 31. Ibid., p. 81. 32. Ibid. 33. Christine Sylvester, “Reginas in International Relations: Occlusions, Cooperations, and Zimbabwean Cooperatives,” in Stephen J. Rosow, Naeem Inayatullah and Mark Rupert, eds., The Global Economy as Political Space (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994), p. 117. 34. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 201. 35. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp. xvi–xvii. 36. Ibid., p. 338. 37. Ibid., p. 346. 38. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 98. 39. Anthony Elliott, Subject to Ourselves: Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Postmodernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), p. 3. 40. Ibid., p. 4. 41. Ibid., p. 21. 42. Ibid., p. 31. 43. Ibid., p. 22. 44. Chinua Achebe, “African Literature as Celebration: Reflections of a Novelist,” Dissent, Summer 1992, p. 345. 45. See John Gerard Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization, 47(1), Winter 1993, pp. 139–174. He makes the point at p. 171. 46. Ibid., pp. 149, 169. 47. Ibid., p. 157. 48. This definition is taken from the useful critique of contemporary approaches to culture undertaken by Robert Wuthnow, James Davidson Hunter, Albert Bergesen, and Edith Kurzweil in Cultural Analysis: The Work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 3. 49. Wuthnow et al. attribute the former view to the anthropology of Mary Douglas and the phenomenological approach of Peter Berger and the latter to what is implicit in Foucault’s approach to broader questions of power and language, see Cultural Analysis, pp. 255, 140, 155–156. 50. See Cornelius Castoriadis, “The Imaginary: Creation in the Socio-Historical Domain,” in The Real Me? Post-Modernism and the Question of Identity (London: ICA Documents 6, Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1987), pp. 39–43, and for his more extended argument, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 51. See Anthony Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition: Self and Society from Freud to Kristeva (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992). The role of the imaginary will be explored in more detail in Chapter 8. 52. See Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1780–1950, (Harmondsworth, UK: Pelican, 1982 [first published 1958]), pp. 319–322; Raymond Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays (London: Verso, 1980), pp. 38–41; and Raymond Williams, Culture (London: Fontana, 1981), pp. 184, 187, 201. 53. George Marcus, “Past, Present and Emergent Identities: Requirements for Enthnographers of Late Twentieth Century Modernity Worldwide,” in Scott Lash

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and Jonathan Friedman, eds., Modernity and Identity (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992), p. 318. 54. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 10. 55. Taken from Richard G. Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1985), p. 13. 56. Ibid., p. 13. 57. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 167. Mitchell utilizes Foucault and Said’s orientalist thesis in his analysis of colonialism in Egypt. His reflections on identity have a wider currency and form part of the contemporary nonessentialist approach to identity. Hence, identity “never exists in the form of an absolute, interior self or community.” Thus, there are “no political ‘units’, no atomistic, undivided selves; only relations or forces of difference, out of which identities are formed as something always self-divided and contingent” (p. 167). 58. Achille Mbembe, “The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony,” Public Culture, 4(2), Spring 1992, pp. 5–6. Mbembe shares Mitchell’s nonessentialist reading, so postcolonial subjects “splinter their identities” and are “constantly undergoing mitosis” (p. 6). 59. See Jonathan Friedman, “Being in the World: Globalization and Localization,” in Mike Featherstone, ed., Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (London; Newbury Park, CA; and New Delhi: Sage, 1990), pp. 311–325. 60. Paul Rabinow’s “travelogue” of Brazil contains an implicit warning against such a tendency. Writing of Brazil, Rabinow muses: All very “Third World” except that Brazil with the eighth-largest gross national product in the world, with a booming export arms industry, substantial computer and automobile sectors, with vast mineral and agricultural wealth, modern cities, great cultural and ethnic diversity (Sao Paulo has 1 million Japanese), with a short and thin history, with its ceaseless migration of populations, with its genocide of the Indians (some 200,000 remain studied by over half the 700 anthropologists in Brazil), its neverachieved (except in song and story) integration of the slaves it imported (twenty times more than the US), its fantastic cultural creativity, is truly the New World—much closer to California than to Morocco or India. First, Second, Third?” See Rabinow, “A Modern Tour in Brazil,” in Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, eds., Modernity and Identity (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992) p. 253. 61. Particularly when it is used to cover a vast canvas that makes little sense historically and colonially. See Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffen, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), who include under the “postcolonial” label most of Africa and Asia, Australasia, the Caribbean, and Ireland. See pp. 2–6. 62. See Immanuel Wallerstein, Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World-System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; and Paris: Editions De La Maison Des Sciences De L’Homme, 1991). 63. Mike Featherstone, “Cultural Theory and Cultural Change: An Introduction” in Feathersone, ed., Cultural Theory and Cultural Change (London: Sage, Newbury Park, CA; and New Delhi, 1992), pp. vii–viii.

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64. According to Nandy, the reception of modernity in the Indian colonial context embodies a love–hate, identification–counteridentification element that is integral to a postcolonial “strategy of survival.” Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 107. 65. This is Santiago Colas’s view of the Third World’s “paradoxical double function” in Jameson’s theory of postmodernism. See Colas, “The ‘Third World’ in Jameson’s Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, pp. 258–270.

2 Beyond the Discourse of International Relations: Culture, Identity, and North-South Relations Theories of international relations appear less a set of variations on the theme of power politics—undoubtedly their most popular guise—than as a celebration of an historically specific account of the nature, location and possibilities of political identity and community. As a celebration, however, they are also a warning. They specify the limits within which the celebration may be conducted. They express authoritative reservations about how far and under what conditions this particular account of political identity and community can be sustained in either space or time. As a discipline concerned with the delineation of borders, the inscription of dangers and the mobilization of defences, the analysis of international relations offers a particularly clear account of what it means to suggest that modern political thought is somehow endangered, in crisis, in need of repudiation, reaffirmation or reconstruction. —R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside

Surveying contemporary developments in world politics and disciplinary currents of thinking within intellectual circles, one might set out with the following observations: that questions of subjectivity and identity reverberate throughout both; and that the discipline of international relations as it has been traditionally constituted and employed is conspicuously inadequate at understanding such increasingly significant questions. These observations, subject as they are to elaboration, inform my attempt in this book to make sense of identity in contemporary Africa. A focus on subjective and intersubjective relations lies at the heart of a whole gamut of issues that have come to the fore in recent political and cultural analysis: in particular, identity, culture, ethnicity, space, place, and modernity. International relations, especially as it reflects on the question of North–South relations, forms both the starting and departure points for an analysis of how these issues affect Africa’s place in the global system. In the process of entering a dialogue with postcolonial, global, and broader postmodern discourses, it will be necessary to reconstitute what is understood by the term international relations. My central contention in this chapter is that international relations, as traditionally constituted and in its mainstream trajectory, is narrow and 29

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increasingly limited as a discourse about world politics. The reasons for this are twofold. First, international relations tends to be stuck in a statist groove, whether it be critical or otherwise of the dominant realist paradigm. Consequently, it tends to ignore a range of issues in contemporary political and social analysis, such as identity, subjectivity, space, and modernity, that are prominent in the broader humanities and social sciences. A key factor is the fortress mentality that defines the discipline; for example, mainstream international relations rarely ventures into the domain of social theory, where many of the exciting developments cited above are of central importance. This is, of course, not true of postmodern or critical international relations, but even in these areas there are problems regarding the place of the non-Western world.1 Second, as a discourse about world politics, international relations is excessively Western in sensibility and orientation and thus severely circumscribed as a commentary on the world in all its heterogeneity. Consequently, international relations marginalizes what has variously been characterized as the Third World, the South, or the postcolonial world. These two limitations will be explored more extensively in the course of the chapter. International relations is by no means a discrete discipline with a uniform worldview. Although one theoretical standpoint—realism—has dominated the discipline, there have been sufficient debates and critiques within what I would term traditional or mainstream international relations to give it at least the appearance of a heterogeneous body of scholarship. Yet the hallmarks of internal contestation, in particular the rival, at times overlapping, bodies of thought ranged around the realist, rationalist, idealist, and Marxist approaches, mask an internal solidity and agreed core on the objects of study in mainstream international relations. For the most part, international relations has pursued a decidedly external focus on relations between states; it has been content to interpret such relations on the basis of power politics, geopolitical and military strategies, and, less centrally, economic processes. The world has been understood in terms of contending processes of conflict and cooperation (with conflict invariably winning out) in which states, as the sole definers of political space, organize themselves around self-interest and the concomitant pursuit of power and order.2 Some recent writing has pointed to norms and ethical principles as being significant to the actions of states.3 Other critiques (particularly the idealist approach) have sought to introduce an internal focus; that is, factors within states that complicate a simplistic billiard ball image of world politics, but these critiques have mostly been easily marginalized by the hegemonic realist paradigm.4 World politics is thus marked by a gestalt in which certain abstract constructions such as states, power, and order are salient. The traditional trajectory of international relations has rendered it both isolated from and, as a consequence, incapable of accounting for the changed

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theoretical and global landscape in which the core stable of power, states, and order has undergone significant conceptual refashioning and, indeed, a practical transformation. Until recently, international relations has been largely isolated from other disciplines and broader interdisciplinary movements in social and political theory. There have been notable, albeit rare exceptions.5 Confident about its historical point of departure and secure in its myths of intellectual difference, international relations has not been inclined to explore its position in relation to other areas of scholarship. A large part of the intellectual isolation of international relations can be attributed to the dominant role played by the realist school, in particular its North American variant. International relations has tended to be selfenclosed precisely because realism has thoroughly defined the parameters of study. Having cemented the idea of the basically anarchical nature of state relations as the defining feature of world politics, realism and its various offshoots, in particular neorealism and rationalism, have been successful in delineating both the form and the content of the discipline. Power, order, and states—the key ingredients of the realist paradigm—have dominated the broader international relations consciousness. Studies not concerned with these core issues have been accorded a decidedly secondary status. The general lack of self-reflection in international relations and in particular the realist enclosure has, however, been challenged over the past few years. The ecological imperative has generated some concern about the inadequacies of thinking anchored in the primacy of state interests. There is a rapidly growing literature on gender and the need to overhaul ideas about power and statehood in light of feminist perspectives.6 Perhaps even more fundamental has been the emergence of the so-called third debate, and interparadigm debate, wherein, on the one hand, ideas imported from European postmodern and poststructural theory (Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Paul Virilio) have been employed to question the basis of the discipline and, on the other hand, critical theory perspectives that take their bearings from Habermas and the Frankfurt school are employed to challenge both the traditional and postmodern or postpositivist positions.7 In many respects, both the postpositivist and critical theory movements represent the first genuine attempt from within international relations to critically interrogate the assumptions, frameworks, and concerns of the discipline.8 The writings of scholars such as R. B. J. Walker, Richard Ashley, Michael Shapiro, James Der Derian, and Robert Cox have encouraged a deliberate shift to the epistemological premises of the discipline, with the result that in some quarters attention has turned to issues of representation, discourse, textuality/narrative, and culture. What has been raised as an issue, therefore, is the very manner in which international relations as a discipline and as a subject matter has been constructed.

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Undoubtedly, this shift represents a break with tradition, and it is within these movements of writing, in particular postpositivism, that my study is positioned. I need to acknowledge that at this stage, for all its reflexivity and innovation, postpositivism has had a strictly limited impact on international relations as a whole. Unlike previous challenges and debates, however, it is not unreasonable to suppose that it will not so readily be reincorporated or appropriated by the mainstream. Nor, judging by the interests and publications of an increasing number of international relations scholars, will it be so easily ignored. It may be, of course, that instead of changing the nature of international relations, the effect of the rethinking currently under way will be to establish new discourses so that both traditional and postpositivist international relations will run their separate courses. Regardless of the outcome, the disciplinary landscape has been altered. Despite these significant developments, mainstream international relations has tended to guard itself from issues raised by a postpositivist inquiry into informing assumptions and relevant subject matter. The outcome has been a gaping silence on a whole range of key problems that have become, as Raymond Williams once said of culture, inescapable in the modern era.9 The transformed nature of the late-modern (or, as some would have it, the postmodern) world and the fact that we are living in what Joseph A. Camilleri and Jim Falk have characterized as a “shrinking and fragmenting world” in which received boundaries and certainties such as the sovereign state are breaking down or at least undergoing significant change10 necessitate a focus on factors beyond the traditional domain of international relations. The departure point of this book is the need to reconceptualize what is understood by the term international relations by placing identity and culture, or subjective and intersubjective relations, center-stage. My principal aim is to people an account of international relations so that the impact of structures and processes such as the state or globalization on communities and individuals is brought into view. My focus on the personal dimension of world politics will also necessitate a more critical reading of which actors and agents are deemed to fall under the purview of international relations. It is necessary to rethink the traditional geographical and spatial axis of international relations away from its focus on great powers and central balance concerns to issues of North-South relations and in particular, the postcolonial context because it has been people on the ground in the Third World, as much as questions of culture and identity, that have been neglected in international relations. Although they are separate issues, one could argue that the neglect of both is not totally unrelated. In some measure, they both highlight the limits of the discipline. Some analysis of this dual neglect is required before proceeding to a discussion of intersubjective relations.

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As the focus of serious and sustained attention in international relations, culture has been exiled to the periphery of the discipline. This is perhaps not surprising in light of the historical and political genesis of the discipline. After all, the expression of culture at the international level was much more muffled in, for example, the formative interwar years or at the turn of the twentieth century. When culture was relevant, it was so only in a much more diffuse sense, as in, say, the “culture of imperialism” or in the shared political culture of the Concert of Europe. It was understood not so much as a discrete area of concern (as in anthropology) but as the shared “civilizational” ethos of Europe’s ruling elites that extended to the non-European world through the processes of imperialism. In this respect, it was a shared moral and ideological outlook that required little comment. A more obvious and direct cause for the neglect of culture follows from the subsequent hold of realism and hence the centrality of the state as the principal category of analysis. Culture has been overlooked or has been simply subsumed by the state. In large part it is seen as a domestic factor that lies outside the narrowly defined domain of international politics. However, the increasing significance of culture and identity to the study of politics has meant that the internal/external demarcation has become tenuous. In light of the contending global and local cultural forces such as Islamic revivalism and the various ethnonationalist claims of legitimacy, international relations has had to concede some importance to internal social formation in an understanding of international politics. Because culture can no longer be swept under the carpet, some concessions have been made, although one could argue that, for the most part, these concessions have been reactive and reinserted within traditional frames of reference. In some early movements toward an international cultural analysis, as in the collection edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, the understanding of culture has been of a different cast and more limited than its use in other discourses. In emphasizing the shared political culture of certain societies or states, Bull has only scratched the surface of culture. 11 Aside from Bull’s essentially limited intervention, there have been some notable attempts to address the cultural realm. Ali Mazrui has written extensively on the role of culture in international relations and has gone so far as to argue that “culture is at the heart of the nature of power in International Relations.” Mazrui sees ideology, political economy, and technology as deeply rooted in the cultural realm and views the North-South divide as an increasingly cultural one. He believes that cultural identity is an issue of increased significance in the contemporary world, so much so that we may be witnessing the “gradual unravelling of identities based on the state, a declining of identities based on political ideology—and the revival of identities based on culture.” 12 Peter Worsley’s earlier account of the pattern of world development puts

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forward similar propositions. The internationalization of culture based on youth cults, religious revivalism, global consumerism, and feminism is seen as “powerful evidence that a sense of common identity and a shared culture can give rise to social movements that quickly transcend the boundaries of any particular society.”13 Both Mazrui and Worsley thus see culture as a key determinant of international political and economic processes that is cutting across the system of sovereign states so central in international relations. Even the world system theorist Immanuel Wallerstein, whose writings significantly influenced development and dependency debates imported into international relations, has shifted ground to view culture as “the key ideological battleground” of the opposing interests within the modern world capitalist system. 14 Wallerstein believes the system of sovereign states is underpinned by various racial and gender hierarchies that work to contain the contradictions evident in the universal claims to legitimacy of states.15 What is fascinating about Wallerstein’s account, aside from its intrinsic merit, is the manner in which he weaves geoculture so effortlessly into his previously economistic model of geopolitics as a world system. This shift in emphasis is illustrative of a broader turn to culture, a “new intellectual focus” that, particularly in the context of North-South, Wallerstein sees as a “search for ways out of the existing system” and an arena “in which at last human action might be efficacious.”16 R. B. J. Walker remains perhaps the most significant writer to advance a cultural critique of international relations and, in the process, questions the traditional boundaries and silences of the discipline. Placing the blame for the neglect of culture squarely at the feet of realism and its elevation of the state and power politics, Walker argues that in its insistence that culture should remain outside the proper focus of study, international relations denies the cultural basis of its own position and perpetuates the myths of its own universal validity. By grasping at a universal or global phenomenon or pattern such as sovereignty or realpolitik, international relations fails to recognize that it does so “entirely within one culturally and intellectually circumscribed perspective,” that is, a Western, First World one. 17 Further, realism should not be accepted on its own terms as a reflection of a “concrete reality” or a structural necessity, but as a “particular manifestation of a culturally specific view of the world which has, historically, managed to develop a hegemonic grasp over the whole.” 18 Walker extends his critique to expose the static spatiotemporal ontology of much international relations theorizing and reaffirms the particularist limits of its universal reach.19 Walker thus asks us to question the artificial distinction between politics and culture that is sustained in international relations and to recognize the cultural basis of any study of the multiple, particular identities in world politics.

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This brief survey of cultural interventions into the mainstream of international relations requires a sense of perspective. In particular, the intellectual backgrounds of these writers should be considered. Wallerstein is a sociologist whose earlier work on world system theory made an intervention into international relations on the coattails of a Marxist challenge to realist accounts of world politics. Mazrui has always cut a distinctive path in international relations and his concerns have had more to do with the problems of Third World justice and identity than with more mainstream issues. Worsley, similarly, has been steeped in the problems of development and dependency in the Third World. It is thus obvious that the perspectives that have attempted to enrich international relations with a cultural focus have come from the outside or the margins and draw on different source material. The same can be said of Walker. Although his work on international relations theory has woven culture into an account of order, power, and states (and thus directly addresses the traditional constituency of international relations), his bearings are primarily from postmodernism. Additionally, the type of analysis Walker undertakes is exceptional. Walker himself recognizes as much: “This kind of literature . . . has emerged largely on the margins of International Relations as an institutionalized discipline. It remains obscure, even alien to those whose training has been primarily within the positivistic, realist, or policy-oriented mainstreams.”20 In other words, it remains foreign to the discipline as it has been traditionally understood and demarcated. Yet the explanation for the neglect of culture does not simply proceed from the arbitrary logic of disciplinary boundaries. The very complexity of the term has tended to rule it out of court. Raymond Williams has highlighted the complex and complicated nature of the term culture, which has been used in several distinct intellectual fields with various senses. According to Williams, this “complex of senses” makes it difficult to agree on one meaning.21 Walker amplifies this thought: “No doubt those who like their concepts to be precisely and operationally defined may find culture to be frustratingly vague and tendentious. They are likely to be perplexed by the variety of meanings given to it.”22 The relatively confused nature of the term and the many debates surrounding the concept is one reason culture has been neglected in international relations, which tends to feel more comfortable with hard, concrete terms, such as the state and order. In this respect, culture has perhaps been perceived as suspiciously loose and too imprecise for analysis. As Jongsuk Chay has remarked in one of the few works devoted to the issue of culture in international relations: “The cultural dimension of international relations is one of the most neglected topics in the field. It is perceived as too broad and its boundaries as too vague, with the result that one’s energies can easily be wasted in this uncertain territory.”23 However, after more critical investigation, the

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same charges could be directed at the abstractions state, sovereignty, and order, which aside from their Eurocentric biases, are as slippery and imprecise as culture. Despite their uncertainties, much effort has been devoted to cementing these categories as central to an understanding of international politics. It would seem that a less benign explanation for the neglect of culture lies in the connection between culture and the human imagination, where the complexity of the term lies not so much in the realm of the semantic, but in the subjective, moral dimensions of cultural activity. It is here that the dominant schools of interpretation in international relations not only have proceeded on the basis of narrow assumptions about human action but have tended to disregard those aspects of human action—such as values, aspirations, creativity, language, and ideology—that are subsumed under the rubric of “culture.”24 At the juncture between what political scientist A. F. Davies termed the “human element”25 and political activity, international relations has been deeply suspicious of according analytical weight to the subjective realm of cultural life. As Walker notes, it is as if culture and international relations are treated as “mutually contradictory terms” in which culture is posited as the creative capacity of humans and international relations, with its emphasis on power, force, and conflict, is held up as a bleaker and more realistic account of the human condition. “From the dark depths of international relations,” notes Walker, “the term culture takes on an aura of frivolity. It appears to refer to the idealistic and utopian, to the veneer of civilized decency that is always stripped away by the harsh realities of power politics and international conflict.”26 Walker traces this view of culture to the epistemological origins of international relations in a Weberian, statist resolution of the problems of ethical questions in a rationalizing modernity.27 Particularly evident in the thinking of Hans Morganthau and Raymond Aron, questions about culture—translated, as they often are, into questions about values, ethics, and moral claims that hinge on identity and subjectivity—are brushed aside with the assertion that state sovereignty is the only practical source of value and hence “the ultimate agent in the conflict between different value communities.”28 Once again cultural factors are marginalized as noninternational and hence only internally significant to states. More important, what is being avowed is the explicitly subjective, and hence human, element that lies at the heart of cultural issues such as race, ethnicity, and gender and unfolding questions involving the other, the local, the global, and the postmodern. In this respect, Walker rightly points to culture as hinting at all the uncertainties and struggles of modernity. 29 It is no surprise that culture, evoking, as it does, the more indeterminate and unresolved aspects of political life, has mostly been treated as a barrier to the proper maintenance of order in international politics and, indeed, to a properly ordered discipline.

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This longstanding attempt to divorce the cultural realm from the mainstream of the discipline has resulted in a depersonalized space in which political detachment and systemic stability have been privileged. The push for a “science” of international politics, as evidenced in the work of Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz and even critics of realism such as James Rosenau, has both denied the explicitly Western cultural basis of international relations and resulted in a field of study largely unencumbered by more problematic questions such as identity. Even in a more collective understanding of identity—that is, the nation and nationalism—the state has taken precedence over the nation as a more reliable guide to action in the international arena, and nationalism has been viewed as a pariah somehow outside the rational parameters of modernity. Yet modernity is essentially Janus-faced, and its legacy has been more ambiguous and double-edged than the traditional emphasis on positivist reason and rationality would admit.30 Although nationalism is forever rearing its head, its association with violence and ethnicity merely reinforces the disinclination in international relations to accord identity a significant explanatory position. In a discipline marked by universal categories of reference and informed by static conceptions of time and space, to admit identity as a key issue in world politics is to admit diversity, difference, fragmentation, and claims to cultural particularism. It is also to accept irresolution and indeterminacy as a central feature of living in the modern world. Such factors significantly undercut the statist resolution upon which international relations is founded and upon which the discipline has attempted to dispel the unpredictability of modernity. International relations possesses an ambiguous heritage regarding modernity. Although much that can be termed “premodern” (Hobbesian ideas about the “state of nature,” Thucydides’ and Machiavelli’s informing assumptions about conflict and power) provides the classical heritage of the discipline, in many respects, international relations has also been a child of modernism, receiving its intellectual sustenance from the nationstate ideals of the Enlightenment and modern Western notions of rationality and progress. Thus, although the inheritance is not clear-cut, international relations can still be viewed as aligned to modernist thinking, particularly in its spatial and temporal outlook. The irony is that, for the most part, international relations has failed to grapple with the issues and implications of modernity. It has been tied to a particular mode of theorizing regarding modernity, that of high Cartesian and Kantian reason fixed in static and abstract models of social and political life that are derivative of what can be termed “early” modernism. 31 This has meant that, like much early modernist thinking, it has tended to gloss over the flux and transient nature of the modern in favor of more positivist moorings; that is, it has invoked a suspended spatiotemporal modernity that does not appreciate the temporality and contingency of modern cultural forms. International

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relations denies the contingent basis of modern life by enclosing the possible and the realistic within the modern state. In so doing it becomes a discourse of limits and boundaries. The orientation of international relations toward Western universalism needs to answer the contemporary celebration of the other and cultural diversity. A concerted rear guard defense of a cosmopolitan culture of Western modernity by writers such as Francis Fukuyama, whose “end of history” thesis sees Western culture as ascendant, has served to reinforce the central tenets of international relations orthodoxy.32 However, like the turn to identity, the neglect of the various voices of the other and the marginal is becoming increasingly tenuous. In this respect the traditional disregard for the South or the Third World in mainstream international relations has become glaringly obvious. Born in Europe in the citadel of realpolitik and crossing the Atlantic after World War II, international relations has been concerned throughout with the center. The great powers, the strategic balance, the framework of international order, the principle of state sovereignty, these Western preoccupations were written into the narrative of both the League of Nations and the United Nations, and it is no accident that they deeply permeate realist thought. In this respect, international relations has been the discourse of those who hold power. Its development was to a very large extent anchored to where the major decisions were made, in terms of both states (particularly in North American policymaking circles after World War II), and academic areas of specialized attention (strategic studies, decisionmaking, and Cold War scholarship). The paradigm of the center thus became the concerns of the whole, and currents of thinking in Western circles such as deterrence were simply transported into approaches and policies toward the Third World without significant modification. This is certainly the case with international relations analyses of Africa, in which considerations of balance of power and state rivalry predominate. If the Third World exists at all, it is merely to mirror the Occident. In particular, the colonial world and its successor states have been seen as marginal to world politics, if they have been seen at all.33 There are thus two binary tendencies in international relations that interact and capture the limitations of the discipline as a whole: universal categories of reference against particular expressions of diversity and a grounding in a Western center against a neglect of the periphery. The acceptance of cultural identity, and hence of particularist claims to difference, would be tantamount to a disavowal of Western universalism and modernity’s global reach. In turn, to accord the Third World as prominent a space as the West in academic analysis would be to displace the universality of the center. Perhaps in this respect the neglect of culture and identity and the Third World in international relations is not fortuitous. Each comes to be understood as the underside of modernity, the other that is split off and

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projected outward as the unfamiliar and hence incomprehensible. The Third World, in particular, becomes akin to Ashis Nandy’s metaphor of the “shaman”: the “repressed self of [Western] society, articulating some possibilities latent in a culture, possibilities which the ‘sane’, the ‘mature’ and the ‘rational’ cannot self-consciously express or seriously pursue.”34 It holds “in trust” the “rejected selves” of the First and Second Worlds.35 Nandy’s essentialisms between the West and the Third World need to be accepted to concede the point that the center is affirmed in relation to “savages” and a “wilderness” out there, “beyond the accessible world of knowledge to the mysterious world of those who remain the undersocialized critics of the present global civilization.”36 There are boundaries that exclude and displace just as resolutely as they include and privilege. The emphasis on intersubjective relations between the West and the Third World (and in particular Africa) is an attempt to redraw the boundaries of mainstream international relations so as to include considerations of culture and identity and the Third World in any contemporary analysis of world politics. This redrawing of the international relations canvas is necessary because, in short, international relations claims exclusive purchase over the boundaries of political space. It banishes to the outer reaches the difficult and the subversive, that which disturbs the more controlled understanding of time and space of a modernity steeped in sovereignty. It defines political space on the back of a series of key binarisms and dichotomies, the most obvious and sustaining being that which Walker refers to as “inside” and “outside,” the fundamental distinction between political life within states and political life between states, a distinction that is intrinsic to the discipline.37 Yet this binarism is not restricted to an understanding of state behavior. As Walker goes on to argue, the inside/outside dichotomy expresses the demarcation between self and other, identity and difference, and community and anarchy that is constitutive of our modern understanding of political space: They affirm a clear sense of here and there. Here we are safe to work out the characteristic puzzles of modernity, about freedoms and determinations, the subjectivities and objectivities of a realm in which we might aspire to realize our peace and potential, our autonomy, our enlightenment, our progress and virtu(e). There, we must be beware. The outside is alien and strange, mysterious or threatening, a realm in which to be brave against adversity or patient enough to tame those whose life is not only elsewhere but also back then. Knowing the other outside, it is possible to affirm identities inside. Knowing identities inside, it is possible to imagine the absences outside.38

In this respect, considerations of culture and the position of the Third World have come to exist on the outside of international relations. Although

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Hedley Bull has reminded us that culture (that is, political culture) has always been implicit in an understanding of the inside of the system of states, it has equally constituted a precarious existence outside the boundaries of the sovereign state. Although Bull accords it a greater explanatory role than most realist and neorealist accounts, he does so mostly within a universalist, homogeneous perspective, whether it pertains to Western or non-Western “international societies” throughout history.39 In other words, culture and the Third World, in the sense that these rubrics denote difference and diversity within the crucible of Western modernity, have been defined outside the geopolitical space of international relations. In light of this critique, it may be legitimate to ask how useful is the discipline of international relations to the type of analysis attempted in this book. The import of this critique might seem to imply that the discipline should be abandoned and the strands of thinking in the postmodernist, feminist, and critical theory approaches resident at the edge of international relations should be picked up instead. Although these approaches have much to commend them and each contributes something of significance to a broader conception of world politics, outright rejection of international relations in favor of any of these approaches is not necessarily the burden of my argument. To the extent that international relations continues to act as a receptacle for institutional structures and interests in world politics, it is potentially a useful benchmark against which to range some of the new perspectives and approaches. Moreover, simply embracing the critical voices within and without the discipline may compound some of the problems indicated thus far, particularly regarding the place of Africa. Rather, my task is to recast the understanding of what constitutes international relations and to look beyond categories of analysis such as state or power to an expanded field of relevant actors and processes and a more complex menu of issues that might shed some light on the nature of politics and political change at a global or world level. Depending on the issue or problematic at hand, this may mean a different type of analysis at different times. Thus, it may be that, for instance, I range ideas about identity and subjectivity against certain state practices. Or, alternately, I may inquire into the nature of postcolonial agency with reference to theories about international regimes and cooperation.40 I may look at how examples of cultural resistance to Western processes interact with global forms of domination and hegemony and perhaps enter a dialogue with theories of hegemonic stability dominant in international political economy. Other possibilities spring to mind: How does modernity undermine attempts at state building in the Third World and thus affect international obligations and behavior? How does the politics of place and location interact with issues of power? These types of comparative exercises (between what might be termed the solid core of international relations and newer issues and perspectives)

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are certainly valid in that international relations, for all its omissions, at least presents a set of concrete criteria and factors against which we may explore broader issues. In this respect, traditional international relations, like the conventional Marxist focus on material processes, acts to remind more radical or alternative approaches of certain hard barriers to change or empowerment, such as the state or the national interest. However, this is not to argue that all future analyses of world politics should be necessarily a comparative exploration of old and new aspects of what constitutes the international. The onus should not be on newer perspectives to hark back to an agreed core. To constantly undertake such an endeavor implicitly privileges the traditional approach, runs into dead-ends, and sets up dominant paradigms. It may ultimately work to domesticate the newer material. The key point to emphasize is that the nature of what legitimately passes for international relations has expanded. The disciplinary boundaries have become fluid in light of the extensive reconceptualization that has taken place in the humanities and the social sciences. One needs only to look at the rise of cultural studies and its positioning first within English and then within history, politics, and sociology (to name the more obvious subjects) to realize how plastic the traditional divides have become. Where exactly does cultural studies fit? Or, for that matter, postmodernism, poststructuralism, or postcolonialism? The impossibility of determining the exact affiliation of these bodies of thinking betrays the contemporary absurdity of attempting such a placement. The intellectual world has been radically transformed. The new (re)formations of knowledge reach across and between old divisions. Widely agreed upon demarcations are becoming less and less the rule. Rather, the trend is toward more inter- and multidisciplinary approaches. International relations should be no exception in this regard, although it has certainly been resilient in the face of the discursive revolutions that have occurred around it. Yet international relations needs to compete increasingly in the arena of contemporary ideas and approaches if it is not to become stale and uninspiring to a new generation of scholars. In this respect, scholars need to refigure what is meant by international relations; they need to point to a more variegated landscape in which the sorts of issues undertaken in this book are neither marginal or only legitimate if ranged against received notions about state or power. Indeed, I would go one step further and question the utility of the rubric “international relations.” Nomenclature is significant because it signals borders and what is considered legitimate. Owing to both the transformations of the contemporary world with all their global implications and the concomitant intellectual reformulations centered on postmodernity that have served, despite furious resistance in some quarters, to fragment disciplinary boundaries and consequently reorient much of academic inquiry, it is

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no longer possible to speak in terms of international relations with its accompanying assumptions of a discrete area of study with clear and necessary boundaries. Already there has been some recognition of this point within international relations.41 Walker speaks of world, rather than international, politics as the more appropriate focus of inquiry.42 Although often loosely invoked as an alternative phrase for international relations, the very notion of world politics is actually denied in traditional international relations because it obviously signifies the existence of forms of politics and political space other than those of the state. International relations is simply what it implies—interaction between states. In moving toward a concept such as world politics (in the sense employed by Walker), scholars are in essence suggesting a different patterning of political space that is impossible to conceive of if the departure point is relations between states. This is especially true if one takes seriously the contemporary turn to culture and identity and the primary significance of making sense of subjective and intersubjective relations. The argument advanced here is that what is labeled international relations can be no less than intersubjective relations, involving interaction between human subjects across societies and communities—mediating imagined identities, subjectivities, and cultures at both the individual and collective levels. Christine Sylvester has already suggested a move along similar lines with her feminist repainting of the international relations canvas. She shrewdly notes that a gendered reworking of international relations is “simply an awareness of the borderlands of identity one routinely traverses that is worked into a method for taking in and recording more about international relations than one has noticed before.” She thus calls for a focus on “relations international,” “the myriad positions that groups assume toward one another across the many boundaries and identities that defy field-invented parameters.”43 Although the notion of relations dovetails with the emphasis on intersubjectivity posited here, one needs to move beyond the international precisely because of its constricting statecentric baggage. States and other abstract collectivities so central in political and international theory can never be more, in this sense, than a part of this ongoing process of intersubjective interaction. 44 Analysis should not hinge on these concepts. Further, systemic or material processes such as capitalist modes of production, communication networks, and technological innovations enter this intersubjective field of interactions as factors that condition identity. In this respect, the notion of intersubjective relations developed here is informed by the broad lines of Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory, which posits a dialectic between the capacity for individual and collective action and certain structural factors that need to be mediated in the process of intersubjective relations.45 This will be explored more fully in Chapter 8.

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The important distinction between international and intersubjective relations posited in this chapter is precisely the human element left out of account in international relations. Culture and identity are no more outside the province of international relations than they are outside the field of human endeavor. Equally, if the brief is the understanding of intersubjective relations at the world or global level, then people and cultures outside the First World must play a more significant role than that of an exotic backdrop to superpower maneuvers or strategic points of interest to the central balance. An intersubjective relations that incorporates questions of identity and modernity within its ambit must necessarily inquire into the nature of such phenomena in contexts outside the main centers of power. Yet, whether we reside in the West or elsewhere, how we make sense of ourselves, at a collective or individual level or both, as subjects and subjectivities that mediate a variety of discourses and structures in specific cultural and historical situations is all the more pressing in a world in which previously secure boundaries no longer provide answers to the perennial questions of being and belonging. Further, one could argue in riposte to mainstream international relations that the question of personal identity is not only crucial but, in many respects, logically prior to any understanding of the state or order or security. In this respect, international relations has tended to divorce the key markers that frame social and political life, such as the psyche, culture, and questions of place and location, from the more exalted category of the state, privileging the abstract and the systemic over more human concerns. A landscape that is devoid of such primary concerns is necessarily barren and in need of reimagining. The task should be to explore the meeting place between what might be termed the internals of personal life and the externals of political life.

NOTES 1. See the critique of postmodern and critical perspectives by Sankaran Krishna, “The Importance of Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations Theory,” Alternatives, 18, 1993, pp. 385–417. 2. See Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed., (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978); Kenneth Waltz, Man, State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); and Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). 3. See the work of Alexander Wendt, Michael Walzer, and Peter Katzenstein. 4. See John Burton, International Relations: A General Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), and John Burton, World Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 5. See for instance Harold Laswell’s use of psychology to explain insecurity in world politics, World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York: Free Press, 1965 [originally 1935]); and Marxist and neo-Marxist critiques of aspects of

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international politics, drawing on the work of Immanuel Wallerstein and particularly evident in the dependency school. 6. See Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Jean Elshtain, Woman and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987); Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland, eds., Gender and International Relations (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1991); J. Ann Tickner Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); V. Spike Petersen, ed., Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992); and Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 7. For a further discussion on the third debate, see Yosif Lapid, “The Third Debate: On the Prospects of international theory in a Post-Positivist Era,” International Studies Quarterly, 33(3), 1989, pp. 235–254; for an account of the interparadigm debate, see Mark Hoffman, “Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm Debate,” Millennium, 16(2), 1987, pp. 231–249; and for a good overview of issues raised in Hoffman and overall in the new perspectives, see Andrew Linklater, “The Question of the Next Stage in International Relations Theory: A Critical-Theoretical Point of View,” Millennium, 21(1), 1992, pp. 77–98. 8. For a useful overview, see Mark Hoffman, “Restructuring, Reconstruction, Reinscription, Rearticulation: Four Critical Voices in Critical International Theory,” Millennium, 20(2), 1991, pp. 169–185. 9. Raymond Williams, Culture (London: Fontana, 1981), pp. 232–233. 10. Joseph A. Camilleri and Jim Falk, The End of Sovereignty? Politics in a Shrinking and Fragmenting World (London: Edward Elgar, 1992). 11. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), and Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977). 12. Ali Mazrui, Cultural Forces in World Politics (London: James Currey, 1990; Nairobi and Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1990), pp. 8, 250. 13. Peter Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1984), p. 58. 14. Wallerstein, Geopolitics and Geoculture, p. 166. 15. Ibid., pp. 170–173. 16. Ibid., p. 12. 17. R. B. J. Walker, “World Politics and Western Reason: Universalism, Pluralism, Hegemony,” in R. B. J. Walker, ed., Culture, Ideology and World Order (Boulder, CO, and London: Westview Press, 1984), p. 182. 18. Ibid., p. 205. 19. See R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 6–8. John Ruggie has made a similar point with reference to the place of the nation-state in various international relations discourses. The nation-state is viewed as a construct of European thought in the space-time frame initiated by the Renaissance that is distinct from what went before or existed elsewhere. See John Gerard Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization, 47(1), Winter 1993, pp. 139–174. 20. R. B. J. Walker, “The Concept of Culture in the Theory of International Relations” in Jongsuk Chay, ed., Culture and International Relations (New York: Praeger, 1990), p. 8.

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21. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana/Croom Held, 1976), pp. 77–80. 22. Walker, “The Concept of Culture,” p. 7. 23. Jongsuk, Chay, ed., Culture and International Relations (New York: Praeger, 1990), p. xi. 24. Walker, “World Politics and Western Reason,” p. 97. 25. A. F. Davies, The Human Element: Three Essays in Political Psychology (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble/Penguin Books, 1988). 26. Walker, “The Concept of Culture,” p. 3. 27. Ibid., p. 10. 28. Ibid., p. 9. 29. Ibid., p. 12. 30. See Sanjay Seth’s argument that nationalism is a child of modernity that is itself shot through with a significant degree of ambiguity and irresolution, in “Nationalism and/in Modernity,” in Joseph A. Camilleri, Anthony P. Jarvis, and Albert J. Paolini, eds., The State in Transition: Reimagining Political Space (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner, 1995). 31. Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman attempt to make a distinction between early modernism and what they call “low” modernity. However, they employ the confusing label of “high” modernity for the former, which is the designation used by other theorists such as Giddens to describe late modernity (that is, the contemporary). Despite the looseness of the terms utilized, Lash and Friedman’s distinction between “high” and “low” understandings of modernity approximate the distinction drawn above between early modernism and modernity proper. See Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, “Introduction: Subjectivity and Modernity’s Other,” in Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, eds., Modernity and Identity (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 1–8. 32. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 33. This disinterest in the colonial and postcolonial world broadly follows the neglect of imperialism, in particular the second expansion of Europe, in international relations. Asia, Africa, and other non-European territories were seen to be outside the civilized world. European states acquired title and ruled in their own right, hence imperial relations were not international relations and they subsequently fell outside the domain of the discipline. 34. Ashis Nandy, “Shamans, Savages and the Wilderness: On the Audibility of Dissent and the Future of Civilizations,” Alternatives, 14, 1989, p. 266. 35. Ibid., p. 273. 36. Ibid., p. 266. 37. Ibid., p. 101. 38. Ibid., p. 174. 39. Bull, The Anarchical Society. 40. This is the essence of Christine Sylvester’s analysis of women cooperatives in Zimbabwe. See Chapter 8 for a detailed account. 41. James Rosenau writes of a postinternational politics in Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Hemel Hampstead, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), p. 6. See also Anthony McCrew and Paul Lewis, eds., Global Politics: Globalization and the Nation-State (Oxford: Polity, 1992), pp. 2–3. 42. See Walker, Inside/Outside, and Walker, “From International Relations to World Politics,” in Joseph A. Camilleri, Anthony P. Jarvis, and Albert J. Paolini,

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eds., The State in Transition: Reimagining Political Space (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner, 1995), pp. 33–59. 43. Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations, pp. 214, 219. 44. William Bloom argues that there is an inevitable process involved in conceptualizing human behavior so that the necessary abstractions and categories put forward to comprehend human action often take on the form of scientific truths that tend to obscure the human element completely. This tendency of abstraction away from the human element is seen to exist in international relations as much as in any other branch of the social sciences. The process of identity formation is the explicit focus of Bloom’s psychoanalytic study of personal and national identity in international relations. But although Bloom argues persuasively for a recognition of the explicitly human element in international politics, he does so entirely from within the state-centric parameters set by mainstream international relations. Thus he employs identification theory merely to link individual to nation to intrastate, often unproblematically. The point of the exercise is to provide a methodological basis for understanding the relationship between people and states in the international realm, the emphasis, strangely, not on culture per se but on the foreign policy process. In this respect, it joins a long line of psychologically informed studies in international relations that have mostly dealt with the decisionmaking process within the realist boundary of state interaction. See William Bloom, Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), preface and pp. 1–24. 45. See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity, 1984).

3 The Genealogy of Postcolonialism

In light of the gaps and silences indicated thus far, the three chapters that make up Part 1 of this book set out to sketch an alternate reading of North–South relations and, by extension, international politics. This reading revolves around the disparate body of writing that has come to be labeled “postcolonialism.” With its gaze firmly on the margins of the international system, postcolonialism promises to readdress the limitations of what came before and offer a more radicalized account of the position of the Third World within world politics. It should be noted from the outset that a bold statement of its political project is not always easy to locate in the postcolonial literature. An explicitly political reading needs to be teased out from the wider focus on identity and knowledge (among other key issues) that more obviously mark the various discourses under the rubric of postcolonialism. Yet I turn in Part 1 to the political implications of the perspectives of postcolonialism in order to make sense of what postcolonialism offers in its account of the place of the marginalized and the dispossessed in the contemporary world. In this chapter I attempt to map the genealogy of postcolonialism. In the next two chapters I critically interrogate the key insights of the discourse, particularly the reading of Third World identity through the motifs of resistance and difference, on the one hand, and ambivalence and hybridity, on the other. Where possible, this material is explored with reference to the African context. Throughout, my aim is to engage with a body of writing that has sought to bring the Third World to the fore of analysis and that brings with it the hope of a new understanding of contemporary culture and politics. It is easy to overlook how quickly the postcolonial discourse, with its relatively humble origins in comparative Third World literatures, has taken off in a short space of time. From a fairly traditional attempt to explore commonalities in the fiction of ex-colonial countries, particularly those under the British orbit, there has been an incredible expansion in scope, 49

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methodology, and sensibility. In the process of this expansion, theoretical questions revolving around culture, identity, and the epistemology of Western scholarship have gradually come to overtake, although not necessarily displace, fiction as the central focus of study. The editors of a special issue of Social Text have gone as far as to suggest that with postcolonialism there has emerged a “new discourse of global cultural relations.”1 Certainly a globalizing element is evident in the work of some writers. However, it is sobering to recall that, as late as 1987, in one of the first major critiques of this emerging discourse by Benita Parry, she refers to the body of writing that includes Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Edward Said not as “postcolonial” but as “colonial discourse.”2 This should serve to remind us of the novelty of postcolonialism’s currency. Postcolonialism has ridden the crest of an academic wave that has ushered in the question of identity as central in the humanities and social sciences. In some respects it has taken the lead role in this process. Moreover, it is distinctive for having given non-European or Third World peoples a voice or space in Western academia, be it historiography, anthropology, or cultural studies. One critic has suggested that postcolonialism’s wide reach in recent years is “coincident with and dependent on the eclipse of an older paradigm, that of the ‘Third World’.”3 The crisis in development issues and a general disillusionment with the prospects of the socalled North–South dialogue has given way to a new designation that, in alliance with poststructuralism, has redirected its critical energy to the epistemological bases of Western power/knowledge. The turn away from issues of aid, (under)development, and economic growth reflects not only the ascendancy of cultural studies but what Tejaswini Niranjana terms a deeper distrust of the liberal-humanist rhetoric of progress and Western universalism and master narratives in general.4 Thus one of the principal moves of postcolonialism has been to deconstruct the Eurocentrism of Western scholarship, particularly in the historiography of colonialism, but also in literary studies of colonial fiction; in the process, postcolonialism has empowered the so-called subaltern or postcolonial subject in a reinscribed narrative of imperialism and colonialism in which identity is recovered. Gyan Prakash describes postcolonial criticism as seeking “to undo the Eurocentrism produced by the institution of the West’s trajectory, its appropriation of the other as History.”5 In this endeavor, the task, according to Edward Said, is to reread Western canonical texts “with an effort to draw out, extend, give emphasis and voice to what is silent or marginally present or ideologically represented.”6 A parallel movement is occurring in Indian historiography, where the “subaltern studies” group is attempting to reinterpret South Asian history, which it sees as dominated by both a colonialist and bourgeoisienationalist elitism. Seeking to critically interrogate the ideological nature

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of this historiography (in particular the Cambridge History series), writers in this ongoing project have given voice to the subaltern, who is seen as having resisted elite domination throughout history. Ranajit Guha argues that the Cambridge historians have “wished away the phenomenon of resistance” and that without a recognition of the subaltern’s role, historiography perpetuates a serious misrepresentation of power relations under colonialism.7 Though distinct from postcolonialism per se, the revisionism of subaltern studies mirrors that of the broader postcolonial discourse: In subverting the intellectual categories of Eurocentric scholarship, it seeks to uncover an indigenous voice and history. The new battleground between the West and the Third World staked out by postcolonialism becomes unmistakably postmodern: one of representation, translation, and power/knowledge (in the Foucauldian sense). The context, according to Niranjana, “is one of the contesting and contested stories attempting to account for, to recount, the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races and languages.”8 Thus there is a reworked struggle for power between the West and the Third World. “The discourse of the postcolonial,” as outlined by Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffen, “is therefore grounded on a struggle for power—that power is focused in the control of the metropolitan language.”9 There is an obvious departure not only from previous Third Worldist paradigms (for example, the dependency school) but from international relations, where the understanding of power is decidedly different and quite traditional in comparison. If postcolonialism forms part of a struggle over discursive power in the constitution of identity, then history, in particular colonial history, also plays a significant part. Although some critics have rightly commented on the difficulties of the prefix “post-” in relation to the historical and contemporary dynamics and implications of colonialism for many ex-colonies,10 this prefix is testament to the fact that issues at the heart of the colonial encounter—relations of domination and resistance, self and other, identity, and modernity—are seen to persist beyond colonialism in a strict historical sense to embody contemporary relations between the West and the Third World. Colonialism comes to signify a continuing set of practices that are believed to prescribe relations between the West and the Third World beyond the independence of the former colonies. The need to comprehend and reinterpret the colonial experience is integral to an analysis of identity today, thus the importance of the “empire writing back,” to paraphrase the work by Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffen. In the process of resistance, the native or subaltern voice is repositioned and empowered. This is seen as instrumental in overcoming an enduring position of otherness and subordination. Postcolonialism serves to challenge continuing orientalist representations. In this sense, just as Said’s orientalist thesis has a more general application, so, too, does the understanding of colonialist

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in postcolonialism. Niranjana suggests that the postcolonial desire for history is “a desire to understand the traces of the ‘past’ in a situation where at least one fact is singularly irreducible: colonialism and what came after.”11 Thus the poststructural suspicion of origins redirects attention to interrogating colonial representations that are seen to condition contemporary relations between the West and the Third World. The attempt to define and characterize postcolonialism should not mask the essential heterogeneity of the discourse. Indeed, to refer to postcolonialism as a discourse is misleading in itself. Because it encompasses differing perspectives and theoretical inputs, postcolonialism is not a uniform body of writing. It includes distinct movements and overlapping concerns, a fact that makes a delineation between the central tropes of difference, resistance, ambivalence, and hybridity extremely difficult. Some writers tend to emphasize both difference and hybridity, resistance and ambivalence. Others, like Said, have subtly changed their perspective over time, so that hybridity has received a more prominent guernsey.12 Certainly the wider currency of poststructural and postmodern perspectives within postcolonialism has shifted the ground away from an effort to recover identity or indeed to undertake the type of textual analysis of novels typified in Ashcroft, although this underplays somewhat the crucial role such perspectives have played from the outset.13 Part of the problem is the analytical looseness with which key terms such as resistance and difference are deployed, particularly when they are used in tandem with concepts such as ambivalence and hybridity, which would, at least on the surface, appear to undercut the moral force of resisting Western hegemony. If one was to characterize the nature of postcolonialism in broad terms, an oppositional stance, concomitant with a celebration of the marginal, would appear to capture the spirit of the various perspectives that coalesce around the postcolonial banner. This oppositional ethic cannot be underestimated because it informs the desire for resistance and difference. Yet what does one make of an insistence on marking out difference and uncovering resistance in the imperial narrative and a simultaneous recognition that the colonial experience ushered in a hybrid culture wherein relations between colonized and colonizer were necessarily shot through with ambivalence? What exactly is being resisted, and what is the nature of the difference around which a postcolonial identity is being reinscribed? What parts of the self or other are being resisted in this hybrid space in which presumably the postcolonial subject is not so clearly differentiated from the West or the modern? Unless one opts for what Niranjana warns is an essentialized difference that permits a stereotypical construction of the other, a construction formed in the first place by imperial representations,14 then a recognition of reciprocity and coevalness as the basis of the ambivalent, hybrid relationship between self and other

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in the (post)colonial context would inevitably condition and circumscribe the type of resistance project envisaged. Even if we take the shared desire to reinterpret or rewrite history, in order to uncover a history of resistance to imperialism, a project shared by Said, Niranjana, subaltern studies, and more ambiguously by Spivak,15 aside from the historiographic need to provide a corrected narrative of imperialism, how does this reworked story feed into contemporary attempts at resistance? How can resistance to imperialism and colonialism begin to be compared with contemporary resistance to modernity and globalization? How does empowering the subaltern retrospectively (and textually) empower the postcolonial subject today? This question brings into focus the relationship between the past and the present in postcolonialism. Scholars know why the past is important for postcolonial writing, yet the more difficult question of how it relates to contemporary projects tends to be glossed over. These kinds of questions will be explored further in the course of this section. For now, some attempt at understanding the heterogeneity of postcolonialism is necessary. There are two broad theoretical and historical frameworks that inform postcolonialism and inspire the countervailing motifs of resistance, difference, hybridity, and ambivalence. The first framework evolves from the work of Frantz Fanon and other Third World scholars such as Albert Memmi in the period of anticolonial nationalism.16 This Fanonian framework utilized Freudian and other psychoanalytical perspectives to understand the colonizer/colonized relationship as one of psychic and moral destruction, particularly for the colonized subject. It posited the necessity for outright resistance and rejection and, in particular, the need to recover precolonial culture, language, and identity and subvert dominant European characterizations. Not only did this framework clearly influence radical nationalist and black liberation movements, it defines the approach of fictional writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Sembeme Ousmane and the Nigerian critic Chinweizu and also informs postcolonial scholars such as Abdul JanMohamed and, in part, Edward Said. “The problem Fanon addresses,” as Benita Parry argues, “is the constitution of self-identity where native difference is validated and which empowers the native to rebel.”17 The essentially Manichean, binary frame of reference employed by Fanon guided the initial movement of postcolonialism toward resistance and difference. The second broad framework that has had a pervasive influence on postcolonialism follows the poststructural critique of positivism and essentialism and revolves around the writings of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan. This movement coincides, perhaps not by accident, with what Ella Shohat termed the crisis in the “Third World paradigm”18 and a general sense of disillusionment in the Third World.

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Postcolonial writing in this vein is less sanguine about the prospects of recovery and resistance and indeed proceeds from a less totally oppositional standpoint, although resistance is still held up as the overriding political project. Deconstructive techniques and postmodern sensibilities are clearly evident in the work of Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Arjun Appadurai, Tejaswini Niranjana, and Kwame Anthony Appiah, and the key motifs of hybridity and ambivalence are employed to understand colonial and postcolonial societies. Homi Bhabha, for instance, views the colonial encounter as inherently ambivalent for both the postcolonial subject and the West. Utilizing Lacan and Derrida, Bhabha sees categories of otherness and difference as conditioned by an inevitable ambivalence that is due to the hybrid nature of postcolonial societies: “The place of difference and otherness, or the space of the adversarial . . . is never entirely on the outside or implacably oppositional.”19 The subjects of colonial discourse are seen as involved in splitting, doubling, projection, mimicry; what is disavowed is repeated as something different, a hybrid.20 Spivak argues similarly: “I am critical of the binary opposition coloniser/colonised. I try to examine the heterogeneity of ‘colonial power’ and to disclose the complicity of the two poles of that opposition as it constitutes the disciplinary enclave of the critique of imperialism.”21 What both Bhabha and Spivak effectively do, via narrative and textual deconstruction, is to reposition the colonial and postcolonial relationship along less essentialist lines, highlighting a more syncretic dynamic. Within this second framework Benita Parry notes a divide opening up between the Fanonian critique of colonialism, which many postcolonial writers, including Bhabha, view as a landmark of the discourse, and poststructuralist critics “who propose a model of colonialism at critical points incommensurable with the terms of Fanon’s theory.” 22 A writer such as Said tends to veer between the two frameworks. On the one hand, he is uncomfortable with the emphasis on uncovering authentic identity (and an outright rejection in Fanon) but attracted to the emphasis on resistance and subverting Eurocentric narratives. On the other hand, he is antithetical to the poststructuralist ethics of the second framework yet willing to concede hybridity and ambivalence as a feature of the imperial and colonial experience. Indeed, other postcolonial writers display a similar tendency to roam between the two frameworks. Niranjana, for one, combines poststructuralist techniques of deconstruction with a resistance project. In this respect, it is useful to view the first framework as the informing moral impulse of postcolonialism, and the second as the modus operandi in the contemporary postcolonial context. In many respects, Said is emblematic of the shifts and heterogeneity of the postcolonial discourse, and a brief analysis of his position is illustrative of the broader themes and fissures in postcolonialism.

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Resistance is the major trope of Said’s writing, most prominently in Culture and Imperialism. In fact, Said claims that Culture and Imperialism is the history of resistance to Western dominance across the imperial spectrum, an experience that was left out of Orientalism. 23 Inspired by Foucault and Antonio Gramsci,24 Said takes his cue from the Fanonian need to resist the extant colonialism of the mind and overturn orientalist representations that have either ignored or marginalized the native voice. However, his call for recognizing and endorsing resistance does not go hand in hand with other Fanonian imperatives, such as recapturing a precolonial authenticity. Although clearly oppositional toward Western imperialism or orientalism, Said rejects notions of ethnic particularity and homogeneity, which he sees as implicit in some celebrations of difference. Reflecting on recent moves for a homogeneous return to Islam, Said (like Bhabha) instead points to the essentially “migratory quality of experience.”25 Writing on the future of postcolonial literature and literary study, Said says that hybridity “strikes me as the essential idea for the revolutionary realities today.”26 Despite his awareness of having to distinguish between resistance and the need to recover some pure or essential identity based on difference, there is still a lingering tension in Said’s claims about the point of resistance. In an earlier analysis, Said describes the revisionist postcolonial effort to reclaim histories and cultures from imperialism as “entering the various world discourses on an equal footing.”27 Elsewhere, however, he argues in an important but intensely ambiguous passage that: the post-imperial writers of the Third World therefore bear their past within them—as scars of humiliating wounds, as instigation for different practices, as potentially revised visions of the past tending toward a postcolonial future, as urgently reinterpretable and redeployable experiences, in which the formerly silent native speaks and acts on territory reclaimed as part of a general movement of resistance, from the colonist.28

The past is redeployable in terms of empowering the native voice and propelling resistance, yet on what basis is territory reclaimed, and how does the phrase “as instigation for different practices” bear on this reclaimed territory? There are Fanonian shades of recovery, difference, and resistance within this passage, and they sit somewhat uneasily with Said’s other claims in favor of the hybrid and “discrepant experiences.”29 Said’s analysis of the “three great topics” of the literature on cultural resistance to imperialism allows us to view the evolving configuration of postcolonialism. Because, as Said rightly observes, these topics are all related and overlap, fragments and motifs from an earlier incarnation of postcolonial writing continue to cast their shadow over more contemporary moves toward hybridity and ambivalence. The first topic concerns “the insistence on the right to see the community’s history whole, coherently,

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integrally.”30 Evident in this topic is the emphasis on recovery and restoration; the building of unifying myths and calls to an organic past free from colonial contamination; and the “invention of tradition” outlined by Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger in colonial and postcolonial societies, which can reclaim their self-identity on a renewed territory of cultural particularity.31 Chinua Achebe’s early novels are part of this project of uncovering an African past that is whole and integral.32 The Fanonian framework is obvious in this first topic of decolonization and resistance. The second topic Said refers to as the “voyage in,” not merely reasserting self-identity, but “writing back” to the imperial center: “disrupting the European narratives of the Orient and Africa” and entering into the discourse of the West with the view “to mix with it, transform it, to make it acknowledge marginalized or suppressed or forgotten histories.”33 Said cites Salman Rushdie in this context, to which one would certainly add Said himself, as well as poststructural writers such as Bhabha who are engaged, in large part, in the disruption and transformation of imperial and Western narratives. The third topic, least developed in Said’s schema, although in many respects the contemporary sensibility in postcolonial writing, is what Said characterizes as “a noticeable pull away from separatist nationalism toward a more integrative view of human community and human liberation.”34 Said quickly digresses into a discussion of nationalism, but he returns to the topics briefly enough to indicate that a recognition of hybridity and its associated implications for identity and resistance constitute the current state of play in postcolonialism. Thus he states that “the history of all cultures is the history of cultural borrowings. Cultures are not impermeable.”35 Appropriations, common experiences, and interdependencies among different cultures mark this third topic, as indeed they infuse the second broad framework of the discourse. Yet, as Said reminds us in his opening remarks on these three topics, they can be separated only for analytical purposes because they are all deeply interpenetrated. Thus it is possible that attempts at recovery and particularist assertion of identity can be found nesting in a project of deconstruction and disruption of the imperial narrative, all the while moving inexorably toward a situation in which all cultures and identities relate to each other in an intersubjective field of increasingly globalized proportions. This brief analysis of Said indicates the tensions and ambiguities that reside at the heart of much postcolonial writing. Such tensions are intensified in another important feature of postcolonialism, one that creates serious difficulties with its ontological claims to represent the voice of the marginal and the dispossessed. Because postcolonialism is self-consciously Third Worldist, it makes certain claims on behalf of Third World peoples and indeed often speaks on behalf of those it sees as marginalized by Western

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hegemony and dominance. There is a conscious privileging of the Third World and of marginality as the proper foci of study. Postcolonialism, as outlined by Said, seeks to reclaim the moral and emotional high ground in its interrogation of Western modernity. Whether it be the Third World intellectual in Western academia or the subaltern/native voice, the impetus is on the margin and the peripheral as the repository of a radical and subversive political standpoint. It is precisely because of this privileging and celebration of marginality that so much energy has been invested in one of the central problems confronted in the postcolonial discourse: Who can speak? And more to the point, can one speak for the Other? Linda Alcoff asks bluntly: “Is the discursive practice of speaking for others ever a valid practice?”36 She notes that the dangers of erasure, a desire for mastery, and the effect of reinscribing sexual and racial hierarchies are ever present in the practice of speaking on behalf of subjects who otherwise cannot be heard, particularly in the rarefied context of academic discourse. Spivak was one of the first academics to confront this problem in her efforts to give subaltern (colonial) women a voice in a historical and textual context in which the “subaltern cannot speak.”37 Because the native woman’s subject position is obliterated under colonialism, it falls to the postcolonial (woman) intellectual to give the muted subaltern a voice. The silence of the subaltern marks the limits of historical knowledge, which allows a critical intervention by the contemporary postcolonial writer. This typically strategic textual practice (a Derridian double inscription or movement—it is possible precisely because it is impossible38) enables Spivak to navigate the essentialist, authentic dynamics inherent in decoding the true native voice.39 These dynamics are all the more problematic under conditions of postmodernity. Postcolonialism seeks to create or recover subject positions for colonial and postcolonial agents. In this context, Teresa Dovey notes that a major dilemma for postcolonial and feminist discourses is invoking the presence of the colonized subject “without speaking for the Other, or without turning the Other into the Same.”40 However, as Simon During has argued, this problem is intensified by the intersection of postmodern and postcolonial thinking. Thus two key aspects of postmodern thought—the refusal to turn the other into the same and the recognition that the other can never speak for itself as the other—has important implications for the postcolonial project.41 Because postcolonialism feeds off both and the context of postmodernity effectively denies a space for otherness, the construction of subject positions in the (post)colonial situation is undermined. The inevitability of subsuming and speaking for (post)colonial subjects is fraught with difficulty on postmodern terrain, thus Spivak’s somewhat tenuous recourse to strategic essentialism and speaking on behalf of subjects without a voice.

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The problem, then, is a particular one that is due to the poststructuralist or postmodern strain in postcolonialism. The tensions between the first and second frameworks in postcolonialism become evident herein. The recovery project, with its implicit move to accord the native subject an authentic voice, does not fit easily with the poststructuralist desire to problematize the recourse to origins and cultural essences. Although both Spivak and Bhabha necessarily rebuke nativist attempts to recover a pure identity, they still wish to locate subaltern autonomy, which becomes all the more difficult given their theoretical positions. Bhabha’s predominantly Lacanian perspective, for instance, filters into his notion of “mimicry” and the other as part of the misrecognized mirror of the self.42 While Bhabha proffers the native’s inappropriate and misrecognized imitations of colonial authority as subversive and menacing, the endless mirror misrecognition that structures the very conditions of subjectivity and becomes inserted in the symbolic order of language (the colonial discourse) leads to a fractured subject marked by a permanent sense of lack. The dilemma can be put simply: If the colonized subject is forever misrecognizing itself and its others and is trapped in a symbolic order of language that allows only misrepresentations and mimicry, what sort of subject position can be uncovered if subjectivity, following Lacan, is implicitly denied in the first place? Which voice does one then seek to speak for or represent, and indeed, is not the discursive practice of speaking for others merely a further instance of misrepresentation and misrecognition, a further moment of parody and mimicry? This dilemma has profound implications for postcolonial agency that will be explored later. Although Parry claims that Bhabha, with his notion of mimicry, produces an “autonomous position” for the colonial subject within the confines of the hegemonic discourse, one needs to ask how active and effective this autonomy is. 43 Indeed, is it at all possible under a Lacanian schema of subjectivity? The postmodern suspicion of subjectivity and agency based on some privileged notion of selfhood tends to cut across the desire on the part of postcolonialism to empower marginalized subjects. As Sankaran Krishna perceptively notes in a postcolonial critique of recent postmodern international relations analyses, this suspicion is politically problematic for people who are “not so advantageously placed in the global hierarchy of late capitalism.”44 Helen Tiffen views the problem in terms of a reappropriation of the other by Europe. Subsuming postcolonialism within a broader postmodern critique of master narratives may serve to invoke a neouniversalism in which postcolonial voices are assimilated through predominantly Western theory into a renewed dominant Western system.45 The balance between a postmodern reading and the need to carve out a space for enabling action on the part of postcolonial subjects is an inherently awkward one.

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The issue of speaking for the other is doubly problematic when one considers the elevated role accorded to the intellectual in the postcolonial discourse. Niranjana touches on this with her question: “How does one represent difference without privileging the role of the Western intellectual or the post-colonial intellectual?”46 The answer, as Spivak is well aware, is simply to acknowledge this privileged position. In fact, what is immediately distinctive about postcolonialism is that the leading intellectuals are simultaneously postcolonial and Western in that they form part of a Western diaspora that seeks to speak for the Third World from the crucible of Western academia. Though not in itself questionable,47 this elevation of the diasporic condition becomes overly self-referential at times. Arjun Appadurai, for instance, may have captured a significant feature of the late modern world with his assessment that “diaspora is the order of things and settled ways of life are increasingly hard to find.”48 However, he may be guilty of reading the general pattern via the particularity of his own situation. Indeed, he unwittingly encapsulates the underlying problem with his reflection: “As I oscillate between the detachment of a postcolonial, diasporic, academic identity (taking advantage of the mood of exile and the space of displacement) and the ugly realities of being racialized, minoritized, and tribalized in everyday encounters, theory encounters practice.”49 The “ugly realities” may be real enough, but to what extent does postcolonial theory meet practice on the basis of the migrant intellectual experience? Appadurai may be closer to the mark with his comment that the postcolonial academic takes advantage of the mood and identity of exile in the West. This mood gives postcolonial perspectives a certain currency within Western academia and society that they do not necessarily have, for example, in African universities and societies, where exile and diaspora may not be the order of the day, at least not in the terms understood by postcolonial critics in the West. Doreen Massey, in a critique of both postcolonial and globalization discourses, notes how often the characteristic concern with place, home, and identity, and the concomitant feelings of displacement and dislocation evident in writers such as Appadurai, “comes from those who have left.” She prompts us to ask who exactly feels the identity concerns of postcolonialism and whether or not such concerns, under the veil of speaking for the Third World, are a “predominantly white/first-world take on things.” 50 Such questions are important to the position of Africa within the postcolonial discourse and it is to these issues that I will return in the following chapters. For the sake of analytical convenience, I will explore the claims made on behalf of resistance and difference in relation to the Third World’s encounter with the West in Chapter 4, and I will explore ideas about hybridity and ambivalence in Chapter 5. Throughout, the focus will be on the sense of evolution in the postcolonial discourse, with a particular eye to

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the continuities and ruptures between the four key motifs of the discourse and their implications for the constitution of contemporary identity, particularly in Africa.

NOTES 1. John McClure and Aamir Mufti, “Introduction” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, p. 3. 2. Benita Parry, “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse,” The Oxford Literary Review, 9(1–2), 1987, pp. 27–59. 3. Ella Shohat, “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial’,” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, p. 100. 4. Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992), p. 9. 5. Gyan Prakash, “Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography,” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, p. 8. 6. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 66. 7. Ranajit Guha, “Dominance Without Hegemony and Its Historiography” in Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies VI: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 299. 8. Niranjana, Siting Translation, p. 1. 9. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffen, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonialism Literatures (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), p. 167. 10. Shohat comments on the “slippery political significations” of the word postcolonial and notes the “unarticulated tension between the philosophical and the historical teleologies” of the term. Aside from the issue of when exactly the postcolonial comes into play historically (evidence of its “ambiguous spatio-temporality”), Shohat also comments on the “globalizing gesture” of the term and the fact that it has little currency in non-Indian, Anglo-American intellectual circles. This last criticism will be pursued later in the analysis. See Shohat, “Notes on the ‘PostColonial’,” pp. 100–106. Similarly, Anne McClintock is concerned with the temporal impreciseness of the term and suggests that it evokes a misleading historical rupture that is “prematurely celebratory.” McClintock is also perturbed with the singular sense in which it is often used, perceiving a “panoptic tendency to view the globe within generic abstractions,” which runs the “risk of telescoping crucial geo-political distinctions into invisibility.” This last criticism is pertinent to the postcolonial application in Africa and will be taken up in more depth in Part 2. See Anne McClintock, “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism’,” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, pp. 86–87. 11. Niranjana, Siting Translation, p. 41. 12. This is certainly true of Culture and Imperialism, wherein the idea of hybridity is a more dominant presence than in his previous work. See, for example, his classic Orientalism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), and some articles such as “Intellectuals in the Post-Colonial World,” Salmagundi, 70–71, Spring–Summer 1986, pp. 44–64, and “Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors,” Critical Inquiry, 15, Winter 1990, pp. 205–225. Indications of

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the diversity of emphasis can be found in this last article, in which Said reflects that the “fetishization and relentless celebration of ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’ is an ominous trend,” placing him at odds, at least in spirit, with quite a few postcolonial writers (p. 213). 13. Indeed, Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffen argue that European social theories “clearly function as the conditions of the development of post-colonial theory in its contemporary form and as the determinates of much of its present nature and content” (The Empire Writes Back, p. 155). However, Tiffen has noted that postmodern and postcolonial discourses may share certain strategies, but they are not synonymous and spring from radically different political contexts. Indeed, she sees postmodernism as a further instance of Europe (re)appropriating the other (that is, the postcolonial). See Tiffen, “Post-Colonialism, Post-Modernism and the Rehabilitation of Post-Colonial History,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 28(1), 1988, pp. 169–181. 14. Niranjana, Siting Translation, p. 10. 15. See Said, Culture and Imperialism, pp. xii–xx; Niranjana, Siting Translation, p. 172; Guha, “Dominance Without Hegemony,” p. 299; and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies IV: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985). 16. See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968 [originally 1952]), and his earlier The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1968); and Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (London: Souvenir Press, 1974 [originally 1957]). 17. Parry, “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse,” p. 30. 18. Shohat, “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial.’” 19. Homi K. Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” Critical Inquiry, 12, Autumn 1985, p. 152. 20. Ibid., p. 153. 21. Spivak, “Subaltern Studies,” p. 5. 22. Parry, “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse,” p. 32. 23. Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. xii. 24. Said makes clear in a recent interview that Foucault is useful as a “scribe of power” and influenced his early appreciation of discursive strategies of normalizing, but that he found Foucault weak on the resistance aspect to such normalization. Instead, Antonio Gramsci looms larger in Said’s thinking on this point, which indicates a more traditionally neo-Marxist influence rather than a strictly poststructural one. See “Orientalism and After: An Interview with Edward Said” (interviewed by Anne Beezer and Peter Osborne), Radical Philosophy, 63, Spring 1993, p. 25. 25. Said, in ibid., p. 28. 26. Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. 317. 27. Ibid., p. 219. 28. Ibid., p. 212. It is perhaps significant that the same passage appears much earlier in his Salmagundi piece in 1986. See “Intellectuals in the Post-Colonial World,” p. 55. 29. Said, Culture and Imperialism, pp. 31–32. 30. Ibid., p. 215. 31. See Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), particularly the introduction by Hobsbawn and the chapter by Ranger.

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32. See Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann African Writers Series, 1958; and Nairobi: Ibadan, 1958); and Achebe, Arrow of God, (London: Heinemann African Writers Series, 1964; and Nairobi: Ibadan, 1964). 33. Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. 216. 34. Ibid., p. 216. 35. Ibid., p. 217. 36. Linda Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Cultural Critique, Winter 1991–1992, p. 7. 37. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Chicago: University of Illinios Press, 1988), p. 308. 38. See Prakash, “Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography,” p. 12, and Niranjana, Siting Translation, p. 45. 39. Incidentally, this strategic privileging of the intellectual’s role comes in for some scathing treatment by Parry. See “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse,” pp. 35–39. 40. Teresa Dovey, “The Intersection of Postmodern, Postcolonial and Feminist Discourses in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe,” Journal of Literary Studies, 5(2), June 1989, p. 120. 41. Simon During, cited in Dovey “The Intersection of Postmodern, Postcolonial and Feminist Discourse,” pp. 123–124. 42. Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” in The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 85–86; and Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders,” pp. 101–104. 43. Parry, “Problems in Colonial Discourse,” p. 39. Parry better illustrates the tensions evident in the poststructural, postcolonial intersection when she concedes that Bhabha’s reading of Fanon is congenial to a deconstructive practice only because it simultaneously elevates that which touches on ambivalent identification and displaces Fanon’s characterization of the colonial encounter as one of relentless conflict and enmity between native and colonizer. See pp. 31–32. 44. Sankaran Krishna, “The Importance of Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations Theory,” Alternatives, 18, 1993, p. 388. 45. Tiffen, “Post-Colonialism, Post-Modernism and the Rehabilitation of PostColonial History.” 46. Niranjana, Siting Translation, p. 169. 47. This is not the view of Arif Dirlik, who claims that the elevated and powerful position and status of most postcolonial intellectuals in the West presents serious difficulties for their ability to address problems in the Third World. In fact, Dirlik argues that postcolonialism of this character (that is, from a Western diaspora) is complicit in the broader processes of global capitalism, which continues to marginalize Third World cultures. See Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism” Critical Inquiry, 20, Winter 1994, p. 331. 48. Arjun Appadurai, “Patriotism and its Futures,” Public Culture, 5(3), 1993, p. 424. 49. Ibid., p. 422. 50. Doreen Massey, “A Place Called Home?” New Formations, 17, Summer 1992, pp. 9, 11.

4 The Politics of Resistance and Difference

Postcolonialism instantiates a double movement in the revision of Western modernity: resisting the power/knowledge of occidental universalism and staking out a space for differentiation in its constitution of an autonomous identity. Each movement is infused by a desire for a radical, subversive refashioning of intersubjective relations between North and South; thus each can be viewed as an attempt to retell the (post)colonial encounter from a counterhegemonic standpoint. Taken together they provide the informing dynamic of the postcolonial endeavor, both intellectual and moral, to empower the subaltern. Yet, typically, the key motifs of resistance and difference encompass a heterogeneity of meaning and an ambivalence of affect. In many respects, resistance captures the spirit of the postcolonial challenge to the West, yet the passage from Fanon to the postmodern resistance of a Homi Bhabha or an Achille Mbembe (notwithstanding Bhabha’s exhortations of a continuity between his poststructural explorations and the Fanonian account) is significantly discordant. Similarly, although an emphasis on difference is seen to unlock postcolonial identity, early nativist moves toward differentiation and particularism are increasingly at odds with Bhabha’s reading of cultural difference as splitting and ambivalence. The fissures apparent in this evolution of the discourse are assuaged somewhat by the contemporary currency of the hybridity and ambivalence frameworks in postcolonialism. However, as I suggested in Chapter 3, there is no clear or neat lineage and passage from one framework to another, nor indeed between one writer and another within the same broad framework. The postmodern strain certainly allows, indeed encourages, a more ambiguous and differentiated focus. Of greater significance, however, is the attempt by writers such as Bhabha, Said, and Spivak to accommodate and reactivate the older motifs of resistance and difference within the more contingent context of contemporary thinking. Resistance and difference are not so much supplanted or strategically 63

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acknowledged at the Fanonian altar; they remain central to the postcolonial project of relocating identity and establishing a space for postcolonial agency. The issue of whether they continue to fit comfortably the contemporary clothes of postcolonialism is one that increasingly needs to be examined. In tracing the politics of resistance and difference in postcolonialism, three broad questions require addressing. What exactly is being resisted? How is this resistance project to be carried out? Finally, why the need for this resistance? It is within the parameters of this last question that the impulse toward difference becomes explicable. The need for an independent identity and the empowerment of the (post)colonial agent become the raison d’être of resistance. Although the methodology of this resistance is becoming increasingly discursive, this understates the emphasis on rewriting the colonial record evident from the outset. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the resistance envisaged under an earlier generation of nationalist activists and writers (and indeed still evident in a writer such as Ngugi) was decidedly more direct and more traditionally political. As for the object of the resistance/difference projects, this is neatly summed up in the “dual agenda” set out by Stephen Slemon: “to continue the resistance to (neo)colonialism through a deconstructive reading of its rhetoric and to achieve and reinscribe those post-colonial traditions . . . as principles of cultural identity and survival.” Similarly, Helen Tiffen sets out the postcolonial project as “The dis/mantling, de/mystification and unmasking of European authority that has been an essential political and cultural strategy towards decolonization and the retrieval or creation of an independent identity from the beginning.”1 This concern with resistance and a differentiated identity frame distinct yet overlapping instances in postcolonialism. I will explore these in turn, taking a text or writer that is emblematic of each, rather than attempt a more comprehensive sweep of the various positions that have been staked out under the respective banners. Broadly speaking, each motif has evolved in the context of concrete political and historical circumstances and, more obviously, within the context of a change in intellectual and disciplinary sensibility under conditions of late modernity. Thus one can trace the movement from a positivist nativism and essentialism to a more diffuse, postmodern understanding of resistance and cultural difference, although nativist strands still reside in consciously postpositivist characterizations. Writing at the decolonization juncture, and in particular in the context of the bitter Algerian war of independence, Frantz Fanon makes a clear call for resistance against European colonialism in Black Skin, White Masks (hereafter referred to as BSWM). Written from the perspective of a “French Antillean” from Martinique, Fanon often writes to (and on behalf of) all “Negroes” living in a state of inferiority due to the successive ravages of slavery and colonialism. Steeped in a firm sense of an observable reality,

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Fanon sets out his Manichean frame of reference: “The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative of the European’s feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say it outright: It is the racist who creates his inferior.”2 It is against this background that Fanon claims: “I find myself suddenly in a world in which things do evil; a world in which it is always a question of annihilation or triumph.”3 BSWM resonates with an unmitigating binarism of choice for the oppressed that constantly evokes the spirit of Aime Cesaire, which is recalled as “the great Negro cry with a force that will shake the pillars of the world.”4 This “great Negro cry” is employed to cast off the vestiges of dependency and inferiority and to inscribe the “alterity of rupture, of conflict, of battle,” an uncovering of “resistance, opposition, challenge.”5 Above all, Fanon is concerned to empower the Negro, to force a recognition of his or her existence in the face of persistent denial of autonomy and space by the European. Foreshadowing the work of poststructuralism, BSWM maps colonial oppression in the power of the metropolitan language to bound the subjectivity of the native: Every colonized people—in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality—finds itself face to face with the language of the civilising nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle.6

Yet mastering the language is in itself no ticket of entry for the native, particularly as a “lesser” form of the colonizer language is marked out for the colonized: pidgin. The colonized thus find themselves in a double bind— beholden to the metropolitan language, but in a modified and further disempowering form. According to Fanon, the black man learns to be ‘a good nigger’; once this has been laid down, the rest follows of itself. To make him talk pidgin is to fasten him to the effigy of him, to snare him, to imprison him, the eternal victim of an essence, of an appearance for which he is not responsible.”7 Fanon outlines no elaborate strategy for the colonized to escape this discursive hegemony. Instead, in BSWM he argues for the existence of choice and “reciprocal recognition” between black and white; he makes a call for the necessity of the “black man” to come into being as a conscious agent of desire and change in opposition to dominant representations of what it is to be Negro. Fanon describes this stance, in an autobiographical vein, as the effort “to assert myself as a BLACK MAN. Since the Other hesitated to recognize me, there remained only one solution: to make myself known.”8 In this respect, Fanon is critical of Octave Mannoni’s

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Prospero and Caliban study of colonial dependency for allowing no space for native resistance and agency. According to Fanon: The black man should no longer be confronted by the dilemma, turn white or disappear; but he should be able to take cognizance of a possibility of existence. In still other words, if society makes difficulties for him because of his color, if in his dreams I establish the expression of an unconscious desire to change color, my objective will not be that of dissuading him from it by advising him to “keep his place”; on the contrary, my objective, once his motivations have been brought into consciousness, will be to put him in a position to choose action (or passivity) with respect to the real source of the conflict—that is, toward the social structures.9

Fanon places the desire for recognition and the constitution of subjectivity squarely within a materialist context: the colonial social structure. Indeed, he is adamant throughout BSWM to emphasize environmental and social processes tied to colonialism over Mannoni’s psychological analyses of dependency and inferiority as strictly individual neuroses. What occurs to the native under colonialism is a result of the colonial dynamic, not some preexisting propensity for domination in traditional culture or, on a more Freudian level, an Oedipal anxiety in the face of overwhelming authority. As Fanon defines the object of self-recognition and hence resistance, “what I want to do is help the black man to free himself of the arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment.”10 Fanon thus sets out the early principles of the postcolonial project—to reject colonialist representations of otherness and to inscribe subjectivity as agency in the face of European colonialism. The self comes into being through rupture and action, although significantly for Fanon, not on the basis of an absolute difference between black and white. Although a recognition of difference (as constitutive of the self) is an integral step on the road of liberation and reconciliation, Fanon does not posit any enduring or irreconcilable gulf between black and white, self and other, in his overall humanist project of reciprocal recognition between colonizer and colonized. Indeed, Fanon preempts some of the ambiguity of more recent postcolonial writers on this point. (I will return to this issue later in the chapter.) Fanon bequeathed postcolonialism an oppositional script imbued by a moral and political fervor that has inspired successive Third World intellectuals to take up his call and write subaltern subjectivity into being. Aside from the direct influence on nationalist and black liberation movements, the directive of uncovering resistance, opposition, and challenge as a means of rupturing neo- and postcolonial positions of domination has fed into the fiction of prominent Third World writers. One African writer who has uncompromisingly and stridently taken up Fanon’s call is Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. The Manichean frame of reference and

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binary oppositions of Fanon dominate Ngugi’s narrative world. Indeed, Ngugi extends Fanon’s project to the postindependence, neocolonial situation in Africa. Devil on the Cross, written during the writer’s detention in prison in Kenya, posits a fairly extreme scenario wherein good and evil are possessed by the “masses” and “exploiters,” respectively, and Western imperialism and modernity are clearly the products of the devil. Kenya is absolutely dominated and exploited by the “local watchdogs” of foreign interests who drive Mercedes-Benzes, design fantastic schemes of exploitation such as the idea of a “heart supermarket,” and gather in paganlike ceremonies in which they extol the virtues of money, corruption, and deception. In this “prison of neo-colonial life,” run by robbers and thieves, what matters is the whiteness of the skin, hence the cream on sale for making people’s skin white. The fetish for the English language is portrayed as a form of slavery. A central character is initially ashamed of mixing English and Gikuyu, and the reader is told that taxis are the only place where the native tongue can be spoken freely. Further, white education has “clipped the wings” of the people and diluted the national traditions of literature and music.11 Similarly, in Ngugi’s Matigari, this neo-colonial nightmare structures modern African life. Corruption, underdevelopment, poverty, collaboration, and violence are the order of the day. “Parrotology” is the official creed of the government,12 and the reader is constantly reminded of the binary landscape: There are “two types of people” and “two worlds”—patriots and traitors/sell-outs; “two camps”—imperialists and “the working people.” Into this bleak terrain enters an old liberation fighter, Matigari, who emerges from the forests in a Christlike, allegorical search for “the truth and justice,” whose very simplicity and innocence triggers off rumors and widely exaggerated claims that a superhuman figure has come to complete the freedom struggle.13 In the final section of the novel, titled “The Pure and the Resurrected,” Ngugi moves toward a redemptive solution. As Matigari roams the countryside in search of truth and justice, a gradual awakening of the people occurs and widespread panic in the regime takes place. Matigari, almost in spite of himself and the simplicity of his quest, instigates an uprising that culminates in the burning of a prominent minister’s house, a symbolic setting fire to the minister’s Mercedes-Benz, and Matigari’s gradual retreat into the forest in order to uncover the AK-47 and the sword that he used in the anti-colonial struggle. Draped once again in full liberation mode, he recalled the night of the worker’s strike. And suddenly he seemed to hear the workers’ voices, the voices of the peasants, the voices of the students and of the other patriots of all the different nationalities of the land, singing in harmony:

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Victory shall be ours! Victory shall be ours! Victory shall be ours! Victory shall be ours!14

Although the resolution to Devil on the Cross is not as hopeful, there is the same move towards a reawakening of the revolutionary spirit of the people and an emphasis on the need for armed resistance to neocolonialism and imperialism. Near the end of the novel, echoing Fanon with the reflection that “it is whiteness that tells us what blackness is,”15 Warring and Gatuira learn of the importance of self-reliance and realize the need for unity and the collectivist ethos in the struggle against the imperial/neocolonial devil. There is a similar baptism of violence and redemption in the finale when Warring shoots Gatuira’s father and other “thieves and robbers” (that is, members of the ruling elite) on the symbolic occasion of Gatuira’s homecoming and engagement feast. Both characters are reborn as resistance fighters, and Warring walks off stridently to other battles. Ngugi’s novels are within the province of Barbara Harlow’s typology of “resistance literature” in that they form part of the struggle against ascendant and dominant forms of ideological and cultural power, in this case the continuing hold of Western imperialism in Kenya.16 Moreover, in an essay on the crisis of culture in contemporary Africa, Ngugi sees the major conflict as the contradiction between “national identity” and “imperialist domination” in the Third World that acts as the “root cause” of other tensions, such as that between modernity and tradition. Thus the real and fundamental conflict of cultures lies in “a national patriotic culture arising out of and getting its character from the struggle against imperialism.”17 Herein lies the quintessential Fanonian script: self-awareness and empowerment through struggle; emancipation through agency; resistance as the basis of self-identity. Indeed, it seems that specifically African studies are marked by these tropes. This idea is most prominent in Abdul JanMohamed’s analysis of the politics of literature in colonial and postcolonial Africa, which posits resistance and opposition as characteristic of the African response to the West and modernity. This emphasis on resistance and opposition seems to reflect the prominence of the African realist canon, which has given the spotlight to novelists such as Ngugi, Sembeme Ousmane, Ayi Kewi Armah, Alex La Guma, and Chinua Achebe, who have tended to reflect, in varying degrees, the Manichean aesthetic that JanMohamed has ascribed to the African colonial and hence literary experience.18 The characterization of African colonialism as Manichean in organization and ideology is also a reflection of the important redemptive role that writers such as JanMohamed have taken on as part of their opposition to Western dominance.

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The flip side to this stance is the imprisoning of contemporary approaches within a binary model. Thus JanMohamed invests relations between colonizers and colonized in colonial Africa with a negativity and a simplistic antagonism that tend to lock postcolonial responses into a rejectionist mode. The Manichean allegory of colonialism spills over into African texts and gives them a “fundamental structural uniformity” of opposition between black and white, self and other, subject and object.19 JanMohamed makes a token gesture toward the ambivalence of the African native but labels this a colonial contradiction. Similarly, where he admits hybridity between colonial and African cultures, they are merely “confused hybrids.”20 This interpretation has a powerfully limiting effect on the prospects for African agency, and moreover, the repression of ambivalence evident in JanMohamed is contradicted by a later generation of African novelists, such as Kojo Laing and Dambudzo Marechera, whom I will explore later in the book. The typology of resistance witnessed thus far is grounded in positivist, binary moorings: The enemy is mostly clear, the path of liberation obvious, the self recoverable through direct opposition and conflict. Yet the terrain is essentially utopian and one-dimensional. As a call to arms, the rhetoric is strident, but the characterization is overly didactic, particularly in Ngugi. The type of direct action insisted upon is born from the memory of struggle embodied in the nationalist era. It is perhaps no coincidence that Matigari is old and frail, a phantasmlike figure who retreats into the mystery of the forest for an outmoded AK-47 rifle and sword. The overwhelming impression, despite the disruption and anxiety he brings about, is of a figure whose time has passed. The forest and Matigari continue to menace, but mostly at a safe distance. Contemporary realities and revolutionary fervor are mediated by a shamanlike presence who is simultaneously insidious but not necessarily of direct consequence. The resistance ethos may also be found in the work of Edward Said, although (as already noted) a change of emphasis takes place in Said’s approach. The Fanonian spirit that inhabits Said is filtered through Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault, so resistance becomes a matter of constructing a counterhegemonic discourse in which the postcolonial writer needs to revise the colonial past and uncover resistance in the historiographical record as a prelude to recovering contemporary identity. The change in emphasis is significant: Not only does resistance become almost exclusively discursive, it looks backward for its redemptive ethic. This is evident in a broad range of writers who have been influenced by Said’s orientalist thesis and also take their cue from the need to build a counterhegemonic discourse: subaltern studies, Timothy Mitchell’s critique of colonial Egypt, 21 Arturo Escobar’s Foucauldian critiques of development,22 and James Scott’s work on the “weapons of the weak” and the various strategies of subaltern resistance to colonial domination.23

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Ironically, the common effort to invoke and rewrite the past in order to uncover the voice of subaltern resistance places Said and these other writers potentially at odds with Fanon. Near the end of BSWM, Fanon reflects that the desire to uncover a past Negro civilization, literature, or architecture, though of inherent interest, would not “change anything in the lives of the eight-year-old children who labor in the cane fields of Martinique or Guadeloupe.” For Fanon, “the body of history does not determine a single one of my actions”; it is only “by going beyond the historical . . . that I will initiate the cycle of my freedom.”24 This passage casts Fanon in the camp of the modern, at least in terms of his rejection of the weight of history and tradition. More important, it highlights the underlying tensions between an earlier generation and contemporary resistance writers, indicating anew the selectivity with which Fanon is invoked by postcolonial intellectuals. As we have seen with Said, postcolonial writers, as part of a general movement of resistance, “bear their past within them” and evoke this past as “urgently reinterpretable and redeployable experiences.” Resistance is seen as an “alternative way of conceiving history,” a “voyage in,” a “writing back” to European discourses that prepares the ground for contemporary identity.25 In an interesting passage, Said presages one of the key concerns of his postmodern colleagues when he refers to the “tragedy of resistance” and observes that it “must to a certain degree work to recover forms already established or at least influenced or infiltrated by the culture of empire.”26 The ambiguity of this tragedy is at once striking: Are we to lament the difficulty attending resistance within the confines of a hegemonic discourse, or more subconsciously, are we invited to share Said’s frustration at the inherent futility of the type of resistance project he has in mind? The significance of Said at this stage is his fusion of Fanonian opposition, albeit selectively, with discursive resistance to colonial historiography. We can briefly explore this form of resistance in the work of James Scott. Like the shadows of empire that lurk in the domestic novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Said’s critique of English literature, Scott explores the “hidden transcripts” of resistance of subordinate groups throughout imperial history that inhabit the “public transcript” of dominant discourse. As part of the recovery of nonhegemonic voices and practices of subject peoples,27 Scott looks to disguised, offstage, veiled forms of practical resistance under conditions of domination: rumors, gossip, folktales, songs, gestures, jokes, street theater, euphemisms, metaphors, blasphemy, the grotesque, and scatology. In short, the realm of the cryptic, opaque, and anonymous, which takes place precisely in sites that are the province of the subaltern: taverns, marketplaces, and carnivals. 28 These disguised and subtle tactics constitute the “elementary, foundational form of politics”

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of subordinate groups and often act as the “silent partner,” or “prehistory” of “louder” forms of public resistance and political breakthroughs.29 Often overlooked and downplayed, these “weapons of the weak” are seen by Scott as crucial in the construction of a resistance culture that is eventually capable, at certain historical moments, of acting as the catalyst of broader, more openly oppositional movements of liberation. They also act as a crucial marker of continuity in subaltern history; at all times, no matter how oppressive the circumstances, some form of resistance has taken place, “a zone of constant struggle” in the everyday, ordinary lives of the subordinate.30 Thus the space for agency and subjectivity has been evident throughout history, particularly imperial history; the preconditions of a differentiated identity (although Scott is careful to insist on a nonessentialist reading of identity31) become visible in the constant effort to contradict, manipulate, inflect, and undermine the position and identity of the dominant in everyday sites such as the marketplace that were “won, cleared, built, and defended.”32 In Scott’s account, the hidden history of domination has been the constant, niggling resistance of the subordinate. In a postcolonial context, something akin to this mode of resistance continues to undermine the public transcript of Western dominance and the broader processes of modernity. The sites vary, but the underlying theme of a microphysics of local resistance is shared, whether it be in the taxis of Ngugi’s novels, the “dislocations and displacements” of modernism in Said’s account of twentiethcentury European culture and art,33 or the “Participatory Action Research” groups in Latin America that Escobar holds up as an instance of “popular power” and grassroots activism that have worked to “develop popular counter-power for social transformation [in] their relation to the production of knowledge” through such activities as the critical reconstruction of local or regional histories and the restoration of popular cultures and languages.34 The representational nature of the discursive resistance advanced in Said, Scott, and Escobar are limited on a number of fronts. The very characterization of dominance as largely a product of a representational framework or “public transcript” implies a simplistic functionality in the relationship between power and representation in relations of dominance and resistance. Representation is too often taken to equal, if not serve, power in the attainment of imperial or dominant interests. However, one could argue that certain representations can be counterproductive and indeed a source of weakness. This is what George Orwell invites us to believe in his short story “Shooting an Elephant,” in which the edifice of colonial authority is compromised, in large measure, by the very roles that colonizers are meant to carry out.35 A particular representational framework can run counter to perceived interests. Knowledge can be based on quite misguided

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or irrational premises that can render dysfunctional discursive tools of domination. Although Scott and Said would accommodate some notion of the fragile basis of the public transcript, it would tend to follow from the outside effect of resistance. The tendency is thus, ironically, to overestimate the potency of dominant discourses and lend them a certain internal coherency and logic that they may lack. However, the effectiveness of the resistance outlined is open to dispute in light of this characterization of dominance. Put simply, how does the subaltern escape the type of representational power at the heart of dominance? What broader strategies are available to oppressed groups in the South? Scott describes various tactics, but to what extent do the agents in his account have at their disposal strategies capable of answering hegemonic discourses? Given that representation is tied to information and communication, and given the unequal access to technology and the means of production, it is difficult to envisage how postcolonial agents (or, for that matter, Third World nations) might go about putting in place a counterhegemonic order. The push for a new information order in the 1970s was a recognition of the underlying material processes involved in representations of the Third World. Is the sort of resistance outlined by Scott mostly appropriated by the dominant discourse? One is left with the impression that the various techniques of hidden resistance lauded by Scott end up only marginally affecting relations of dominance. (They are, after all, mainly hidden and have an effect on authority only when they come out into the open.) At a broader level, it begs the question of whether a counter-narrative as typified in the discursive resistance of postcolonialism is sufficient in itself to refashion asymmetrical relations of power. The relationship between resistance and domination evident in the writing of Scott and Said brings to the fore other problems in this manifestation of postcolonialism. These problems become glaring under the shadow of the postmodern, a presence that has prompted a significant shift in the postcolonial approach. There is a certain neatness in the dichotomy between resistance and domination in the writing explored thus far that tends to unravel under conditions of late modernity, in terms of both the poststructural challenge to binarism and the greater reflexivity and contingency of late modern life. Writers such as Said and Scott are sensitive to the underlying reciprocity between resistance and hegemony, yet they largely sidestep the pitfalls by insisting on the continued imperative of resistance as the dominant motif of postcolonialism. Yet certain processes are unleashed in late modernity that condition postcolonial experience in both a material and intellectual sense and render it less conducive to the operation and logic of a straightforward resistance culture. Although this is recognized by an increasing number of postcolonial writers—from Spivak to Bhabha to Mbembe—old habits die hard and resistance is transformed and carried on under a paradoxical postmodern label.

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Jameson informs us that all countercultural forms of resistance, and even more overtly political interventions such as guerrilla warfare, “are all somehow secretly disarmed and reabsorbed by a system of which they themselves might well be considered a part, since they can achieve no distance from it.” This system, the “new global space” that is the “moment of truth” of postmodernity,36 does not negate agency and emancipatory politics for Jameson, but it certainly refashions the relationship between resistance and domination such that, according to Michael Ryan, they meet in the same cultural space rather than operate separately or mutually exclusive to one another.37 Similarly, Naoki Sakai, writing of Japan’s modernization in the face of Western hegemony, argues that this modernization was prompted in part by resistance to the West’s domination; had the Orient not resisted, it would never have been modernized. Sakai’s broader point is that, even in resistance, Japan was subject to modernity in the same sense that the West is able to define itself only as a universal against various others, in this case the Orient.38 Thus resistance and domination are symbiotic or dialectic, as Ernest Wamba Dia Wamba claims in his critique of African attempts to invoke traditional culture as part of resisting Western development.39 They are more so under late modernity, which operates as a more open and constantly evolving system wherein challenges to the seemingly dominant Western global culture are both possible and proscribed.40 They are proscribed precisely because, as George Marcus informs us, “resistance in the struggle to establish identity does not rest on some nostalgic bedrock of tradition or community, but arises inventively out of the same deconstructive conditions that threaten to pull it apart or destabilize what has been achieved.”41 Resistance is thus always already conditioned with paradox and ambiguity; its operation is precarious because of contingent counterpressures that bind it to modernity; for example, various imported technologies and consumerism. Yet some caution is needed here. Even in the colonial period in Africa, a similar dialectic occurred between resistance and the increasing reliance on cash crops and modern farming methods and expertise. This and Sakai’s example of Japan’s modernization suggest that what has become an article of faith under late modernity was always there in the unfolding of resistance. The increased awareness of the reciprocity between resistance and domination (or, indeed, between resistance and modernity) has paved the way for a more postmodern reading of the resistance dynamic in postcolonialism. Yet the very notion of a postmodern resistance seems a contradiction in terms. It proceeds from an unarticulated tension between a keen appreciation of late modernity and postmodernism in general, and a desire to keep the Fanonian flame alight and adaptable to contemporary conditions. For Niranjana for instance, deconstruction is not only a logical sequence from previous discursive strategies evident in Said or subaltern

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studies but a key poststructural technique that brings “to legibility areas of contradiction, difference and resistance.”42 Once again, the terms employed here are imprecise. Difference is not meant to imply a search for origins or essences, but its lingering use in the singular tends to, at best, inscribe heterogeneity in a deeply ambiguous manner. Resistance is legible through Niranjana’s translation of texts, which constitutes a “disruptive, disseminating force” opening up a postcolonial space.43 The mechanisms of this postmodern resistance is strikingly evident in the writings of Bhabha and Mbembe. In “Of Mimicry and Man,” Bhabha does not mention the word resistance, yet he leaves an undeniable impression that colonial authority is constantly undermined and hence resisted because mimicry operates as the basis of colonial control and disciplinary power. From Charles Grant to James Macaulay in British India, Bhabha gives instances of how British colonial power was rationalized on the basis of employing a self-contradictory and ultimately corrosive part imitation of British ideals in the constitution of the colonial subject. The colonized, in this account, becomes “a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite.”44 Invoking Lacan and the ever present shadow of Derrida, the effect of this mimicry (“almost the same, but not quite”) is that the “mottled” colonial subject becomes “the sign of double articulation”: an appropriated other that becomes the sign of the inappropriate; an uncertain, incomplete, and partial representation; a profound and disturbing presence because it “poses an immanent threat to both normalized knowledges and disciplinary powers” by alienating the knowledge of the colonial discourse.45 Colonial mimicry thus becomes “at once resemblance and menace.”46 How is mimicry a menace? “The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority.” The effect of the partial representation and recognition of the colonial subject is that, Foucault-like, “the look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the disciplined, where the observer becomes observed” and is confronted with “those disturbances of cultural, racial and historical difference that menace the narcissistic demand of colonial authority.”47 Bhabha is careful to distinguish the disruptive articulation of the mimicry outlined from a Fanonian reading of imitation as colonial dependence. Unlike in Fanon (and Cesaire), “mimicry conceals no presence or identity behind its mask.” 48 This is clearly Lacanian territory: the opaque subject (both the colonizer and the colonized) misrecognizing itself and being misrecognized. Yet somehow—and this is the point Parry makes in underlining the “autonomous position” that Bhabha creates for the subject within the confines of the colonial hegemonic discourse—the colonial subject, almost despite itself, is able to resist the full gaze of colonialism’s disciplinary power and become empowered through the mimicry of the colonial situation.

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Similarly, there is a passive, almost unintended subjectivity evident in Mbembe’s characterization of the postcolony. In a mostly Foucauldian representation of power relations, Mbembe presents the contemporary African state in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival: obscene, vulgar, and grotesque in its fetishization of power. Mbembe argues that postcolonial relations of power do not conform to standard interpretations of domination (resistance/passivity, subjection/autonomy, hegemony/counterhegemony). He implores us to go beyond binary categories, and indeed, he provocatively states that the “vulgarity of power” in the postcolony renders traditional notions of resistance irrelevant: Ruled and rulers enter a promiscuous relationship; a “convivial tension” of familiarity that results in the mutual “zombification” of the dominant and the subordinate. This “zombification” results in each robbing the other of its “vitality” and “has left them both impotent.”49 A “situation of disempowerment” for both ruler and ruled eventuates. However, though the “commandement” (that is, the authority of the state) becomes demystified, the process “does not do violence to the commandement’s material base.”50 The bleak account outlined thus far seems to leave little or no room for subaltern agency, and given that the commandement “glides unperturbed” over “pockets of indiscipline,”51 the strong implication is the futility of any action and the impossibility of emancipation. Yet Mbembe’s apparent intention is not to close off possibilities for agency. Indeed, precisely because the postcolony is a “chaotic plurality” made up of a multitude of spheres and arenas, the postcolonial subject has to learn to continuously bargain and mobilize “several fluid identities which, by their very nature, must be constantly revised in order to achieve maximum instrumentality and efficiency as and when required.”52 The postcolonial subject comes into existence as being subject to the fetish of state power and as deploying a “talent for play and sense of fun” in this fetishization. Because they are “constantly undergoing mitosis” and splinter their identities, “it would be mistaken to continue to interpret the postcolonial relation in terms of ‘resistance’ or absolute ‘domination’, or as a function of the dichotomies and binary oppositions generally adduced in conventional analyses.”53 The very promiscuity of the subject’s relationship to the commandement rules out any prospect of outright resistance, and conversely, this promiscuity undermines the ruler’s ability to dominate absolutely and maintain control. So where does the postcolonial subject stand in this seemingly contradictory impasse? How should the split halves of the “zombified,” disempowered, yet fluid and active subject be recovered? According to Mbembe, “what defines the postcolonial subject is his/her ability to engage in baroque practices which are fundamentally ambiguous, mobile, and ‘revisable’, even in instances where there are clear, written, and precise rules.” These contradictory practices ratify the fetish of state power at the same time that they maintain, “even while drawing

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upon officialese . . . the possibility of altering the place and time of this ratification.”54 It is at this juncture that the character of power relations in the postcolony become grotesque, carnivalesque. The postcolonial subject manipulates the baroque practices of the state: Not only do the obscenity and vulgarity of power establish one of the modalities of power in the postcolony, they are also “one of the arenas of its deconstruction” by the subject. Thus, in true carnivalesque fashion, the key inversion of power relations and hence the basis for undermining the commandement’s authority take place “when, in their desire for splendour, the masses join in madness and clothe themselves in the flashy rags of power so as to reproduce its epistemology; and when, too, power, in its own violent quest for grandeur and prestige, make vulgarity and wrongdoing its main mode of existence.”55 The postcolonial subject maneuvers in “an enormous space open to improvisation,”56 in which it is able to reveal the excesses of state power through simulacra, pretense, and the ridicule of official ceremonies and, consequently, as Bhabha argues, undermine the authority of the dominant. Mbembe’s contemporary canvas is certainly complex and bizarre; it is difficult to discern the precise nature of subjectivity and agency in the context of the simulacra, fetishization, and zombification of the postcolony. Part of his argument acts to foreclose traditional avenues of subaltern resistance and emancipation. Yet he is unable or unwilling to completely deny a space for subjectivity and agency, despite the modernist baggage of such terms. Indeed, given his view of the chaotic postcolony as open and impossible to enclose completely by relations of dominance, it seems logical to allow some scope for what he terms “identity improvisation.” However, this subjective space needs to be juxtaposed with Mbembe’s concomitant argument that any action on behalf of the postcolonial subject will “not do violence to the commandement’s material base.” This obviously prompts the question (as it did for Scott’s hidden resistance) of how significant the agent’s capacity for manipulation of the commandement’s authority is in the face of the impenetrable state power suggested. If the postcolonial subject is able to achieve “maximum instrumentality and efficacy,” to what avail is this if the material position of the dominant cannot be significantly undermined? Furthermore, how should this ability be equaled with Mbembe’s notion that the very vulgarity and obscenity of the “banality of power” in the postcolony sets up the conditions for its own debasement?57 What is of particular concern in the context of the resistance motif is the representation in both Mbembe and Bhabha of the subject’s capacity for action. In both writers’ works there is a restricted, almost inert and uninvolved quality to the subject’s ability to resist authority. In both cases, the terms of power and domination are set from above: colonial authority promoting a self-defeating mimicry in Bhabha; the commandement feeding the

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fetishization for its vulgar and debased power in Mbembe. In Bhabha, there is no specific mention of the colonized subject. It is the camouflage, mimicry, and very fetish of the colonial culture that constitutes the menace to colonial authority: “For the fetish mimes the forms of authority at the very point at which it deauthorizes them.”58 The absence of an articulated subject within this deauthorization of colonialism seems to imply that the subject is merely swept up in the ambivalence of colonial discourse, a bit player that responds passively to the dynamics of mimicry. Similarly, in Mbembe ordinary people hold a mirror to the commandement that reflects the debasement of its power and authority, “often unwittingly.”59 Again, the impression left is of puppets playing out prearranged roles. How do the postcolonial politics of resistance fit in here? Mbembe’s virtual dismissal of a resistance politics makes sense only within an early Foucauldian framework: He would like to direct our attention away from top to bottom, binary, and zero-sum relations of power to the “microphysics of power,” that is, the whole network of power relations in which resistance is recast as occurring at the local level and at multiple points, often randomly in response to the normalization of society. For Foucault, where there is power, there is resistance; but the two do not exist outside or exterior to one another.60 Following this reasoning, resistance does not disappear in the postcolony; it merely becomes decentered and, at times, unintentional or “nonsubjective” in Foucault’s terms. Mbembe’s postcolony is populated with a wide cast of policemen, administrators, state officials, teachers, and “everyday people” who all collaborate in the fabulization of power. These everyday subjects are able to reflect back the vulgarity of power and in the process ridicule state power: “There, they can tame it, or shut it up and render it powerless. Once having symbolically bridled its capacity to annoy, they can enclose it in the status of an idol.”61 There are notable inconsistencies within Mbembe: power is enclosed in a chaotic, open postcolony; the commandement is rendered powerless despite its hermetic material power base. Here we witness the intersection of postmodernity/poststructuralism and the politics of resistance: At once power relations can make sense only in terms of the “intimacy of tyranny,”62 which is seen by Mbembe as a central feature of postmodern life; further, his representation of the postcolony is refracted through the poststructural lenses of Foucault and Bakhtin. These twin dynamics condition the appreciation of resistance: They simultaneously undercut its traditional impetus and complicate the understanding of how it operates in the contemporary period. Resistance is recast along postmodern lines in order to make sense of the “convivial tension” between ruled and rulers.63 Resistance and hegemony are at once familiar and domesticated. The spatial setting of resistance moves along a more postmodern path, yet in a

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temporal sense, undercurrents and tensions from a previous incarnation linger. The contemporary postcolonial stage becomes one in which subjectivity and agency are at once diluted and recouped, and consequently resistance itself becomes mottled and, ironically, a mimicry of its former self. Bhabha’s Derridian and Lacanian fusion provides even more limited scope for subjectivity and the politics of resistance. The characterization of mimicry owes little to postmodern conditions per se; after all, Bhabha is looking back to colonial authority in the nineteenth century. Resistance is more abstracted and impersonal in his account, although in fairness, other essays evidence a more personalized account.64 Yet we are reminded often enough that resistance was (is) real: Mimicry is a menace to colonial authority. There is some of Mbembe’s vulgarity of power in Bhabha with the “masses joining in madness” in the reproduction of authority. However, it is no longer mere resemblance, but a subversive mimicking. The colonial other becomes a more intensified subject of difference because it “is almost the same, but not quite.”65 This self-knowledge on the part of the colonizers is sufficient to undermine colonial authority. Yet the resistance inscribed is strangely other-than-subjectivity. The colonized are necessary only to reflect back as not quite the same. Their role is in the Lacanian mirror: They are eternally misrecognized—and, indeed, unrecognizable. The dynamics of self-identity for the native seem to pale in light of the broader and more significant drama of the colonizers gazing into a troublesome self-image. The process is mostly subjectless; mimicry resides in the symbolic order of language. The politics of resistance, understood to a significant extent as constituting agency and hence inscribing subjectivity (identity), unravels somewhat in the play of Lacanian mirrors. There is a similar journey of certainty to indeterminacy in the understanding of difference as constitutive of subaltern identity. The emphasis on difference and particularity—in other words, the move toward establishing an authentic, native, independent voice and identity in contradistinction to the West and modernity—propelled the anticolonial and postcolonial resistance project. Indeed, as previously argued, the recovery of and insistence on difference have formed not only the means but the central rationale of this resistance. It takes its cue from Chinua Achebe’s notion that the recovery of a different, traditional self-identity is a crucial step toward self-respect and empowerment; that in emphasizing the distinctively African (be it Yoruba or Igbo) or Indian, a space for a more critical and independent response to European domination can be established. The singularity of African culture, literature, or philosophy thus becomes not only a marker of a separate identity but a basis upon which a modern response to modernity can be undertaken.66 This follows a broader turn to the particular in the social sciences, a perceived attempt to get beyond the confines of Western universalism and the homogeneity of modernity. It has

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been an obvious feature of anthropology (particularly critical anthropology), and it has become no less evident in a discipline as Eurocentric and universalist as international relations, at least at the critical margins.67 In postcolonialism, this sensibility informs most attempts at carving out a subversive and radical space in opposition to Western dominance and hegemony. Yet its moral and intellectual force has come to unwind quickly in the late modern age, more so than the emphasis on resistance, with the increasing acceptance of nonessentialist and hybrid accounts of culture and history. The irony is that at the general, universal level, the focus on cultural difference has served an important empowering role whose coherence weakens considerably once the specific and particular aspects of most cultural positions are taken into account. Thus the retreat into difference and particularity makes sense only at a broad level; once the actual differences and particularities within and between various postcolonial cultures are acknowledged, there can be no one authentic or essential voice of opposition and resistance somehow untainted by the processes of colonialism and modernity. This seemingly innocuous point has been difficult to concede. Postmoderns such as Spivak have tried to overcome the problems inherent in attempting to establish an independent subaltern or postcolonial voice by utilizing a “strategic essentialism,” that is, allowing for some form of essentialized identity sufficient strategically to fulfill the requirements of opposition and resistance and simultaneously accepting the impossibility of any authentic or “native” identity.68 This allows us, with proper acknowledgment of the necessary caveats, to move beyond a poststructural impasse. More modernist thinkers like Said have found it difficult, even within a postcolonial guise, to let go of essentialized constructions of subjectivity that lay the groundwork for a differentiated identity. In the postcolonial discourse, difference comes to epitomize the triumph of the other or, rather, the transformation of the other in orientalist and colonial representations to an authenticated, liberating constitution of self. The other returns not as a construct of the Western imagination but as affirmation of a distinctive, non-Western identity (or series of identities) that cannot be incorporated or appropriated into a Western dynamic. Thus, as outlined by the literary critic Helen Tiffen, postcolonial writers “rehabilitate” the self against European appropriation. In fracturing imposed European master narratives and perspectives, postcolonialism replaces them with an “alternative vision.” This is particularly the case for “indigenous peoples” (India, Africa) who are able “to challenge European perspectives with their own metaphysical systems.” 69 These “alternative ontological systems” “can demonstrate the way to escape historical and textual containment, or engulf it on behalf of their own metaphysics,” because they are essentially “recuperable.” This is possible, according to Tiffen, despite colonizer and colonized being “inextricably interwoven” in the colonial

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encounter.70 What is particularly revealing in Tiffen’s argument is the implication that this process of recuperation is straightforward and unproblematic for indigenous peoples. Behind the mask of European domination lies a native identity ready to be utilized and deployed back at the West. This characterization of an identity that is essentially different and ever present in some pristine form accords with various other representations of cultural difference between the West and non-West. From the subaltern studies project71 to Fredric Jameson’s characterization of Third World literature as essentially allegorical and hence distinct from the West,72 from Biodun Jeyifo’s similar distinction between “story-telling” in the South and “science” in the North as following a global division of knowledge73 to Partha Chatterjee’s analysis of nativism and anticolonial nationalism in which he outlines a material and spiritual divide between West and non-West, in particular the “spiritual” as an inner domain “bearing the ‘essential’ marks of cultural identity,”74 the emphasis is on some notion of a cultural gulf between North and South. Such theorizing tends to fly in the face of the inevitable reciprocity of identity between West and non-West, particularly in the context of the colonial encounter. As Annie Coombes rightly points out, the use of difference as the basis of dissipating grand narratives of Western origin “can ultimately produce a homogenizing and levelling effect that has serious consequences.”75 The irony is, as Coombes highlights in the context of curating practices in museums, that a frozen representation of the other is produced that is just as limited and defeating as past orientalist representations. In fact, such representations of cultural difference inevitably lead to contradictions and unsustainable distinctions that tend to undermine the whole resistance project. Nowhere are the pitfalls and problematics more manifest than in two separate African exchanges that are revealingly interconnected. In the first, the Nigerian critic and writer Chinweizu, in an overview of African literature savagely dismisses Wole Soyinka as “unAfrican.” Describing Soyinka as “Euro-assimilationalist” and “Euro-modern,” Chinweizu claims that Soyinka has a contempt for Africa that is obvious in the “blancophilia and negrophobia” of his poem “To my first white hairs” in the collection Idanre and Other Poems and in his overall adoption of a Western modernist technique that may have guaranteed him a Nobel Prize but has distanced him from “authentic” African writing, which, according to Chinweizu, is to be understood as popular, folkoriented, oral-based, and relating directly to the African experience. Soyinka is highly “academic,” modernist in a European vein, and privileged as a representative voice of African literature only from the outside. He is thus portrayed as more European than Black African, an “outsider” in Africa despite his exalted status in the West.76

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If Chinweizu’s critique is counterposed to a more recent series of exchanges between Soyinka and Ali Mazrui, incredibly, the roles of the above exchange reverse, with Soyinka positioning himself squarely as an authentic African against the Arab-African and mostly Westernized Mazrui. Several polemical interventions in the African journal Transition regarding Mazrui’s BBC documentary The Africans: A Triple Heritage (1986) contain an emotional and heated debate wherein the subtext of who is to be regarded as more truly African takes over the merits or otherwise of the documentary. Soyinka claims that the series only pays lip service to Sub-Saharan Africa and underplays the indigenous African contribution, privileging instead the Muslim (Arab) and Christian heritages. Citing this as a manifestation of an “alienated African,” Soyinka mirrors Chinweizu when he points to Mazrui as not truly African and as essentially pandering to a Western market. In his replies, Mazrui rightly interprets the exchange as a debate over authenticity. Mazrui argues that Soyinka, claiming that the BBC series was not produced by a Black African, raises fundamental questions about who constitutes an African and what historical and cultural ingredients legitimately make up the true or authentic heritage of Africa.77 The answers, as Mazrui points out, are of course complex. Utilizing race as the exclusive basis of cultural difference is highly suspect, to say the least. The broader significance of these exchanges lies not in the absurdity of the specific claims per se, but the way they tap into the underlying difficulties of a position of difference based on some reading of authenticity or essentialism. Soyinka the African outsider in Chinweizu’s account becomes Soyinka the African insider in the exchange with Mazrui, belying the obvious point that Soyinka is as modern an African (and thus as authentic) as Chinweizu and Mazrui, especially given their shared status as Western-educated intellectuals writing in English who have each spent some time outside of Africa. Both Chinweizu and Soyinka (at least in the above exchange) tend to ignore the key factor that cultural difference, as the basis of a distinct identity, is, in the words of Trinh T. Minh-ha, “an ongoing process which is produced, not salvaged.”78 Perhaps Minh-ha needs to be modified in this respect; the production or salvaging of some sense of cultural distinctiveness should not be viewed as binary opposites. In other words, it is not so much that the basis of difference lies in one or the other. What is important is the way in which that which is salvaged, from a pool that is available to a particular culture in a particular time and space, be it traditional practices or folktales, is caught up in contemporary constructions and reproductions that have as much to do with the present and some projection of the future as with the past per se. This does not deny the sense and significance of the past for postcolonial societies, nor

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the continuing hold of conceptions of self and society that went before. It merely points to the fact that concepts and positions such as sameness and otherness or self and other are more useful when viewed in terms of degrees and movements within the same concept, or differences (both produced and salvaged) between and within identities, rather than timeless dualities and conflicts. Further, as Jonathan Friedman has pointed out regarding the Ainu of Hawaii and the BaKongo in Africa, whether an identity is “self-centered” or “other-oriented” is not simply explained via a concept of cultural difference, but with reference to such factors as specific historical circumstances, “global position,” and the respective strengths of modernity and tradition within the cultural whole.79 Thus, the suspicion of unproblematically reactivating the past evident in Fanon is instructive in moving toward a more contemporary sense of cultural difference that looks to identity as an ongoing, evolving process. Precisely the same tussle over the past has occurred in the debate about the nature and origins of philosophy in Africa. Is there a genuinely indigenous set of metaphysical beliefs that constitute a distinct African worldview and hence philosophy, or is philosophy necessarily a European construct in which traditional, indigenous elements are not as important as distinctive contributions by modern Africans that specifically address African dilemmas? The attempt to uncover a preexisting philosophy is seen as misguided by those like Paulin Hountondji who look to philosophy as something not merely handed down, as is oral history, but as an evolving discipline forged in the interplay between traditional and modern, inside and outside elements. Hountondji states the brief succinctly in the following passage: Motivated by the genuine need for an African philosophy, they have wrongly believed that this philosophy lies in our past, needing only to be exhumed and then brandished like a miraculous weapon in the astonished face of colonialist Europe. They have not seen that African philosophy, like African science or African culture in general, is before us, not behind us, and must be created today by decisive action. Nobody would deny that this creation will not be effected ex-nihilo, that it will necessarily embrace the heritage of the past and will therefore rather be a recreation. But this and simple withdrawal into the past are worlds apart.80

The underpinnings of a fairly comprehensive break with the more traditional focus on difference as authentic and recuperable are now visible. According to a newer and more radical sensibility, what is recuperable in terms of a postcolonial politics of resistance and difference is not pure or completely distinctive. Indeed, difference lies not so much in a binary selfversus-other construction, but in the often uneasy accommodation of the two in a psychically split state of subjectivity. It is on this nonessentialist

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terrain that due recognition is given to what Homi Bhabha refers to as the “demography of the new internationalism”: postcolonial migration, cultural and political diaspora, displacement, exile, and “the grim prose of political and economic refugees.” In this new globalized space, “the very concepts of homogeneous national cultures, the consensual or contiguous transmission of historical traditions, or ‘organic’ ethnic communities—as the grounds of cultural comparativism—are in a profound process of redefinition.”81 Postcoloniality is testament to this process of redefinition because it provides the setting for a more complex articulation of cultural difference. Difference is no longer a hermeneutic project for the restoration of cultural essence or authenticity; it is not merely “the acquisition or accumulation of additional cultural knowledge.” Rather, it is, according to Bhabha, “the momentous, if momentary, extinction of the recognizable object of culture in the disturbed artifice of its signification, at the edge of experience.”82 The “edge of experience,” the movement “beyond,” “the uncertainty of culture’s in-between”;83 this Bhabhaian territory is precisely the site of culture that R. B. J. Walker underlines—the in-between of the human imaginary, the indeterminate and unresolved. It is here, away from assumptions of cultural holism and homologous expression, that Bhabha traces the “enunciatory disorder” of cultural difference: The colonial signifier—neither one or other—is, however, an act of ambivalent signification, literally splitting the difference between the binary oppositions or polarities through which we think cultural difference. It is in the enunciatory act of splitting that the colonial signifier creates its strategies of differentiation that produce an undecidability between contraries or oppositions.84

Difference experiences a radical loss of the “dialectical assemblage of part and whole.” An ambivalence and splitting of subject positions occurs so that the culture concept itself is disturbed. It is no longer a matter of simple dualities and recovering cultural essences. According to Bhabha, differentiation becomes the repository of a plurality and hybridity of psychic and social experience that effectively undercuts a self-against-other subjectivity: Splitting constitutes an intricate strategy of defence and differentiation in the colonial discourse. Two contradictory and independent attitudes inhabit the same place, one takes account of reality, the other is under the influence of instincts which detach the ego from reality. This results in the production of multiple and contradictory belief. The enunciatory moment of multiple belief is both a defence against the anxiety of difference, and itself productive of differentiations. Splitting is then a form of enunciatory, intellectual uncertainty and anxiety that stems from the fact

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that disavowal is not merely a principle of negation or elision; it is a strategy for articulating contradictory and coeval statements of belief.85

Cultural difference is now understood not as something that is singularly different, but as differentiation in the plural in terms of a complexity of articulation, effect, and meaning. Although this notion of differentiation does not foreclose a space for resistance—after all, it is the very ambivalence and Derridean doubleness or in-betweeness of its expression that is seen as threatening to colonial or European domination—it does transform the basis for postcolonial subjectivity and thoroughly complicates the relationship between self, culture, tradition, community, and modernity. The setting is no longer from an early Achebe novel; rather, it is the “colonial nonsense,” in Bhabha’s formulation, of the culturally unassimilable space of “the Horror, the Horror” and the Marabar caves, “a hybrid time and truth that survives and subverts the generalizations of literature and history.”86 We are, in effect, back to Lacan; and my critique of Bhabha’s Lacanian notion of resistance is equally apt in this context. Rather than rehearse this critique, it is important to note at this juncture the shift toward an altered conception of postcoloniality. Thus, when Bhabha defines postcoloniality as enabling “the authentification of histories of exploitation and the evolution of strategies of resistance,” he adds a crucial “beyond this” (or an intervening space). Postcolonialism certainly bears witness to a “contra-modernity,” an “otherwise than modernity” in which cultures of the South may be contingent to modernity, but discontinuous or in contention with it, or even resistant to it. Yet this position of “difference,” of “resistance,” is undercut by the cultural hybridity of the borderline conditions of postcoloniality, so cultures within this ambit “translate, and therefore reinscribe, the social imaginary of both metropolis and modernity.”87 Consequently, postcolonial cultures always encounter “newness” that cannot be negated by a recalling of the past. The past is certainly refigured and “innovates and interrupts the performance of the present.” But it is a contingent “in-between” space.88 Despite the subversive intent of the politics of resistance and difference, the effort at empowering the postcolonial agent and invigorating a radical subjectivity, there is no escape from modernity, or indeed from colonial authority or European domination more generally. These manifestations of the Western other are internalized and constantly rearticulated in an ambivalent postcolonial context. To paraphrase Bhabha, they become a part of the necessity, not the nostalgia, of living. Resistance and difference become necessarily refashioned and, some may argue, deliberately weakened and obscured. If difference and resistance were initially understood as the basis of a postcolonial counterhegemonic project that sought to undermine Western dominance and empower the South, then the contemporary

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ground upon which this project is to be carried out has become infertile to the Fanonian understanding of rupture and opposition. The rupture promised by postcolonialism is evident enough in postmodern writers such as Bhabha and Mbembe (perhaps more in narrative technique than effect), but the outright opposition has become compromised, contradictory, and, at times, dissipated. An argument that proceeds on the “banality of power” delivers much less space for agency and subjectivity for the postcolonial actor than does the direct confrontation of a Ngugi scenario, however simplistic it may be. If agency and indeed survival and some conception of postcolonial futures have become the focus of some postcolonial approaches, it is difficult to envisage how Third World cultures and identities can move forward in a state of mimicry and zombification where the impulse is more toward ambiguity and creolization than toward resistance and difference as traditionally understood. Yet this shift cannot be properly understood until the postcolonial inscription of ambivalence and hybridity that has fueled this revision of the traditional politics of resistance and difference has been more fully taken into account. In this respect, Bhabha and other postmodern writers provide a bridge, in its Heideggerian sense, between resistance, difference, ambivalence, and hybridity: a “bridge which gathers as a passage that crosses.”89 It is in this crossing that we can explore the postcolonial lessons for agency and begin to chart the broader revision of identity in Africa and the Third World.

NOTES 1. Stephen Slemon, “Modernism’s Last Post,” Ariel, 20(4), 1989, p. 3; Helen Tiffen, “Post-Colonialism, Post-Modernism and the Rehabilitation of Post-Colonial History,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 23(1), p. 171. 2. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968 [originally 1952]), p. 93. Emphasis in original. 3. Ibid., p. 228. 4. Ibid., p. 134, and again at p. 199. 5. Ibid., p. 222. 6. Ibid., p. 18. 7. Ibid., p. 35. Emphasis in original. 8. Ibid., p. 115. 9. Ibid., p. 100. Emphasis in original. 10. Ibid., p. 30. 11. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Devil on the Cross (London, Ibadan, and Nairobi: Heinemann, African Writer Series, 1982), pp. 62–63. 12. The reference to “Parrotology” in Kenya as the official creed of government is not as fanciful as it sounds. Ngugi cites a speech by president Moi in which the President expounds on his philosophy of “Nvayoism” or “follow my footsteps”:

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I call on all ministers, assistant ministers and every other person to sing like parrots. During Mzee Kenyatta’s period I persistently sang the Kenyatta (tune) until people said: This fellow has nothing (to say) except sing for Kenyatta. . . . I was in Kenyatta’s shoes and therefore, I had to sing whatever Kenyatta wanted. If I had sung another song, do you think Kenyatta would have left me alone? Therefore you ought to sing the song I sing. . . . This is how this country will move forward. The day you become a big person, you will have the liberty to sing your own song and everybody will sing it. See Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London: James Curry, 1986; Nairobi: Heinemann, 1986; Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986; Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1986), p. 86 (n. 5). 13. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Matigari (London, Ibadan, and Nairobi: Heinemann Africa Writers Series, 1990 [first published in 1987 in Kikuyu]). 14. Ibid., p. 175. 15. Ngugi, Devil on the Cross, p. 132. 16. Barbara Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York and London: Methuen, 1987), p. 29. 17. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in NeoColonial Kenya (London: New Beacon Books, 1983), p. 80. 18. Abdul JanMohamed, Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983). 19. Ibid., p. 263. 20. Ibid., pp. 4, 9. 21. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 22. See, for instance, Arturo Escobar, “Discourse and Power in Development: Michel Foucault and the Relevance of His Work to the Third World,” Alternatives, 10(1), March 1984, pp. 377–400, and his more recent, “Imagining a Post-Developmental Era?: Critical Thought, Development and Social Movements,” Social Text, 10(2/3), 1992. 23. See James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1985), and Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1990). 24. Fanon, Black Skin, pp. 230–231. 25. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), pp. 212, 216. 26. Ibid., p. 210. 27. Scott, Domination, p. 19. 28. Ibid., pp. xii, 123, 137. 29. Ibid., pp. 199, 201, 227. 30. Ibid., p. 14. 31. Ibid., p. 21. 32. Ibid., p. 123. 33. Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. 186. 34. Escobar, “Discourse and Power,” p. 391. 35. George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant,” in Inside the Whale and Other Essays, (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, in association with Secker and Warburg, 1962 [story originally published in 1936]).

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36. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991), p. 49. 37. Michael Ryan, Politics and Culture: Working Hypotheses for a Post-Revolutionary Society (London: MacMillan, 1989), p. 19. 38. Naoki Sakai, “Modernity and Its Critique: The Problem of Universalism and Particularism,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 87(3), Summer 1988, p. 498. 39. Ernest Wamba Dia Wamba, “Some Remarks on Culture, Development and Revolution in Africa,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 4(3), September 1991, p. 229. 40. Frank J. Lechner, “Cultural Aspects of the Modern World-System,” in William H. Swatos Jr., ed., Religious Politics in Global and Comparative Perspective (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989), p. 23. 41. George Marcus, “Past, Present and Emergent Identities: Requirements for Ethnographers of Late Twentieth Century Modernity Worldwide,” in Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, eds., Modernity and Identity (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), p. 327. 42. Tejaswihi Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992), p. 173. 43. Ibid., p. 186. 44. Homi Bhabha “Mimicry,” p. 86. Emphasis in original. 45. Ibid., p. 85. For example, it undermines English claims to liberty. This is captured by Sir Edward Cust in 1839: “To give to a colony the forms of independence is a mockery; she would not be a colony for a single hour if she could maintain an independent nation.” Cited in above article, p. 85. 46. Ibid., p. 86. 47. Ibid., pp. 88, 89. 48. Ibid., p. 88. 49. Achille Mbembe, “The Banality of Power and the Asthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony,” Public Culture, 4(2), Spring, 1992, p. 5. 50. Ibid., p. 15. 51. Ibid., p. 15. 52. Ibid., pp. 2, 5. 53. Ibid., pp. 5–6. 54. Ibid., p. 23. 55. Ibid., pp. 29–30. 56. Ibid., p. 11. 57. Ibid. 58. Bhabha, “Mimicry,” p. 91. 59. Mbembe, “The Banality of Power,” p. 12. 60. For a brief outline of Foucault’s position, see his The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 88–97. 61. Mbembe, “The Banality of Power,” p. 12. 62. Ibid., p. 22. 63. Ibid. 64. See Homi Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” Critical Inquiry, 12, Summer 1985. 65. Ibid. 66. See Chinweizu’s argument that a distinctly African modernity can be established only with reference to African tradition, so the teaching of the humanities

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in African universities, for example, should be placed within the framework of ancient and traditional African history and thought, not European studies. Thus, “a modern African culture,” writes Chinweizu, “whatever else it might be, must be a continuation of old African culture. Whatever else it includes, it must include seminal and controlling elements from the African tradition, elements which determine its tone, hold it together, and give it a stamp of distinctness” (p. 298). In The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers and the African Elite (New York: Random House, 1975), especially chapters 14 and 15. Chinweizu advances the same argument regarding the teaching of African literature, which he sees as unduly dominated by European modernism rather than African oral and folk traditions. See “Introduction: Redrawing the Map of African Literature,” in Voices from Twentieth-Century Africa: Griots and Towncriers, selected with an introduction by Chinweizu (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1988). 67. Mark Hoffman argues that the shared theme of recent critical and postpositivist international relations is that “the universalizing and globalizing tendency of economic, political and informational change, particularly in the late twentieth century, has also produced a heightened perception of economic, political and cultural differences,” which has become the “defining feature of contemporary global politics.” See Mark Hoffman, “Restructuring, Reconstruction, Reinscription, Rearticulation: Four Critical Voices in Critical International Theory,” Millennium, 20(2), 1991, p. 183. 68. See Gayatri Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, eds., Subaltern Studies IV: Writing on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 342–356. 69. Tiffen, “Post-Colonialism,” pp. 172, 173. 70. Ibid., p. 176. 71. Madhava Prasad comments on the “demand for authenticity” in the subaltern studies material and an accompanying faith in the discovery of an “already existing political program in the rebel consciousness of the subaltern.” Relating this to the broader postcolonial discourse, Prasad views the new intellectual sensibility as a contest “over which groups are the true subjects of history.” By default, Prasad concludes, “the nativist frame of reference, which was the target of the project, becomes the order of meaning in and against which these histories operate.” See “On the Question of a Theory of (Third World) Literature,” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, pp. 64, 67. 72. See Fredric Jameson “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text, 15, Fall 1986. 73. Biodun Jeyifo, “Literature in Postcolonial Africa: Repression, Resistance, and Reconfigurations,” Dissent, Summer 1992, pp. 353–361. 74. Partha Chatterjee, “Whose Imagined Community,” Millennium, 20(3), 1991, pp. 521–525, at 522. 75. Annie Coombes “Inventing the ‘Postcolonial’: Hybridity and Constituency in Contemporary Curating,” New Formations, 18, Winter 1992, p. 42. 76. Chinweizu, “Introduction: Redrawing the Map,” pp. xxv–xxvii. 77. See Wole Soyinka, “Triple Tropes of Trickery,” Transition, 54, 1991, pp. 178–183; and Ali Mazrui, “Wole Soyinka as a Television Critic: A Parable of Deception,” Transition, 54, 1991, pp. 165–177, and “The Dual Memory: Genetic and Factual,” Transition, 57, 1991, pp. 134–146. 78. Minh-ha in James Clifford, Virginia Dominguez, Trinh T. Minh-ha, “The Politics of Representation. Of Other Peoples: Beyond the ‘Salvage’ Paradigm,” in Hal Foster, ed., Discussions in Contemporary Culture, No. 1, (Seattle: Bay Press, 1987), p. 140.

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79. Friedman “Being in the World: Globalization and Localization,” in Mike Featherstone, ed., Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (London, Newbury Park, CA; and New Delhi: Sage, 1990), p. 324. Aijaz Ahmad also reminds us of other “material” factors such as class and gender that tend to get overlooked in broad conceptualizations of difference such as that in three worlds theory. See In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London and New York: Verso, 1992), p. 92. 80. Paulin Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (London: Hutchinson University Library for Africa, 1983 [first published in French in 1976]), p. 53. 81. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (London and New York: Routledge, MA, 1994), p. 5. 82. Ibid., p. 126. 83. Ibid., p. 127. 84. Ibid., p. 128. 85. Ibid., p. 132. 86. Ibid., p. 128. 87. Ibid., p. 6. 88. Ibid., p. 7. 89. Heidegger, cited in ibid., p. 5.

5 Inscribing Ambivalence and Hybridity

The postcolonial discourse has tended to follow its own sequential development. Hence the inscription of ambivalence and hybridity can be viewed as the latest stage in the postcolonial discourse, a shift that is by no means unilateral or indeed simultaneous, but one that expresses the predominant language of its current phase. In this respect, there is no escaping ambivalence and hybridity in contemporary postcolonialism and their informing motifs: indeterminacy, fragmentation, heterogeneity, plurality, and multiple identities. Postcolonialism thus mirrors the structure of a recent art exhibition in New York, “The Hybrid State,” in which, as described by Anne McClintock, you first enter “The Passage,” which leads into a dark antechamber with the word “Colonialism” inscribed above. In order to move into this colonial space, you need to stoop through a low door “only to be closeted in another black space.” The way out of this state of colonialism is forward where another word, “Postcolonialism,” invites you through a larger door into the next historical phase, “after which you emerge, fully erect, into the brightly lit and noisy “Hybrid State.”1 The postmodern celebration of hybridity evident in this exhibition is symptomatic of the hybridized and syncretic view of the late modern world that frames postcolonialism. This is precisely the terrain of Said’s third topic of cultural resistance to imperialism, which is put forward “as the essential idea for the revolutionary realities today.”2 It is in the context of some of these “revolutionary realities” that I address the focus on ambivalence and hybridity, mapping first the postmodern conditions and poststructural heritage of postcolonialism that underpin the position of writers such as Bhabha. I will then indicate some of the key limitations of this heritage for a discourse ostensibly propelled by an engagement in problems and issues arising out of the marginalized position of the Third World. Finally, I will explore the possibilities and implications of some new directions that are brought to the fore in the ambivalent, hybrid overlaying of 91

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the resistance and difference motifs central to postcolonialism. These are the concern for Third World futures and “cultural survival” in the South, the contemporary nature of multiple identity, and the politics of the everyday in a postcolonial world of radical heterogeneity and plurality. Like the postcolonial rubric itself, the key notions of ambivalence and hybridity have enjoyed such a wide currency of use that they have slipped into general discourse as self-evident conditions of postcoloniality. Yet the virtual orthodoxy of these terms belies their novelty and contemporaneity to the late modern age. The emphasis on hybridity is heightened in the context of the increased multiculturalism, creolization, and, to paraphrase Ulf Hannerz, intercontinental traffic of identity and culture in the more globalized space of the late twentieth century. As a condition that is specific to postcoloniality, hybridity is a product of the interaction of cultures that was an inevitable manifestation of colonial rule. Indeed, writers such as Bhabha trace hybridity back to the nature of colonial authority. More important perhaps, it is intimately bound up with the diasporic experience of the postcolonial intellectual in the First World. With obvious inputs from poststructuralism and critical anthropology (itself heavily influenced by poststructural thinking), the emphasis on the hybridity of identity is a rejection of essentialized accounts steeped in notions of ethnicity, race, or nation. Further, it follows the “death of the subject” thesis in problematizing the traditional conception of subjectivity and instead highlighting flux and fragmentation as key determinants of contemporary identity. Therefore, identity is not merely constructed, it is fluid and plural; in the words of Said, “heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated and unmonolithic.”3 Ambivalence broadly parallels this lineage; however, it has a broader application beyond identity and indeed is seen to predate late modernity and capture an essential feature of imperialism and colonialism. Thus, although intersubjective relations in the contemporary period are seen as ambivalent, broader historical processes of power, domination, and resistance are also penetrated by a “structured ambivalence,” evident in colonial as much as postcolonial societies. 4 Although the ambivalence motif has a wider historical reach, it nevertheless has a contemporary resonance and indeed has gained a substantial fillip in the context of the postmodern emphasis on contingency and indeterminacy. Relations of power and domination have always produced an ambivalent effect on the nature of agency. However, it is only under the guise of a poststructural reading of these relations that ambivalence has achieved the urgency of its postcolonial significance. In this respect, it captures the in-between, the equivocal, and the uncertain of the postmodern age. Some writers argue that ambivalence is endemic to colonial rule and hence inevitably conditions postcolonial revisions. Both Bhabha and Niranjana, for example, locate ambivalence at the heart of colonial authority.

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Thus, Niranjana, reflecting on Bhabha, argues that “colonial discourse, although it creates identities for those it transfixes by its gaze of power, is profoundly ambivalent at the source of its authority.”5 Taking a different route, David Gordon traces the inspiration behind orientalism (and, though he does not mention it directly, postcolonialism) in the resentment toward the West on the part of Third World intellectuals in the nationalist/postindependence period, a resentment that, however hostile, was inevitably ambivalent given that these intellectuals were steeped in Western methodologies and values and hence experienced a love/hate relationship with the West.6 The colonial experience, therefore, lends itself to a condition of ambivalence. However, it is important not to confuse the colonial experience itself with discursive strategies and techniques utilized to interpret this experience. Although present in colonial history, ambivalence and certainly hybridity are actively inserted into the past as analytical tools by the postcolonial discourse itself. It may be, as Bhabha argues, that the representational nature of colonial history lends itself to an effect of ambivalence.7 Equally, this reading would not be possible without the poststructuralist techniques of deconstruction. Indeed, both Prakash and Niranjana concede this point. Commenting on the subaltern studies approach, Prakash argues that this type of historicizing “exemplifies the ambivalence of postcolonial criticism: formed in history, it reinscribes and displaces the record of that history by reading its archives differently from its constitution.”8 There is an active intervention on the part of the writer (and the discourse itself) to serve a theoretical end. Niranjana is more explicit on this point: “Hybridity can be seen, therefore, as the sign of a post-colonial theory that subverts essentialist models of reading while it points toward a new practice of translation.”9 It is in the “post-foundational space” mentioned by Prakash10 that postcolonialism revises colonialism with the motifs of ambivalence and hybridity and produces a reading of the colonial and postcolonial that accords with the poststructuralist desire to disrupt and undercut European master narratives of hegemony and domination. This is clearly where the politics of resistance still floats freely as the focus of the postcolonial project. Notwithstanding this, it becomes equally clear that ambivalence and hybridity are more in tune with the sensibilities of late modernity or postmodernity than the earlier politics of resistance and difference. The effect, as I explained in Chapter 4, is that resistance becomes increasingly abstracted and discursive and, at least in its earlier incarnation, looks decidedly out of place in the postmodern parameters of contemporary postcolonialism. There is little doubt that the various conditions of postmodern life not only provide the backdrop to this postcolonial approach but directly inform its reading of ambivalence and hybridity. John Gibbons characterizes

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the emerging nature of contemporary political culture as “pluralistic, anarchic, disorganized, rhetorical, stylized, ironic and abstruse.” In the socalled postmodern world of plurality and confusion, he sees the world as experiencing cultural dissonance and fragmentation, as well as the proliferation of new values and patterns that directly relate to the more global character of the late modern age.11 Without necessarily overdoing the theme of change, the symptoms of a transformed world are certainly apparent: the global motions of peoples and cultures; the pressures on traditional boundaries, be they state, nation, or community; the internal replications in societies of inequalities and discrepancies once associated with colonial differences; simultaneous homogenization and fragmentation within and across societies; the interpenetration of global and local processes; the disorganization of a world previously conceived in terms of either three worlds, a bipolar world, or discrete nation-states; and, overlaying many of these forces, the more transnational and global nature of capitalist modes of production and the resulting international division of labor.12 To this could be added Stuart Hall’s point about the accelerated diaspora experience and the attendant recognition of diversity. 13 Certainly the breakdown of clear boundaries between a traditionally perceived three worlds (particularly the boundary between the so-called First and Third Worlds) has given postcolonialism the impetus to view global cultural relations as more fluid, unpredictable, and interconnected. These postmodern conditions have fueled a poststructural approach to questions of identity, culture, power, and resistance, creating in many respects a breach with older conceptions and understandings of North-South relations. The divide that has opened up, a divide that directly reflects the transformed basis of theorizing about the Third World, is apparent in the exchange between Gyan Prakash and the Marxist critics Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook. In his reply to their Marxist critique of post-foundationalism, Prakash argues that the underlying unease addressed in O’Hanlon and Washbrook’s critique concerns “the desire for mastery over ambivalence”: “Because they disavow equivocality, O’Hanlon and Washbrook fail to see that deconstruction opens up productive ways of reading and reinscribing the structure of ambivalence closed by foundations in serving certain types of authority and power.”14 Herein lies the impulse behind the focus on ambivalence and hybridity: an acceptance and indeed celebration of the possibilities of postmodern contingency and incomprehensibility. As critics such as Prakash and Arjun Appadurai would argue, because the world and our capacity to comprehend it have changed, our postcolonial lenses must be attuned to more appropriate interpretative strategies. Along with Bhabha, they go one step further: These new tools of deconstruction also help us understand more deeply the historical processes of colonialism and imperialism that condition the contemporary structure of

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postcoloniality. In this reading, the postmodern allows glimpses of the repressions and blind spots of modernity and modernization that have always lurked underneath the veneer of European hegemony. It enables the postcolonial to appreciate the contemporary and the future (late modernity) while casting a critical gaze back to modernity. Despite the claims of Marxist postcolonial critics such as Aijaz Ahmad and Arif Dirlik that such approaches are ahistorical and overly culturalist,15 postmoderns such as Bhabha, Niranjana, and Prakash have little problem in locating postmodernity historically. The temporal and spatial mutability encouraged in this postmodern/ postcolonial approach to questions of identity is exemplified in Bhabha. In the essay “Signs Taken for Wonders,” not only is ambivalence located at the enunciation of colonial authority, but hybridity is seen as the primary effect of this authority. In Bhabha’s reading of the account of Indian Christian Anund Messeh’s visit to a grove of trees outside Delhi in May 1817 to witness the gathering of five hundred natives eagerly digesting the translated copies of the Bible, he gives a portrait of the “transparency of British power” in which colonial culture/space is inherently hybrid and ambivalent. The Bible is taken as a sign of British/colonial power, a European master narrative of universal validity and control. Yet its effects are contradictory and uncertain. As a sign or text of authority, it demands validation and recognition of its status from colonial subjects. However, these subjects, despite their apparent enthusiasm and embrace of the book, ask unsettling and subversive questions of this authority. As Messeh explains to them the nature of the Christian sacraments of Holy Communion and baptism, the natives reply: “We are willing to be baptized, but we will never take the Sacrament [Holy Communion]. To all other customs of Christians we are willing to conform, but not to the Sacrament, because the Europeans eat cow’s flesh, and that will never do for us.” When Messeh replies that they must obey because it is “The Word of God,” the natives simply respond “If all our country will have this Sacrament, then will we.”16 Rather than producing conformity and obedience, rather than accepting the demand “at the centre of the originary myth of colonialist power” that its power is unbounded, that its authority is universal in that God and imperial power are coincident, that the enunciation of British authority is unitary and “unmarked by the trace of difference,” the effect of colonial power is the production of hybridization, the cataloguing of differences, and the existence of contradictory knowledges and multiple beliefs.17 Instead of offering simple validation, colonial authority can only gaze on hybridity and difference, mimicry and mockery, the very “ruse of recognition.” The hybridized effect of this unsatisfied demand for affirmation forces an acknowledgment of the “uncanny forces of race, sexuality, violence, cultural and even climatic differences which emerge in the colonial

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discourse as the mixed and split texts of hybridity.”18 The English book no longer commands authority but gives rise to a series of unanswerable questions. It produces uncertainty, “estranges the familiar” (self) and allows “unpredictability.” The cultural space it marks out—hybrid and different— is the product of the very discriminatory practices that demand recognition of authority. The book as a symbol of British power retains the semblance and presence of authority, yet it becomes a “partial presence,” a hybrid object of contradictory signification.19 In this process of transparency, “hybridity represents that ambivalent ‘turn’ of the discriminated subject into the terrifying, exorbitant object of paranoid classification.”20 It thus moves from a demand for recognition to a desire for validation that opens up psychic processes of displacement and dislocation, splitting, denial and repetition, and an estrangement of that which it set out to satisfy into a paranoid threat that is “uncontainable because it breaks down the symmetry and duality of self/other, inside/outside.”21 According to Bhabha, the native questioning of the book-as-authority literally turns the origin of the book (and hence authority overall) into an enigma. In this representational flux (of both the unconscious and conscious), when the natives “make these intercultural, hybrid demands,” they “are both challenging the boundaries of discourse and subtly changing its terms by setting up another specifically colonial space of the negotiations of cultural authority.”22 This is the space of ambivalence and hybridity, the terrain upon which the “conditionality of colonial discourse,”23 rather than its authoritative affirmation, is expressed. Bhabha ends his essay with a none too subtle validation of his own argument: a series of quotes from missionaries of the early nineteenth century expressing what we now know to be the inability of Christianity to make significant inroads into Hindu and Muslim India. Bhabha’s ultimate sign affirming the hybridization and ambivalence of colonial discourse/ power is the failure of the book to fulfill the demand/desire of British power in India for mastery and control. The politics of resistance and difference are obviously visible in this textual deconstruction of colonial authority, yet of concern in this chapter is the weaving of ambivalence and hybridity into the very fabric of colonial and postcolonial identity. Although the hybridity ascribed to colonial power in Bhabha’s account is perhaps of a different cast from its postmodern and postcolonial relation, its effect is the same: estrangement of the familiar, a particularizing of the universal, and a contingency and unpredictability at the core of intersubjective and power relations. In fact, the postcolonial understanding of hybridity reaches back to subvert colonial power, inscribing, along the way, ambivalence and a consciously postmodern sensibility. Bhabha’s point about the contradictory nature of colonial representation and discourse (a very postmodern insight at that) may well be conceded, yet there are still

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key issues that need to be addressed in this postmodern reinscription of history, as well as the more general question of the appropriateness of a Bhabha-type account of the (post)colonial experience. Like the deployment of ambivalence to denote both the colonial and the postcolonial experience, there is an ambiguity regarding the use and understanding of hybridity in poststructural postcolonialism. Thus hybridity as endemic to colonial power (Bhabha, Niranjana) is a manifestation of mimicry, splitting, and double inscription. As understood in the contemporary sense as a feature of late modernity’s intensified intermingling of cultures, diaspora, or creolization, it owes little explicitly to Lacan, Derrida, or Freud, for that matter. In the colonial space, the colonizers themselves are seen to suffer from a form of lack. The hybridity of the situation lies not in the sense hinted at by Said but in the psychic and representational impossibility of the colonizers to validate themselves as hegemonic. We can assume from Bhabha’s account that the colonized also experience hybridity in that they half embrace the book of authority. However, what they really experience is the hybridity of colonial authority, or the hybridity that spins off the inability of the colonizers to affirm their own identity. The identity of the colonized is not only of secondary importance, its shadowy presence suggests an essentialized quality (after all, as Hindus, the natives necessarily reject the Sacrament). It seems odd that the hybridity that pertains predominantly to the postcolonial diaspora (for instance, as understood in Hall, Appadurai, or Appiah) is read back into history to denote the fractured identity of the colonizers. The “contamination” of cultures mentioned by Appiah, for example, seems to be of a different order from the hybridization of colonial space outlined by Bhabha.24 The overall effect of this approach to the past is what Ella Shohat has put forward as the conceptual ambiguity of the term postcolonial (and, more specifically, hybridity) in that there is “an unarticulated tension between [its] philosophical and the historical teleologies,” an ambiguous spatiotemporality in which postmodern theory and chronological history do not necessarily align easily.25 The impreciseness and ambiguity of the use of the term hybridity in Bhabha, the slippage from the descriptive to the discursive, belies broader questions regarding the recourse to the past. It could be argued that this recourse is in fact an escape into the safer pastures of history so that the more pressing issues of the present and future for the postcolonial Third World will not be confronted.26 (This argument will be explored later in the chapter.) An issue closer to the postmodern reading of history is the danger of transposing and projecting contemporary questions and approaches into the past. Importing the “post” into the colonial may serve, as Appiah notes, the same function of the “post” in postmodernism, that is, challenging earlier legitimating narratives.27 However, it may also obscure

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and confuse the historical. This should not be interpreted as merely a modernist reaction to equivocality. Rather, reading the equivocal into a situation that may not have necessarily been so indeterminate and ambivalent, at least not to the degree suggested by Bhabha, may obfuscate more than it reveals. One way of illustrating this point is to distinguish between process and effect in the colonial space described by Bhabha. A similar criticism was advanced in Chapter 4 in reference to Scott’s “weapons of the weak.” Bhabha himself is aware of the obvious retort to his thesis about the transparency of British power: No matter how empty or hybridized this power, it still had powerful effects on the subject of its gaze. As Bhabha himself rhetorically asks, because the strategic devices of this power were contradictory and ambivalent, “Need they be any less effective because of that? Not less effective but effective in a different form, would be our answer.”28 This somewhat undercuts the triumphant undertone of his concluding remarks regarding the failure of Christianity in India. However, he at least implies that this discursive shifting of ground masks a certain reality and brutality of colonial power in India that was not necessarily deflected by the hybridization of power and indeed may have been fueled by the very psychic desire for mastery that Bhabha outlines.29 To argue that colonial authority was “effective in a different form” is not greatly supportive of a resistance reinscription of colonial history. It also somewhat trivializes the precise significance of this hybridization and ambivalence of authority, a problem also apparent in Mbembe’s account of the “commandement’s” power in the postcolony. The broader question of the validity of a postmodern reading of the Third World is a crucial one for postcolonialism. In many respects the postmodern turn—as both prescription and description of late modernity— is apt and useful. The late modern world does encompass many of the conditions outlined in postmodernist accounts and as a consequence there is a need for a more postmodern approach (understood as a critical reflection upon, rather than a rejection of, modernity) to the complexity and contingency of the contemporary age. Yet there are problems and pitfalls in this turn: for the question of subjectivity and agency in postcolonial societies, as I explained in Chapter 4; and, more generally, for the particularities of cultures that are mostly different from (although not necessarily outside) the context of the West or First World in which ideas about the postmodern originate. The motifs of ambivalence and hybridity are certainly insightful for an understanding of the postcolonial in the sense that this term denotes a meeting ground for intersubjective relations between North and South. However, some of the Western baggage that accompanies the postmodern into the postcolonial needs deconstructing. There are three central problems concerning the postmodern/postcolonial fusion as it touches on the question of hybridity. The first pertains to the

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obvious Western origins and orientation of postmodernism and poststructuralism. It is not so much that because of these origins the postmodern is not able to provide insights into non-Western societies but, as many critics have noted, that postmodernism proceeds from a peculiarly Western experience of disillusionment with modernity that may not be appropriate to societies that are still coming to terms with modernity and its challenge to tradition and the premodern.30 Thus, the politics that often accompanies this disillusionment (ranging from nihilism to a retreat from conventional political action) may not provide effective or relevant strategies to people and movements attempting to navigate a different set of demands and opportunities provided by modernity. The very Eurocentrism or Western bias of the postmodern turn may also, ironically, marginalize or even exclude the ostensible Third World focus of postcolonialism. Dirlik notes that this is a particular problem for the motif of hybridity. In highlighting the postcolonial intellectual’s elevated status in the First World academy, Dirlik argues that these intellectuals’ professions of hybridity and in-betweenness as a condition of postcoloniality are somewhat hollow: “The hybridity to which postcolonial criticism refers is uniformly between the postcolonial and the First World, never, to my knowledge, between one postcolonial intellectual and another.”31 One could go beyond the intellectual and ask whether the condition of hybridity speaks to the intersubjective experience of people on the ground in the various Third World locations. If this is a valid observation of the postcolonial discourse, then it suggests a serious shortcoming in the relevance of the motif of hybridity for postcolonial societies. As it stands, I think Dirlik’s criticism needs to be qualified. The First World and the postcolonial are not discrete realms in the case of which, in the words of Kipling, “never the twain shall meet.” The First World or the West is present in the postcolonial, both in the Western academy and in the Third World village or city, and the postcolonial, as Dirlik admits, is also present in the First World. The condition of hybridity is thus inevitably part of this intersubjective space. However, it may be that postcolonialism as discourse gives short shrift to the Third World. Dirlik is on surer ground in this respect. Indeed, he goes on to argue that postcolonialism tends to “exclude from its scope most of those who inhabit or hail from postcolonial societies. It does not account for the attractions of modernization and nationalism to vast numbers in Third World populations, let alone to those marginalized by national incorporation in the global economy.”32 Dirlik has in mind the inability of the postcolonial intellectuals in the West to see beyond their circumstance and postmodern lenses. One could go further and suggest that this failure to account for the attraction of modernity results from the postmodern disenchantment with modernity in the First World, a disenchantment that spills over in the postcolonial account of hybridity and ambivalence as a global condition that incorporates the Third World.

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If postmodernism imports a peculiarly Western sensibility into postcolonialism, it can also have the effect of conflating the Third World into a single dimension, “overworlding” and flattening its heterogeneity. This is partly due, as Shohat notes, to the inherent globalizing gesture of the term postcolonial. Because it floats across and indeed beyond the Third World, it tends to “downplay multiplicities of location and temporality.”33 Yet it is the postmodern informing of the hybridity motif that can result in a generalized, indeed homogenized, Third World. In Anice Loomba’s critique of Bhabha, she points to the sliding from the particular to the general so that the hybridity of enunciation in a particular colonial context “spills over into becoming the definitive characteristic of all colonial authority, everywhere, at any time.” Hybridity swells from a specific colonial situation “to become paradigmatic of all oppositional theory and politics.”34 Despite the emphasis on hybridity, the colonial subject comes across as remarkably free of gender, class, caste, and other distinctions.35 What is crucial from our point of view is the reason Loomba gives for why theorists adopt this generalized representation of hybridity. She argues that it results from a too easy shift from the semiotic to the social. In other words, there is a slippage between the theoretical insights of a postmodern and postcolonial perspective and the particular social, historical context in which hybrid relations are taking place. What I referred to earlier as a discursive shifting of ground tends to muddy the situation under review so that the enunciation or representation of hybridity (with its accompanying postmodern sensibility) becomes synonymous with conditions or effects of hybridity. Thus the hybridity in question becomes nonspecific; it operates as the basis for the textual reinscription of the (post)colonial rather than as an exploration of instances of hybrid identity. It is the triumph of the sign of hybridity rather than its various and multiple significations. Annie Coombes makes a similar criticism of hybrid practices in postcolonial art curation and museum exhibitions. The postmodern celebration of hybridity, particularly read as the sign of the postcolonial, can produce a homogenizing and leveling effect precisely because it becomes a monolithic condition of the encounter between the West and its other. Hybridity in this account becomes the representation of the postcolonial as other, a more “complex revision of the primitivist fantasies of early modernism” that witnesses the “ultimate reassertion of a Manichean model.” 36 Thus there is not only the danger of a cultural appropriation of the postcolonial by the West but a serious papering over of differences and diversity under the banner of a hybrid postcoloniality in which the specificity of experience that informs the various manifestations of hybridity is denied. The result, according to Coombes, is an uncritical celebration of a hybridity that threatens to “collapse the heterogeneous experience of racism into a scopic feast where the goods on display are laid out for easy consumption in ever

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more enticing configurations, none of which actually challenge or expose the ways in which such difference is constituted and operates as a mechanism of oppression.”37 The problem lies not so much in the nature of hybridity or, in Coombes’s account, the hybrid objects of culture themselves, but in their reworking under the guise of the postmodern. Thus, as Judith Squires comments in her overview of Coombes, “The postmodern practice of ‘bricolage’, comprising free-flowing confusion and flux, apparently celebrating difference, can actually result in in-differentiation.”38 This tendency to “in-differentiate” reflects in many respects the Western origins of postmodernism. In advancing a general condition of flux and fragmentation, it ascribes a universal dimension to this condition, one in which the various specificities of the Third World become uniformly postcolonial and, following Jameson, either inside or outside the First World postmodern orbit. The third pitfall in the postmodern overlaying of postcoloniality concerns the questions of subjectivity, agency, and resistance that I explored in Chapter 4. Without repeating all these arguments, the prospects for agency and the nature of postcolonial subjectivity are crucial issues for a discourse that increasingly approaches the Third World via the lenses of ambivalence and hybridity. What concerns critics such as Krishna and Dirlik is the implicit denial of subjectivity and hence the scope for enabling action in postmodern accounts of the postcolonial. Such concerns are captured in the following question posed by the U.S. writer bell hooks: “Should we not be suspicious of postmodern critiques of the ‘subject’ when they surface at a historical moment when many subjugated people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time?”39 What troubles Krishna in particular is the implicit dichotomy of choice advanced in postmodern analyses that touch on the Third World. One either is an essentialist making claims about origins and authenticity regarding native identity or, alternately, subscribes to the “death of the subject” thesis. The latter choice is rejected as not politically enabling. A useful postcolonial approach, according to Krishna, is cognizant of the fact that definitions and representations of subject positions are contingent and fragile; that in “privileging certain categories of selfhood over others, there is an inescapable moment of inscribing reality with one particular and arbitrary interpretation.”40 Strategic essentialisms and binary positions are inevitable and necessary in this respect if they proceed on the basis of a recognition of their conditionality. Postmodern critiques of essentialism often underestimate the implications of this move for Third World peoples interested in retaining a practical notion of political subjectivity. It is in this context that Ahmad has noted how “politics as such has undergone remarkable degrees of diminution.” Further, “any attempt to know the world as a whole, or to

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hold that it is open to rational comprehension, let alone the desire to change it, [is] dismissed as a contemptible attempt to construct ‘grand narratives’ and ‘totalizing’ (totalitarian?) knowledge.”41 In this light, the crucial question for Krishna is not, therefore, the postmodern impossibility of subjectivity, but how to politically garner the “emancipatory potential” of various subject positions.42 Without this theoretical compromise, the possibility of agency and resistance under a postmodern and postcolonial banner is minimal. According to this critique, then, hybridity potentially forecloses the space for meaningful action and even resistance. It does this both historically and in the present. As Loomba notes of the use of hybridity to reinscribe the colonial experience, it is “difficult to accept that any notion of hybridity will dilute the violence of the colonial encounter.”43 In the context of contemporary relations between North and South, there is the real danger that in completely closing off the construction of identity and subject positions based on some notions of community or tradition, hybridity as the representation of the postcolonial condition ossifies agency in the Third World. Shohat argues that the antiessentialist emphasis of hybridity comes dangerously close to dismissing all searches for community and identity and thus “appearing to sanctify the fait accompli of colonial violence.” She asks “whether it is possible to forge a collective resistance without inscribing a communal past,” especially for communities that have undergone a brutal rupture. According to Shohat, the “retrieval and reinscription of a fragmented past becomes a crucial site for forging a resistant collective identity”: “Postcolonial theory’s celebration of hybridity risks an anti-essentialist condescension toward those communities obliged by circumstances to assert, for their very survival, a lost and even irretrievable past.”44 Shohat’s argument is suggestive of Chinua Achebe’s view of himself as a teacher whose primary responsibility was to communicate and reconstruct an African identity (in this case, Igbo) in his novels precisely because of the colonial destruction of tradition. To move forward entails a knowledge of the past and an identity based on cultural antecedents. Obviously, when one looks at the wreckage of former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Somalia, there are also dangers in tapping this communitarian past. Hence Krishna’s puzzle of how to garner the emancipatory potential of recourses to community, the past, or other essentialized expressions of identity. An emphasis on hybridity needs to address the issue of cultural survival and Third World futures for marginal and vulnerable communities navigating a distinctive space in the age of global capitalism. The foregoing critique of postcolonialism suggests some of the pitfalls in postmodern representations of the Third World. Yet the postmodern turn, in highlighting hybridity and ambivalence and imparting a more critical approach to modernity, also opens up and directs attention to issues of

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contemporary relevance to the position and prospects of the postcolonial or Third World. As the postcolonial discourse repositions itself under the umbrella of postmodernism and within the context of the late modern age, it incorporates the older motifs of resistance and difference but molds them to the contours of multiple, shifting identities and an overall reconceptualization of political space. This repositioning and the passage from resistance to hybridity and ambivalence are by no means smooth or always coherent. As evidenced by Dirlik and Krishna, there is an increasing din of dissenting voices, mainly from a more traditional Third Worldist perspective. Contradictions within the evolution of the postcolonial discourse are of intrinsic interest, yet from the point of view of this book, of greater importance is what sort of tool the postcolonial insistence on ambivalence and hybridity provides us with in assessing the unfolding of intersubjective identity in Africa. In the remainder of this chapter, I will take stock of some of the more recent themes under the postcolonial banner and the directions they give in illuminating the way forward, in particular the concern for cultural survival and Third World futures; notions of ambivalent, multiple identities; and a focus on the politics of the local and the everyday. The combination of cultural survival and Third World futures initially seems an odd grouping. Yet in many respects it captures at least the implicit challenge of postcolonialism: We can move forward only after we have properly deconstructed and reconstructed the past. The emphasis, until now, has mostly been with the past. For all the benefits and lessons that can be garnered from a reinscription of the past, postcolonialism can be legitimately criticized for a reluctance to engage with the contemporary processes of modernity and an unwillingness, thus far, to look ahead and suggest concrete alternatives and strategies for postcolonial societies struggling under the weight of the modern and the global. In terms of the former criticism, postcolonialism has mostly been content to act as a critic of modernity. As for the latter criticism, postcolonialism has generally been more comfortable with the semiotic and discursive rather than the social and political in the everyday. However, a recognition of hybridity and ambivalence, accompanied by a postmodern reading of the modern, inevitably redirects attention to modernity and an emphasis on cultural plurality and heterogeneity, particularly in the face of a supposed global culture. It can be argued that postmodernism encourages the postcolonial critic not to reject modernity (a regressive, binary move under the postmodern) but to critically engage with its limits and its possibilities, particularly its more hybridized operation in the Third World. Although we are still far from more practical analyses offering specific ways ahead (except, perhaps, in the work of certain postdevelopmentalists such as Escobar), the nascent concern with the issues of cultural survival and Third World futures, however tentative and at times contradictory, indicates a

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desire on the part of some postcolonialists to rework older notions of difference and resistance and reorient them to a hybrid, ambivalent reading of the competing processes of modernity and tradition in the Third World. One writer who combines the two concerns and has attempted to (re)conceptualize the issues and dilemmas for postcolonial societies is Ashis Nandy. For Nandy, hybridity and ambivalence are natural and inevitable in the navigation of modernity and the continued relevance of tradition in the Third World. However, Nandy also recognizes the profound imbalance between the two and the increasing triumphalism of globalized modernity over older cultures and civilizations in the postcolonial and Third Worlds. Questions of modernity and the survival of traditional cultures go to the heart of self-other relations, in particular the constitution of the self in the Third World. Nandy sees the confirmation of a continued, distinctive subjective identity as a vital step for the survival of non-Western peoples in the future space of a more intensified global system. Although Nandy often employs essentialized concepts (particularly when he considers India and its relationship to the West) and language (for example, recovery), he is careful to concede both the full significance and relevance of modernity and the global world for the Third World. However, what particularly concerns Nandy is that “so many individuals and collectivities are willing and even eager to forego their right to design their own futures.”45 For Nandy, “unmixed modernism” (by which he means unadulterated and complete submission to modernity) as well as “unmixed traditionalism” are no longer fashionable, and the former subject to increased critique in the West (presumably by postmodern critics but also by the ecologists and environmentalists tapping into premodern values). Instead, Nandy puts forward a Gandhian fusion of critical modernism (informed by criticisms of modernity from both inside and outside the West) and critical traditionalism (informed by Mahatma Gandhi’s refusal to romanticize the Indian past/history or blanketly defend traditions).46 Yet before this critical engagement with the values and forces of the modern, the “victims of history” need to “rediscover their own visions of a desirable society” less burdened both by the “post-Enlightenment hope of ‘one world’ and by the post-colonial idea of cultural relativism” so that the “recovery of the other selves of cultures and communities, selves not defined by the dominant global consciousness, may turn out to be the first task of social criticism and political activism and the first responsibility of intellectual stock-taking in the first decades of the coming century.”47 This “intellectual stock-taking” has in many respects already taken place (especially in postcolonial fiction). What is of particular concern in the present context is the next step, what Nandy terms a rediscovery of postcolonial visions for the future. There are certainly pointers in Nandy’s analyses that are general yet intrinsic to the postcolonial project of moving forward with reference to both the past and the hybrid present. Although resistance, in particular that

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toward the mystifications of Western notions such as development, rationality, and science, is still relevant, what is required is both an updating of core traditions and an appropriation and reinterpretation of exogenous ideas and values. The pull of hybridity is obvious; however, what Nandy describes is in many respects pre-postmodern. Thus, he offers Gandhi as a model of this updating and reinterpretation. Of India in general, Nandy argues: “This civilization has survived not only because of the ‘valid’, ‘true’ or ‘proper’ exegesis of the traditional texts . . . but also because of the ‘improper’, ‘far-fetched’ and ‘deviant’ reinterpretations of the sacred and the canonical,”48 in both India and the West, one might add. In particular, Nandy contends that any project of cultural survival and reinterpretation that is useful for a way forward must learn to “acknowledge and decode three languages which often hide the implicit native theories of oppression in many non-Western traditions”: the language of continuity, the language of spiritualism, and the language of self.49 These languages are viewed as specifically non-Western collective and individual skills that potentially equip peoples of the Third World with self-strategies useful in mitigating and guiding social transformation. The language of continuity is counterposed to the modern Western emphasis of change as disjunction and instead assumes that all change can be interpreted as “aspects of deeper continuities. In other words, the language assumes that every change, howsoever enormous, is only a special case of continuity.” This language is mostly articulated by the “victims of the present global system.”50 Nandy is highlighting a crucial difference in the perception of social transformation and thus suggesting that cultures and civilizations with a strong grounding in a non-Western tradition are able to absorb change and reincorporate it into an already existing worldview. Change, therefore, does not merely become submission to an outside force or an indication of Western superiority. By extension, hybridity becomes empowering, and ambivalence, an intrinsic, though not disabling, condition of living with modernity. Similarly, the language of spirit serves certain “this-worldly” purposes that allow a traditional culture to criticize and defy encroaching cultures and invoke both an objective and subjective frame of reference (for instance, myth) in contradistinction to a privileging of objectivity and science in Western culture. Finally, the language of self incorporates familiar Western psychoanalytic ideas of self-realization, selfenrichment, and human creativity but also draws on a more traditional theory of the not-self; that is, the self intervenes in the outside world and vice-versa, so non-Western societies have at their disposal a vantage point based on self-in-society, which gives them a social world with which to interpret outside influences.51 There is a wealth of ideas and possibilities for individual and collective transformation in Nandy’s critique. The psychoanalytic basis of his thinking moves beyond the Lacanian limitations of Bhabha to embrace

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pathways of reflexivity and subjectivity that are enabling and forwardthinking. Nandy is pointing both to the universal creativity of the human imaginary (and hence the capacity for reflection and change) and to a specific language and outlook in non-Western societies that create a space for a critical mediation of modernity and globalization. He is laying the basis for intersubjective relations based on the premises “(1) that we model ourselves in the world on our interventions in our own selves, and (2) that the world does to us what we do to ourselves.”52 Further, in embracing hybridity and ambivalence as the cornerstones of contemporary identity, he is placing cultural survival (incorporating critical traditionalism) squarely within the context of Third World futures in an increasingly global (that is, Western) world. Beyond the enticing possibilities outlined, it is difficult to assess the more specific claims and representations advanced. Thus to what extent is the model of cultural survival outlined tied to the Indian experience without much application elsewhere in the postcolonial world (particularly in the Caribbean, where traditional cultures and civilizations are not so intact, and in most of Africa, where a common spiritual bond/language may well be missing)? Does Nandy’s model take into sufficient account the asymmetry of power positions within and across the Third World? What is possible in India may not be so in Burkina Faso, for example. Certainly one can think of several instances of “intellectual stock-taking” and cultural and political reimaginings across the Third World that lend substance to Nandy’s claims (from subaltern studies in South Asia to Escobar’s description of more grassroots Participatory Action Research groups in Latin America and the appropriation of Western clothes as refashioned symbols of local status in the Sape culture in Zaire as outlined by Friedman). Yet one cannot help but think that the type of reinterpretation envisaged by Nandy, though certainly available to all of us as reflexive human beings, might be more effective in certain contexts and societies as opposed to others. Finally, one could point to the lurking binarism and essentialism implicit in Nandy’s critique. This is exemplified in the metaphor of the shaman provided by Nandy, which becomes the site of the Third World. In Nandy’s account, the shaman, as prophetic and dissenting voice of the other, becomes “the only way out” for the Third World in the contemporary global culture, “the modest symbol of resistance to dominant politics of knowledge,” with a “style of negation” whose “categories do not make any sense centre-stage but always seem to touch the disempowered in the wings.” The shaman remains a testimony to a “transformative experience” with “one foot in the familiar, one foot outside; one foot in the present, one in the future or, as some would put it, in the timeless.” This shaman represents the “repressed self of the society, articulating some possibilities

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latent in a culture, possibilities which the ‘sane’, the ‘mature’ and the ‘rational’ cannot self-consciously express or seriously pursue.” In the present global culture, this otherness remains the “least socialized articulation of values of freedom, creativity, multiple realities and an open future.”53 Extending his representation of the shaman as a metaphor for the Third World, Nandy argues that the Third World acts as “Other of the First,” an otherness that “opens up—alas, only theoretically—many possibilities.” The Third World can be seen as an upholder of traditions and cultures outside the present global culture, waiting for its prodigal brothers to come back and admit their profligacy. Or it can be redefined as “a concept of trusteeship,” insomuch as the Third World holds in trust the “rejected selves” of the First and former Second Worlds. Alternately, it can act as a reminder that “all is not well with this, the allegedly best of all possible worlds.”54 An openness for future possibilities is still apparent in Nandy’s account, yet it seems to make a subtle retreat from the model of cultural survival outlined in his earlier piece. Thus the possibilities are now either in the wings or merely theoretical. As in Scott’s “hidden transcripts” and Bhabha’s reading of the British colonial authority, the challenge to hegemony and scope for agency seem trivial and marginal. Also, although the underlying focus on relations of self and other and ambivalence are evident in the shaman metaphor, the representation of the Third World’s otherness comes across as distinctly essentialized (“timeless,” “outside,” “irrational”). Although Nandy’s intention is to suggest that the other resides in the self and vice-versa, the concept of rejected selves and the binary representations of the First and Third Worlds seem to undercut his more clearly stated embrace of hybridity and multiple identity in his earlier critique. There seems to be little notion of upgrading and appropriation in the shaman, more an emphasis on discomfort and repression on the part of the Westerner. However, the concern for “creating a space at the margins of the present global civilization for a new, plural, political ecology of knowledge” is still the primary focus for contemplating Third World futures.55 Compared with some other recent postcolonial attempts to address the issue of the future,56 Nandy’s attempt is a genuine and useful starting point. Perhaps the central insight afforded by Nandy, in contradistinction to the earlier critique of hybridity advanced, is the enabling possibilities of hybridity. In learning to live with the hybridity and ambivalence of contemporary life, subjects can begin to carve out a space for future action and reflection. Rather than experiencing hybridity as a loss of authentic self and a diminishing of agency, the very movement between identities and traditions can entail a reclaiming of aspects and elements that are conducive to modern living.

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Thinking about cultural survival and Third World futures is conditioned by a general embrace of the idea of multiple identity as constitutive of the postcolonial experience. The move toward multiple realities has its antecedents in notions about cultural difference in postcolonialism and more general postmodern reworkings of identity in social theory. Earlier notions of distinctiveness and difference, however, are reworked with an ambivalent overlay so that the emphasis has shifted away from the discrete and authentic to the plural and heterogeneous. This is the ground upon which Said signals his third topic of the postcolonial: the “revolutionary reality” of hybrid, multiple, plural identities. No longer are the positions of an earlier generation of postcolonial and nationalist writers attempting to build separate boundaries around notions of community, nation, or race seen as tenable in the contemporary world. This, of course, does not deny much evidence to the contrary of this postcolonial embrace of multiple identity. After all, there are countless instances of the reassertion of a singular identity in the Third World, especially evident in various ethnonationalist projects, ethnic cleansing, and communal and tribal conflict (consider Bosnia or Rwanda as two glaring examples). The allure of organic or premodern rationalizations of identity is still powerful in the late modern world. However, at least in contemporary postcolonial theorizing, there is a distinct break with such thinking. Even reconstructions around the idea of cultural survival are couched not in exclusivist, authentic terms, but in the manner outlined by Nandy as necessarily incorporating the outside and the foreign in reworkings of the self. Although it is true that much that goes under the label of the “postcolonial experience” in the context of multiple identities relates to the condition of postcoloniality in First World cities and academia, there has been a discernible move to ground ideas about shifting and plural identity in the Third World. Certainly the emphasis on diaspora, multiculturalism, and the migrant situation, evident in the writings of Arjun Appadurai and Stuart Hall, for example, relate specifically to First World phenomena. In these writings the guiding influence of a postmodern sensibility is apparent. The following passage from Hall is illustrative: Thinking about my own sense of identity, I realise that it has always depended on the fact of being a migrant, on the difference from the rest of you. So one of the fascinating things . . . is to find myself centered at last. Now that, in the postmodern age, you all feel so dispersed, I become centered. What I’ve thought of as dispersed and fragmented comes, paradoxically, to be the representative modern experience! This is “coming home” with a vengeance! Most of it I much enjoy—welcome to migranthood. It also makes me understand something about identity which has been puzzling me in the last three years. I’ve been puzzled by the fact that young black people in London today are marginalized, fragmented, disadvantaged and dispersed. And

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yet, they look as if they own their own territory. Somehow, they too, in spite of everything, are centered, in place: without much material support, it’s true, but nevertheless, they occupy a new kind of space at the centre. And I’ve wondered again and again: what it is about the long discovery-rediscovery of identity among blacks in this migrant situation, which allows them to lay a kind of claim to certain parts of the earth which aren’t theirs, with quite that certainty? I do feel a sense of—dare I say—envy surrounding them. Envy is a very funny thing for the British to feel at this moment in time—to want to be black! Yet I feel some of you moving towards that marginal identity. I welcome you to that, too.57

The notion that marginality and migranthood become both centered and the representative (post)modern experience is certainly provocative and at the very least indicates the importance of context and place when making such assessments. What Hall says of migrant blacks in London may well be true of London. Yet to what extent does it capture a more general global condition? Certainly the postmodern allows such a position in that it seeks to rethink boundaries of inside/outside, centre/periphery and space in general. The world, in this scenario, is more fluid and traversed. However, one does not necessarily need to subscribe completely to world system theories to concede that there are still significant power imbalances and differences between and within the various centers and peripheries in the global system of capitalist production. In this respect, one needs to critically ask how centered people in the Third World feel, be they migrants, displaced refugees in border camps, or foreign labor (for instance, the experience of Sri Lankans and other South Asians in Saudi Arabia). In fairness to Hall, he does concede that his feeling that more and more people are “recently migrated” in some sense is tempered by the fact that “every identity is placed, positioned, in a culture, a language, a history. Every statement comes from somewhere, from somebody in particular. It insists on specificity, on conjuncture. But it is not necessarily armourplated against other identities. It is not tied to fixed, permanent, unalterable oppositions. It is not wholly defined by exclusion.”58 In some recent postcolonial writing, there have been sustained attempts to position thinking about multiple identity in various Third World settings. As we have seen, from African writers such as Appiah, Achebe, and Mbembe to Escobar in Latin America and Nandy in India, the move in this group of postcolonial writers has been to think through some of the broader theoretical ideas for postcoloniality in the Third World raised by not only postmodernism but also older discourses such as development/ modernization and nationalism. Along this path, it is important to note three facets of such writing that tie notions of multiple identity to specific Third World experiences. The reimagining of Third World identity along nonessentialized, plural lines is not merely a postmodern revelation. A postmodern writer

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such as Hall is willing to concede as much. Addressing the issue of the centering of marginality as the representative postmodern experience, Hall recognizes that “what the discourse of the postmodern has produced is not something new but a kind of recognition of where identity always was at.”59 Similarly, the recognition of identity as a container of multiple influences that make for more hybridized intersubjective relations is a point that the African writer Chinua Achebe, for example, has long advanced in his reinterpretation of postcolonial Africa. Reflecting on his childhood and the competing influences of Christianity and African traditional beliefs, Achebe claims: “We lived at the crossroads of culture. We still do today.” At this crossroads, there are dangers as well as benefits: In wrestling with “multiple-headed spirits,” Africans might return to their people “with the boon of prophetic vision.”60 In a more recent essay, Achebe quotes Walt Whitman: Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes) To which he adds, “where one thing stands, another will stand beside it.”61 For Achebe, the colonial experience is an inheritance, one “grain” among others that must be accorded due recognition, as should “every grain that comes our way.” The key question for Achebe is what encouragement these grains offer “for the celebration of our own world, the singing of the song of ourselves in the din of an insistent world and song of others.”62 This view of the unfolding of identity as a song of self and other, a multitude of grains making up the African (post)colonial experience, certainly prefigures recent postmodern theorizing on identity as ambivalent and hybrid. Although the postmodern would also highlight the decentering and fragmentation of identity and in many respects it has given the hybrid reading of identity an elevated position in contemporary thinking, Hall is prescient in noting that the ambivalence of identity in the postmodern in many respects captures “where identity was always at,”63 at least in the context of imperialism and colonialism. The second point to note about the rendering of hybridity and ambivalence into the fabric of particular Third World identities such as Africa is that the embrace of multiple identity does not signify the displacement of difference as an informing motif of contemporary postcolonialism. As noted throughout this section, the turn to ambivalence and hybridity does not simply replace the politics of resistance and difference. Although there are tensions and contradictions in the evolution of the postcolonial discourse, the earlier and perhaps defining dynamics of postcolonialism are

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reinscribed and updated to take into account inputs from both postmodernism and postmodernity or late modernity. This has been the consistent feature of writers ranging from Said to poststructural writers such as Bhabha and Spivak. In respect to the theme of multiple identity, there has been an attempt to refashion the concept of difference and tailor it to a more syncretized representation of identity. The catch-phrase of such writing, evident, for example, in the positions of Appiah and Nandy, could be “Hybrid yet still distinctive and different.” Thus, in Appiah, there is still an attempt to grapple with the notion of a distinctive African sensibility (What is Africa? What does it mean to be African?) despite the concessions to the postmodern reading of identity. Tracing the evolution of various attempts to rethink African civilization in the modern world in the form of negritude or Pan-Africanism, Appiah notes that “however impressed they were by the power of Western technology, they were also engaged with the worlds of their diverse traditions.”64 Rejecting claims to Africanness based on race, or a shared metaphysics and common history, Appiah nevertheless argues, somewhat vaguely, for a remodeled, secular Pan-Africanism across nations and states (including the African diaspora) that accepts the diversity of Africa (both inside and outside the continent) but institutes a common commitment to the African continent’s problems and dilemmas.65 Appiah’s sense that “we are Africans already” does not deny differences but seeks to recast the notion of difference by paying its dues to the concept of multiple identities while remaining grounded in a distinctively African context and terrain of meaning and experience. In this respect, it parallels Nandy’s notion of cultural survival as an expression of an Indian sensibility mediating the processes of modernity and globalization and in the process continually updating and reshaping what it means to be Indian in a global political space. A third qualification regarding the elevation of hybridity and ambivalence in postcolonialism is that the tone of celebration and optimism that often accompanies postmodern readings of multiple identities (in, for example, Hall or Appiah) is not necessarily shared by those on the ground in Africa who are pulled in different directions. Certainly diverse voices promote differing visions of what it means to live with multiple identities. Novelists from Achebe to Kojo Laing, for example, tend to celebrate the plurality of influences. Others, such as the Zimbabwean Dambudzo Marechera strike a more negative note. Although Marechera cannot speak for the heterogeneity of experience in Africa and his vision is idiosyncratic, his fiction is useful in providing a cautionary reminder that not all Africans revel in the play of multiple identities. Marechera’s confronting, selfconfessional writing boldly underlines a destructive side of the ambivalence

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of postcoloniality and speaks of psychic disorder and dislocation, eerily chronicling his own personal decline.66 A brief comparison of the images of African identity and of the African diaspora found in the writings of Marechera, Appiah, and a group of writers collected in Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora reveals the complexity and ambivalence that mark the postcolonial experience. On one hand, there is the fragmented, dark insight of Marechera, whether it be his notion of the false self-image of African writers in Africa or the hollowness of Africans playing at being African in London. Marechera’s is an interesting standpoint given his frequent travel between Harare and London and Oxford. His position in the diaspora is constantly put under strain by his memories and travel back home. “I still speak English and sound quite foreign to myself. Sometimes I wear a black suit, sometimes its jeans, and sometimes it’s a holy rag from the old and grand past of ancient times.”67 There is more than confusion here. Breakdown, fragmentation, and loss inhabit Marechera’s world. “The English language,” Marechera writes, “has certainly taken over more than the geography of the African image.”68 Yet exile in London is no tonic for the “cultural cerebral rape of my people” in Africa.69 Moving among the African diaspora is profoundly demoralizing for Marechera. He sees everyone as phony and cynical; as “hippopotami that have been doped with injections of English culture,” and are removed from the “multitudes” in Africa.70 In this bleak universe, the self is like a “half-made phantasm,” “restlessly leaping about in its own stillness; unable to be anything other than nervous and resentful and prone to a strange obsequious assertiveness.”71 Echoing Fanon, Marechera writes that he never really came to terms with his blackness until he encountered whiteness in England. Yet this encounter produces a deep uneasiness that gnaws away at self-assurance. There is “no answer to a whiteman’s sneer.” The effect, writes Marechera, is that the African in London lives in a “circle, an impossible position, and the psychiatrist’s couch.”72 Marechera mournfully concludes that Africans are like the ruins, not the originals, of themselves and that they are bound together by dissonant, disparate, and disfigured experiences: “Had we lost the African image or had the African image lost us? Did it exist? Certainly, it had become an absence, idol, an altar of lost dreams, lost hopes, lost faith, lost silences, lives lost.”73 Loss, absence, and intense ambivalence mark Marechera’s diasporic representation of Africa. Interaction with the outside only intensifies feelings of marginalization and disintegration. As with Marechera’s own life, the intersubjective space between London and Harare is one of irretrievable breakdown. If breakdown and fragmentation constitute one reading of the African diasporic experience, other, more positive and hopeful imaginings also

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exist. Appiah provides a rich tapestry of African identity as he journeys back into his family’s history and the history of the Asante on the occasion of his father’s funeral in Ghana. From the outset, it is clear that there is nothing typical about Appiah’s situation: His father is a nationalist hero and revered politician and lawyer, Westernized and privileged and also head of his matriclan (abusua); Appiah’s uncle is the king of Asante; Appiah lives in the United States but is connected via his extended family to England and Norway. This wonderful hybrid world that he celebrates is distinctly atypical, as he wryly notes: “As I grew older, and went to an English boarding-school, I learned that not everybody had family in Africa and in Europe.”74 Yet the occasion of the state funeral gives Appiah the opportunity to reflect on the postcolonial condition in general: All the identities my father cared about were embodied about us: lawyer, Asante man, Ghanaian, African, internationalist; statesman and churchman; family man, father and head of his abusua; friend; husband. Only something so particular as a single life—as my father’s life, encapsulated in the complex pattern of social and personal relations around his coffin—could capture the multiplicity of our lives in a postcolonial world.75

Interwoven in this celebration of hybridity is a struggle between Appiah’s aunt (wife to the king and part of the father’s matriclan) and Appiah’s father over property rights and funeral arrangements. Interestingly, this is similar to the battle over the lawyer S. M. Otieno’s body in Kenya that I gave an account of in Chapter 1 of this book. However, the multiple nature of identity is Appiah’s central focus. His optimism that the sort of intersubjective mingling that marked his father’s life and is present in the lives of Appiah’s extended family provides the basis for his inclusive view of a global African diaspora connected by a shared postcolonial inheritance that suggests “a certain hope for the human future.”76 There is no sense of Africans as wandering refugees and a continent and people in ruins as there is in Marechera; Africa is imagined along more affirming lines with interaction between Africa and the West a basis for mutual enrichment rather than African impoverishment. At one remove from Appiah’s postcolonial reflections but striking a similarly positive note is the collection titled Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora, which presents various perspectives from an African American and Caribbean perspective on the contemporary significance and relevance of Pan-Africanism. The Africa invoked in this volume is very much the First World terrain of black music and Harlem community, of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Rastafarians, African American communism and South Africa. Yet Africa is seen throughout as home and the imagined identity of African Americanism is intimately bound up with a conception of what it is to be

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African. Paul Gilroy defines Pan-Africanism as “the proposition that the post-slave cultures of the Atlantic world are in some significant way related to each other and to the African cultures from which they partly derive.”77 Not only is Africa seen as an imagined home for these “post-slave cultures,” there is a frequent, mostly unintended crossover between claims and assumptions made on behalf of an African diaspora and Africans in Africa itself. Indeed, the crucial distinction between the two becomes blurred at times. Thus it is that Pan-Africanism, a concept whose force in Africa seems to have floundered in the face of self-interest and inaction, is held up by the collection’s editors and many of its contributors as a panacea for Africa’s problems. In the essay by the Jamaican Horace Campbell, for instance, Pan-Africanism is defined as “at once an exercise in consciousness and resistance. It reflects the self-expression and self-organization of the African peoples and expresses their resistance to Eurocentrism.” Further, “the challenge of today’s concrete reality is to change the wretchedness of the conditions of existence of . . . African peoples.”78 Cultural resistance and political unity are seen as key elements in this respect. In the “struggle beyond the culture of capital,”79 Campbell argues that “building a federation of Africa based on the cultural unity of the continent and the harnessing of the knowledge and skills developed by Africans over the centuries are some of the challenges that face the African peoples in the next century.”80 This perspective is interesting for two reasons. First, it points to a significant gulf between the Africa imagined in this Pan-Africanist diaspora and contemporary Africa itself. If we take, for example, Campbell’s noble sentiments on building African unity, it is difficult to envisage a way forward given the failures of the Organization of African Unity and previous moves in the direction of Pan-Africanism. The pressures on the individual nation-states are such that even the prospects for regional integration are dim. Similarly, how exactly is Africa to get beyond the “culture of capital” in an era of economic globalization in which multinational capital reaches increasingly, albeit unevenly, into all parts of the world and alternatives to liberal capitalism are scant? How is resistance to be understood in this respect? As I explore in Part 2, relations between Africa and the West, from religion to music, have been characterized by ambivalence, accommodation, and indigenization rather than outright resistance. Some of the problems that bedevil postcolonialism are also present. This sort of writing about the prospects and relevance of Pan-Africanism reveals a gulf between the diasporic perspective and the everyday lives of Africans on the ground in the various societies across Africa. I suspect that Pan-Africanism is more of an issue for the diaspora, which feels the need to imagine home, than for those whom Uganda and Zimbabwe or indeed Igbo or Shona or Luo are more of a reference point in the shaping of identity than

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a nebulous concept of Pan-Africanism. One is reminded of the comment by Doreen Massey that so often the concern with home or place comes from those who have left and who experience feelings of dislocation and disorientation. A second point to note about this collection is that for all the emphasis on diaspora, home, culture, identity, resistance, and hybridity, there is not one mention of or reference to postcolonialism and postcolonial discourses that have come to speak for all of these concerns. This is partly a result of disciplinary boundaries and the Marxist historical methodology of the volume. Regardless, it indicates that African American writing on PanAfricanism has cut is own path. More to the point, perhaps, it places the contemporary fascination with postcolonialism in perspective and indicates that it hardly claims exclusive purchase over these issues. At a broader level, what these representations from the diaspora highlight is the polysemous nature of Africa for those who lay claim to it as constitutive of their identity. Marechera’s diasporic wasteland mirrors Achille Mbembe’s account of the zombification of identity and vulgarity of power relations in the postcolony. The terrain is Lacanian: misrecognition, psychic split, fractured self. Africa is decentered and indeed dismembered. To some extent Marechera’s dark vision can be seen as eccentric, yet within it is contained much of the pain and anxiety of Africa’s encounter with the West. There is a somewhat paranoid-schizoid position in Marechera’s deep ambivalence toward Africa, and there is certainly a brutal honesty in his account that is not amenable to easy resolution. In many respects Marechera gives flesh to the materialist account of the global marginalization of Africa. In his short story “Oxford, Black Oxford,” he writes of calmly walking to his tutorial in All Souls and letting in the “hail of memories” of Africa: images of mud huts; “gnarled” faces; grim and degrading lives; hunger and squalor; “a bottomless hell.”81 The bleakness of his African imagination is a stark contrast to the hope and sheer pleasure contained in Appiah’s reveling in the play of hybridity and multiple identity in contemporary Africa. In Appiah Africa is a meeting point for various cultures in which the future is bright precisely because of the African ability to adapt, accommodate, and rework the modern and the strange. The Pan-Africanist longing for home indicates that Africa resides in the West in its role as a reference point for the various minority groups and discourses in the United States attempting to redress hegemonic relations of power. Africa’s context and meaning is not African per se: Africa is imagined as a unifying community and point of origin that sustains a continuing attempt to facilitate an accommodation within Western society. Akin to its role in Appiah, Africa is the harbinger of hope. These predominantly outside accounts of Africa place it squarely at the juncture between the late modern world and older frames of reference.

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This is not surprising given the space that the diaspora inhabits: It necessarily faces both ways, often from within the center. It may well be that this intersubjective space is rarefied compared with the situation of people and communities on the ground in Africa. Although the sense of intersubjectivity (between Africa and the West) is more heightened in this context, I have argued throughout that a similar interaction occurs at the level of the everyday. Despite the caveats in the reach and significance of late modernity and globalization for the Third World that I will later highlight, Africa is nevertheless part of a global political space in which its people and cultures are always on the move between the past and the modern world. In pointing toward difference or hybridity as conditions of contemporary postcoloniality, the postcolonial discourse often swirls high above the ground of Third World society. Despite its origins in the personal and particular, at least in its initial incarnation as the study of comparative Third World literatures, postcolonialism has been more concerned to explore (and deconstruct) the epistemological and discursive, resulting in an abstracted focus. Alternately, its attention has been directed to the narrowly historical within which broader claims are advanced (for example, from under a tree in Delhi, 1817, we are able to trace the ambivalence and hybridity of colonial power). For all the emphasis on difference, particularity, and non-Western values, the discourse as a whole has been strangely lacking in specificity and grounding. This partly reflects its explicitly theoretical project (with the attendant Western inputs). Yet theory need not be antithetical to the grassroots and local. As I noted previously, not only has postcolonialism lacked an everyday focus, it has also tended to ignore specific African or Third World experiences. Perhaps the beginnings of a return to a more particularized focus are apparent. Encouraged by the emphasis on plurality and heterogeneity so celebrated under the postmodern banner, writers from varying theoretical standpoints, such as Loomba, Dirlik, Krishna, and Mbembe, have gone beyond the general to explore or at least point toward specific, local instances of identity. In redirecting attention toward actual particularities and differences on the ground, such writers are increasingly gesturing toward the level of the everyday as the site of postcolonial revelations about contemporary identity. In this respect they follow novelists such as Achebe and Ngugi and writers such as James Scott in turning to the everyday in order to make sense of competing forces of domination and resistance, modernity and tradition, self and other. This tentative turn to the politics of the everyday is particularly concerned to highlight the centrality of material factors and the space for agency as constitutive of identity. It is perhaps no surprise that the former dynamic has been spearheaded by Marxist critics of postcolonialism such

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as Ahmad and Dirlik. For such critics the concern is with the perceived rejection of material factors and categories of analysis in postcolonialism (class, modes of production, global capitalist processes) and the triumph of a misleading culturalism in approaches to the Third World. Such a stance is informed by an older politics; that is, a radical, Marxist perspective in which the North-South divide is interpreted (in economic terms) along the axis of a fairly clear distinction between center and periphery in the world system. Questions of culture and identity are seen as derivative to structural, material processes or, at worst, obfuscatory of these underlying realities. Thus, according to Dirlik, postcolonialism tends to throw “the cover of culture over material relationships, as if one had little to do with the other.” This action diverts attention away from capitalism to ethnocentrism, which not only disguises the ideological limitations of postcolonialism but “provides an alibi for inequality, exploitation, and oppression in their modern guises under capitalist relationships.”82 A less scathing but no less materialist critique is advanced by Colin Leys, whose review of the African tragedy chides writers such as Basil Davidson and Jean-Francois Bayart for excluding both economic history and contemporary global economic forces from their respective accounts of Africa’s predicament. Arguing that the commitment and hope of Davidson or the poststructural irony and “distancing” of Bayart are not sufficient in themselves to address Africa’s problems, Leys states that the most positive response is for the rest of the world “to start thinking about Africa in terms that correspond to what is really happening there,”83 that is, the material realities of economic weakness and debt. The Marxist critique of a culturalist position is by now a familiar one. Writers such as Leys and Dirlik are instructive in bringing into focus material factors (economic history, global capitalist modes of production, and division of labor, which underpin the secondary status of much of the Third World). The everyday is certainly not divorced from the material realm, and modernity is not merely an ideological or discursive construct without concrete, structural effects. To the extent that Dirlik provides a corrective to some of the more excessively culturalist approaches to the Third World, it is a welcome intervention. However, the danger (as in many a Marxist account) is that an excessively structuralist position takes the place of the culturalist one. The material becomes privileged over the cultural with obvious implications for agency and identity. The tightness of such a perspective can limit analysis as much as it facilitates comprehension. When Dirlik claims that postcolonial critics have “rendered into problems of subjectivity and epistemology concrete and material problems of the everyday world,”84 he reveals not only a crude understanding of the interconnections between the material and the subjective (as outlined in Chapter two) but a desire to reinscribe the material at the expense of the

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cultural or the subjective. This is certainly at odds with the contemporary sensibility of postcolonialism (that is, in the celebration of hybridity and ambivalence). More important, other Marxist critics such as Jameson and Wallerstein are prepared to give culture and ideology its head and, rather than insist on a narrow base-superstructure model, allow for more subtle interactions between the material and cultural realms. In reminding us of material considerations, critics such as Dirlik provide us with another guideline with which to explore the everyday ramifications of modernity and globalization in postcolonial societies. The difficulty is how to avoid overusing this guideline. The concern behind much of this Marxist revision of the postcolonial is to recover some space for a radical politics in the perceived quagmire of postmodern theory. This space is understood in terms of the arena of action more than the capacity for action. Yet although a Marxist approach generates its own difficulties for agency, the suspicion of postmodern politics as profoundly disenabling for peoples and movements in the Third World dovetails with the second dynamic in the turn to the everyday: the emphasis on the capacity of the postcolonial agent for self-reflection, action, and change. I have already addressed the problems of agency under postmodernism and noted the concerns of a range of Third Worldist critics that the postmodern may serve to close off options for the marginalized. With these concerns in mind, I want to acknowledge the work of writers such as Mbembe, Appiah, and Simone and Hecht, who have explored the space for agency in postcolonial Africa at the level of the local and the everyday. These writers embrace the very indeterminacy and contingency of postmodernity and attempt to map its possibilities in African political and cultural life. Although Mbembe’s account of the postcolony is a good deal more circumspect about the efficacy of agency, his Cameroonian landscape of funerals, state rituals, food, fashion, and the body cuts across the public and private realms and describes a “chaotic plurality” in which the postcolonial subject is defined by “his/her ability to engage in baroque practices which are fundamentally ambiguous, mobile, and ‘revisable’, even in instances where there are clear, written, and precise rules.” The subject assumes multiple identities in its everyday interactions with state power; it both dances publicly and laughs at its excesses, “confirming, in passing, the existence of an undoubtable institution; all this, precisely in order to better ‘play’ with it and modify it whenever possible.”85 Similarly, in their account of Sape culture in Zaire, of shantytowns in Sudan, and funeral processions in Benin, Simone and Hecht argue that “making ambiguous the meaning of events and displays of collective behaviour become survival tactics in a political landscape simultaneously incorporated into, and ignored by Western agenda.” 86 Thus the subject manipulates the local

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terrain of civil action, which, though not always effective (at least not in a traditional sense), presents opportunities for agency and reflexivity in society against the forces of state power and globalization. It is precisely because this everyday space is ambivalent and identity is multiple that postcolonial subjects are able, in the words of Mbembe, to improvise, bargain with, and reshape their environment. We are now in a position to briefly take stock of postcolonial approaches to Third World identity. We have seen how the defining motifs of resistance and difference have been reworked under the sign of the postmodern to incorporate a hybrid, ambivalent interpretation of intersubjective relations between the West and the Third World. In its contemporary reformulation, resistance still pervades postcolonialism, though there now seems to be more ambiguity and doubt in terms of not only the object of this resistance but its very efficacy. The commitment to deconstructing or translating Western representations continues to dominate the postcolonial agenda, although I have noted some movement toward more grounded and particular investigations of postcoloniality that take into account not only the colonial past and its continuing significance but some consideration of the way ahead for Third World societies grappling with modernity and globalization. These investigations, however, are the exception rather than the rule. In the context of this book, this more recent turn is of particular interest; yet the wider agenda of postcolonialism cannot be ignored, and it is the limitations of some of this postcolonial writing as well as the insights afforded by the focus on cultural survival, multiple identity, and the politics of the everyday that I engage with throughout this book, particularly with reference to the identity and place of Africa. Postcolonialism sends out mixed, at times confusing, signals to its ostensible constituency, the Third World. It is marked by its share of internal contradictions: It attacks essentialism and the notion of an authentic self or voice yet, on occasion, cannot help but romanticize the native other; it speaks of resistance and agency yet proceeds on a poststructural reading of subjectivity. Beyond these theoretical impasses, it holds up an intensely ambiguous political program for the marginalized and oppressed of the world. Resistance is imperative, but outside the text the way ahead is difficult to make out. Some critics have unkindly noted that the lack of substantive political (or economic and historical) understanding is the result of literary theorists crossing over into areas beyond their expertise. Russell Jacoby notes “how few political insights or conclusions these emphatically political theorists offer. Denunciations of imperialism, hegemonic order, and the like are abundant, but the post-colonial scholars hardly illuminate recent and particular situations.” 87 Another critic, Alex Callinicos, writes of a “narrowing of political horizons” in the reduction of social processes to questions of semiotics.88 Benita Parry provides the

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most thorough critique of what she terms as a tendency to subsume the social and the political to textual representation. In particular, she highlights the reluctance of postcolonial theorists to directly address questions of class, ethnicity, and the nation-state, “which continue to fashion the selfunderstanding and energize the resistances of exploited populations in the hinterlands of late imperialism.”89 Although I have maintained that discourse and representation have direct political significance and that the task of postcolonial deconstruction is an important first step, there are certainly problems in the translation of postcolonial theories into everyday political practices for change that connect to the life strategies of the marginalized in the Third World. The levers of representation are not sufficient to affect change for such people given the evident lack of resources and economic inequalities, though they may certainly form part of a wider strategy (as in Escobar’s example of Latin American Participatory Action Research movements). This is not to deny that people do not put in place their own strategies for survival, adaptation, and change. However, it may be that what occurs on the ground bears little relationship to what is written in the First World academy by postcolonial theorists, at least not directly. Postcolonialism thus provides a political project that is for the marginalized peoples and cultures of the Third World but not of them. Moreover, it is not always a project that is well grounded in Third World experience or easy to interpret and put into practice. In many respects the key difficulty remains the inability of postcolonial perspectives to disassociate themselves from the center despite the badge of marginality. In a preface to a recent postcolonial collection, the “post-colonial moment” is strongly linked to the First World, with disparate events such as the issue of chador in French schools and the burning of The Satanic Verses in Bradford, UK, held up as indications of the return of the imperial “repressed,” “where the peoples and frontiers of empire now inhabit and divide the centre.”90 As long as this center continues to crowd out the postcolonial imagination, marginalized sites in the Third World will remain out of focus. Despite such shortcomings, postcolonialism provides a vantage point on the Third World that is absent in more traditional discourses such as international relations. In this respect it is potentially better equipped to give us insights into the unfolding of intersubjective identity and relations between North and South. Dirlik may well be correct in arguing that the currency of postcolonialism has much to do with a general crisis of understanding produced by the inability of old categories to account for the Third World.91 Notwithstanding this argument, he provides us with a twin criterion that is useful in critically appraising postcolonialism’s account of identity: the extent to which it relates directly to actual Third World experiences and the extent to which it takes seriously the more globalized space of North-South relations. Any attempt to work through the implications of

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postcolonialism for African identity needs to come to grips with the resistance motif and the handle it provides, in both its traditional and postmodern guise, for an understanding of modernity and globalization in the Third World and the capacity of postcolonial subjects to navigate these processes. As we shall see, it offers a radically different agenda and perspective on the place of the Third World than most globalization theorizing. It is to the increased significance of global processes and scenarios of an emerging global culture that I now turn.

NOTES 1. “The Hybrid State Exhibit,” November 2–December 14, 1991, Exit Art, New York, cited in Anne McClintock, “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism,’” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, pp. 84–85. 2. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 317. 3. Ibid., p. xxv. 4. Ella Shohat, “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial,’” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, p. 107. Bhabha, Said, and Scott ground their analyses of ambivalence in the period of colonial rule. 5. Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992), p. 45. 6. David Gordon, Images of the West: Third World Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1989), pp. 90–97. 7. See Homi Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817,” Critical Inquiry, 12, Summer 1985. 8. Gyan Prakash, “Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography,” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, p. 9. 9. Niranjana, Siting Translation, p. 46. 10. Gyan Prakash, “Writing Post-Oriental Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32(2), 1990, pp. 383–408. 11. See John Gibbons, ed., Contemporary Political Culture: Politics in a Postmodern Age (London; Newbury Park, CA; New Delhi: Sage, 1989), pp. 23–24. 12. Arif Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism,” Critical Inquiry, 20, Winter 1994, p. 351. 13. See Stuart Hall “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Jonathan Rutherford, ed., Identity: Community, Culture and Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990). 14. See Gyan Prakash, “Can the ‘Subaltern’ Ride? A Reply to O’Hanlon and Washbrook,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34(1), January 1992, pp. 169, 173; Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook, “After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism and Politics in the Third World,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34(1), January 1992, pp. 141–167; and Prakash, “Writing Post-Oriental Histories of the Third World.” 15. See Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literature (London and New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 11–12; and Dirlik “The Postcolonial Aura,” pp. 344–345

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16. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 104. 17. Ibid., p. 115. 18. Ibid., p. 113. 19. Ibid., p. 114. 20. Ibid., p. 113. 21. Ibid., p. 116. 22. Ibid., p. 119. 23. Ibid., p. 114. 24. See Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Cuture (London: Methuen, 1992), p. 251. 25. Shohat, “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial,’” pp. 101–102. 26. Shohat provides a slightly different slant on this point when she argues that one effect of postcolonialism’s ambiguous spatio-temporality is the implication that colonialism is now a matter of the past, thus undermining its effects in the present and downplaying certain anti-neocolonial struggles that may be more in tune with contemporary power relations and issues. See ibid., pp. 104–105. 27. Appiah, In My Father’s House, p. 250. 28. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 113. 29. The tendency to obscure another dimension (“reality,” for want of a better term, or certain material factors) is addressed by Sankaran Krishna in his critique of postmodern international relations analyses of the Third World. Krishna argues that we need to “reflesh” certain postmodern interpretations of the Gulf War because the “preoccupation with representation, sign systems, and with the signifier over the signified, leaves one with little sense of the annihilation visited upon the people and land of Iraq.” See “The Importance of Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations,” Alternatives, 18, 1993, p. 399. 30. Krishna argues that many postmodern analyses that address the Third World either directly or, more likely, indirectly commence from a “remarkably self-contained and self-referential view of the West and are oblivious to the intimate dialogue between ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ economies, societies, and philosophies that underwrite the disenchantment with modernity that characterizes the present epoch.” See ibid., p. 388. Ania Loomba makes a similar criticism of postmodernism’s Eurocentric sensibility: There is a “tendency to read colonized subjects through the linguistic or psychoanalytical theories which remain suspiciously and problematically shot through with Eurocentric assumptions whose transfer to all subalterns is unacceptable.” See Loomba, “Overworlding the ‘Third World,’” The Oxford Literary Review, 13, 1991, p. 171. Along identical lines, Ahmad (“The Importance of Being Ironic”) provides an informed critique of poststructural “colonial discourse” and Bhabha in particular, claiming that the “inflationary rhetoric” of Bhabha’s opposition to modernity is possible only because Bhabha, of course, lives in those material conditions of postmodernity which presume the benefits of modernity as the very ground from which judgements on the past of this post- may be delivered. In other words, it takes a very modern, very affluent, very uprooted kind of intellectual to debunk both the idea of “progress” and the sense of a “long past,” not to speak of “modernity” itself, as mere “rationalizations” of “authoritarian tendencies within cultures”—in a theoretical melange which randomly invokes Levi-Strauss in one phrase, Foucault in another, Lacan in yet another. Those who live within the consequences of that “long past,” good and bad, and in places where a majority of the population has been

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denied access to such benefits of “modernity” as hospitals or better health insurance or even basic literacy, can hardly afford the terms of such thought. (See pp. 68–71, quote at pp. 68–69.) 31. Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura,” p. 342. Dirlik goes on to take a swipe at the supposed marginality and powerlessness of many postcolonial intellectuals writing in the West: Postcolonial intellectuals in their First World institutional location are ensconced in positions of power not only vis-a-vis the “native” intellectuals back at home but also vis-a-vis their First World neighbors here. My neighbors in Farmville, Virginia, are no match in power for the highly paid, highly prestigious postcolonial intellectuals at Columbia, Princeton, or Duke; some of them might even be willing to swap positions and take the anguish that comes with hybridity so long as it brings with it the power and prestige it seems to command. (p. 342) 32. Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura,” p. 337. On this latter point about incorporation into the global economy, Dirlik’s central criticism of postcolonialism is that because of its Western sensibility (in theory and location), it has been silent about its status within and relationship to the transformed global situation brought about by capitalist processes in late modernity. Indeed, Dirlik argues that postcolonialism and globalization are intimately bound up. As a description of the new world situation after colonialism, the postcolonial discourse mystifies both politically and methodologically a situation that represents not the abolition but the reconfiguration of earlier forms of domination. The complicity of postcolonial in hegemony lies in postcolonialism’s diversion of attention from contemporary problems of social, political, and cultural domination, and its obfuscation of its own relationship to what is but a condition of its emergence, that is, to a global capitalism that, however fragmented in appearance, serves as the structuring principle of global relations. (p. 331) Postcolonialism is complicit because instead of drawing attention to the material processes of late modernity that underpin North-South relations, it focuses instead on discourse, culture, and identity: “They have rendered into problems of subjectivity and epistemology concrete and material problems of the everyday” (p. 356). Although I do not disagree necessarily with Dirlik’s point about the intimacy between postcolonialism and globalization, I think we need to be critical of his reductionist binarism between material and subjective processes. As I argue in Chapter 2, the material (the state or class) should not be privileged over questions of subjectivity and identity. Not only do they interact and are thus interconnected (in Giddens’s sense of structuration), but in many respects questions of subjective identity underpin material processes. 33. Shohat, “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial,’” p. 104. 34. Loomba, “Overworlding the ‘Third World,’” p. 173. 35. Ibid., p. 182. Marxist critics such as Ahmad and Dirlik have also made reference to the lack of differentiation between a general condition of postcoloniality and more specific factors such as class. 36. Annie Coombes, “Inventing the ‘Postcolonial’: Hybridity and Constituency in Contemporary Curating,” New Formations, 18, Winter 1992, pp. 39, 51. 37. Ibid., p. 43. 38. Judith Squires, “Editorial,” New Formations, 18, Winter 1992, p. v.

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39. bell hooks, cited in Krishna, “The Importance of Being Ironic,” p. 417. 40. Krishna, “The Importance of Being Ironic,” p. 402. 41. Ahmad, In Theory, p. 69. 42. Krishna, “The Importance of Being Ironic,” p. 406. 43. Loomba, “Overworlding the ‘Third World,’” p. 172. 44. Shohat, “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial,’” pp. 109–110. 45. Ashis Nandy, “Shamans, Savages and the Wilderness: On the Audibility of Dissent and the Future of Civilizations,” Alternatives, 15(3), 1989, p. 264. 46. Ashis Nandy, “Cultural Frames for Social Transformation: A Credo” Alternatives, 12(1), January 1987, pp. 114–115. 47. Ibid., p. 114, and Nandy, “Shamans,” pp. 264–265. 48. Nandy, “Cultural Frames,” pp. 117–118. 49. Ibid., p. 118. 50. Ibid., pp. 118–119. 51. Ibid., pp. 119–120. Without wishing to buy into the specific origins of this self-in-society concept, I should note that such thinking is also part of Western psychoanalysis from Freud and Marcuse to more recent theories by Castoriadis, Kristeva, and Elliott. For an overview and instance of this theorizing, see Anthony Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition: Self and Society from Freud to Kristeva (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992). 52. Nandy, “Cultural Frames,” p. 123. 53. Nandy, “Shamans,” pp. 265–266. 54. Ibid., pp. 273–274. 55. Ibid., pp. 266–267. 56. See, for example, Bhabha’s essay “How Newness Enters in the World,” in The Location of Culture, which begins with Walter Benjamin and Joseph Conrad, explores Jameson’s postmodern global landscape and Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and ends with an extended discussion of some Derek Walcott poems. The terrain traversed in Bhabha’s essay is Conrad’s “heart of darkness,” Jameson’s Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, “the new world (b)order” of “mass migrations and bizarre interracial relations” (mainly in the United States), the postmodern city (of the West), and the borderlines of minority discourses. Hybridity and ambivalence are once again cast, at least in Bhabha’s work, in the predominantly First World diaspora or in the imperial past. The question of the future enters the analysis, via John Forrester, only in relation to an image of a transnational world whose canvass is mostly Western. Thus, the breakdown of the temporality in the present world signifies a historical intermediacy so that the past dissolves in the present and as a consequence the future becomes an “open question” instead of being a fixity of the past (p. 219). In becoming an open question, the future provides an “agency of initiation” that enables the postcolonial to possess again and anew “the signs of survival, the terrain of other histories, the hybridity of cultures” (p. 235). The Third World is merely implied here, as are the themes that Ashis Nandy explores in the foregoing discussion. The landscape is unashamedly postmodern (including the choice of fiction) and, given my earlier critique, problematic for a consideration of specifically Third World futures and the issue of cultural survival. 57. Stuart Hall, “Minimal Selves,” in The Real Me: Post-Modernism and the Question of Identity (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1987), p. 44. 58. Ibid., p. 46. 59. Ibid., p. 44. 60. Chinua Achebe, “Named for Victoria, Queen of England” (1973), in Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays 1965–1987 (New York: Heinemann, 1988), pp. 22–23.

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61. Achebe, “What Has Literature Got to Do with It?” (1986), in Hopes and Impediments, pp. 110–111. 62. Chinua Achebe, “African Literature as Celebration: Reflections of a Novelist,” Dissent, Summer 1992, p. 345. 63. Hall, “Minimal Selves,” p. 46. 64. Appiah, In My Father’s House, p. 37. 65. Appiah argues in this context that it is really unsurprising that a continental identity is coming into cultural and institutional reality through regional and sub-regional organisations. We share a continent and its ecological problems; we share a relation of dependency to the world economy; we share the problem of racism in the way the industrialised world thinks of us (and let me include here, explicitly, both “Negro” Africa and the “Maghreb”); we share the possibilities of the development of regional markets and local circuits of production; and our intellectuals participate, through the shared contingencies of our various histories, in a discourse. In My Father’s House, p. 292. It is interesting that for all Appiah’s postmodern approach, many of his specific reflections on African identity are decidedly conventional. 66. Dambudzo Marechera, The Black Insider (Harare: Boobab Books, 1990). 67. Ibid., p. 24. 68. Ibid., p. 49. 69. Ibid., p. 51. 70. Ibid., pp. 62–63. 71. Ibid., p. 65. 72. Ibid., pp. 65, 77. 73. Ibid., pp. 92, 95, 105. 74. Ibid., p. ix. 75. Ibid., p. 311. 76. Ibid., p. x. 77. Paul Gilroy, “Sounds Authentic: Black Music, Ethnicity, and the Challenge of a Changing Same,” in Sidney Lemelle and Robin D. G. Kelley, eds., Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (London and New York: Verso, 1994), p. 94. 78. Horace Campbell, “Pan-Africanism and African Liberation,” in Lemelle and Kelley, eds., Imagining Home, pp. 285–286. 79. Campbell, “Pan-Africanism and African Liberation,” p. 306. 80. Ibid., p. 287. 81. Marechera, “Oxford, Black Oxford,” in The Black Insider, p. 118. 82. Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura,” p. 347. 83. Colin Leys, “Confronting the African Tragedy,” New Left Review, 204, March/April 1994, pp. 33–47, at p. 46. 84. Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura,” p. 356. 85. Achille Mbembe, “The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony.” Public Culture, 4(2), Spring 1992, p. 23. 86. T. Abdou Maliqalim Simone and David Hecht “Masking Magic Ambiguity in Contemporary African Political and Cultural Practices,” Third Text, 23, Summer 1993, p. 107. 87. Russell Jacoby, “Marginal Returns: The Trouble with Post-Colonial Theory,” Lingua Franca, September/October 1995, p. 36. 88. Alex Callinicos, “Wonders Taken for Signs: Homi Bhabha’s Postcolonialism,” Transformation, 1, Spring 1995, p. 111.

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89. Benita Parry, “Signs of Our Times: A Discussion of Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture,” Third Text, 28/29, Autumn/Winter 1994, pp. 12–13, at 21. 90. A further indication of this blurring of center and margin is the novel claim that Naples (where the conference from which the collection was derived in May 1993) is seen as an ideal postcolonial site, situated as it is “on the edge of Western Europe.” Accordingly, “Naples provides a fitting place in which to consider the emerging art and politics of living in-between worlds, seeking and ratifying the potential of such openings.” One can only ponder what “in-between world” Dar es Salaam or Kinshasa occupy in this light. See the preface to Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, eds., The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. xi–xii. 91. Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura,” p. 352.

6 Mapping Globalization

There are two key difficulties in attempting to understand the phenomena of globalization: grasping its precise nature and significance and determining its relevance for marginalized societies in Africa and the Third World generally. The first difficulty is compounded by the fact that there is little agreement on the meaning of the term globalization. It does not constitute a discrete discourse; globalization, more so than postcolonialism, is an amalgam of different discourses. As an overarching concept, it is deployed in various disciplines in an attempt to make sense of certain processes and movements that seem to stretch across the globe. There appears to be little disagreement over the existence of these global processes. However, it would be hard to find common ground on how they are to be comprehended and interpreted. The second difficulty derives from the evident Western orientation of much globalization theory and writing. Not only are there deeply embedded processes located at the center, but conceptual categories and assumptions that proceed from this reference point. The terrain of globalization is surveyed from the gaze of the Western observer. At the outer limits of the Western reach and vision, particularly in Africa, globalization not only takes on a different character but also encounters a different set of forces and pressures. One obvious indicator of these different circumstances is that at the same time that much Western theorizing about globalization spins off into accounts of cyberspace and a postnational world, specifically African and Third World critiques of globalization emphasize an older paradigm of economic dependency and North-South imbalances. Thus not only does globalization need to be carefully defined, but its peculiarly African manifestation—that is, how it affects Africa and what factors lend it a distinctiveness there—requires a keen appreciation. First, what is global? What is meant by globalization, and what is the genealogy of the term? Broadly speaking, globalization pertains to a set of 129

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writings and movements that have responded and sought to characterize the significant transformations of the mid- to late twentieth century (also referred to, particularly in social theory, as the late modern age). These transformations in communications, technologies, capital, labor, markets and trade, the production and distribution of goods and services, and the mass movement of peoples, have embodied a global character; that is, they have tended to transcend the traditional boundaries of the nation-state and initiate a restructuring of relations between cultures, nations, and states along more transnational, supranational, or even subnational lines. The effect of these transformations, at least in popular parlance, is the rise of ideas about a global village, one world, global civil society, and a global culture, particularly evident in the spread of social movements organized along the configuration of global issues such as ecology, gender, and peace. Yet the difference between process and prescription in response to the increased global landscape needs to be distinguished. Whereas all globalization discourses attempt to make sense of the global nature of the late modern world and can thus be seen as a direct response to the transformations of the present age, certain discourses attempt to theorize the nature and possibilities of the global processes along normative and even utopian lines, particularly the World Order Models Project, the critical or emancipatory perspective of Robert W. Cox and Andrew Linklater, and, of course, in global ecology movements such as Greenpeace. In contrast, postmodern approaches celebrate the possibilities unleashed by globalization along less utopian lines and instead point to hybridity, multiple identities, and indeterminacy as a condition of living in the late modern age. Further, there is a growing distinction between a materialist or neo-Marxist position and a more culturalist position in theorizing globalization. Thus, whereas sociological perspectives (and even some postcolonial perspectives such as that of Appadurai) have tended to highlight the cultural basis of globalization, world system and critical theorists, postmodern geographers such as David Harvey, and postcolonial critics such as Ahmad and Dirlik have insisted on the materialist basis of the new global age. This is an important divide that needs to be addressed; indeed it is noteworthy that a materialist such as Wallerstein has made an attempt to incorporate a cultural reading into his world system perspective. Notwithstanding this divide and the distinction between process and prescription, it is clear that in an expansive body of work ranging from social theory and postmodern geography to certain approaches in international relations itself, the category of the global constitutes a crucial element of the contemporary period. Though one might concede that the category of the global has captured a powerful and symptomatic aspect of modernity, it does so unevenly and selectively. Like most theory of a predominantly Western orientation,

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globalization picks up certain processes and developments pertaining to the First World and magnifies them beyond their specifically Western context. Thus obvious symptoms of globalization such as European unification, multimedia communications, and the so-called computer superhighway are held up as key pointers to a world without borders when in fact they exhibit certain characteristics (such as trading strength or computer technology) not present in many parts of the Third World. A central difficulty lies in how to understand the phenomena of modernity. As I have argued, distinctions between modernity and late modernity (and indeed postmodernity) are difficult to delineate, yet they are necessary to avoid a slippage between assumptions relevant to the West and conditions specific to the Third World in all its heterogeneity. Regardless of such distinctions, it can be argued that understandings and definitions of both late modernity and postmodernity, as the latest stages in the evolution of modernity, display an unmistakably Western texture and proceed from a uniquely Western encounter. The implication of this argument is not that the late modern or postmodern is irrelevant to the Third World. Political space, by which I mean the ability of predominantly Western processes to increasingly transcend time and distance, has become truly globalized through the intensified spread of capitalism under late modernity. In this respect, late modern processes cannot help but affect the Third World even if it is not fully plugged into the global Internet. Likewise, to the extent that postmodernity tells us about indeterminacy and contingency under (late) modernity, it has potentially useful insights for understanding modernity in the Third World, although it is useful to keep in mind Zygmunt Bauman’s powerful argument that ambivalence and contingency have always been at the heart of modernity.1 Rather, I argue that the experience of modernity in the Third World in the contemporary era must be characterized carefully, and, or more to the point, scholars need to proceed from a particularly Third World perspective rather than an assumption that what is observable from a Western vantage point is necessarily a global phenomenon, that is, a common, homogeneous experience. I can put forward two working hypotheses on this basis. First, to the extent that one of the central premises of most globalization theories and scenarios is the commonality or homogenization of circumstance—that we are all experiencing global processes in the same manner and indeed at the same time—globalization is profoundly misleading in its characterization of a global condition. To argue that globalization, particularly in its more obvious economic guise, affects the Third World and that we are all part of an interconnected global system is significantly at variance with arguing that globalization produces the same effects. In this respect, there has been an unfortunate tendency in various global projections to flatten the effects of contemporary

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processes on identity and culture so that both descriptions and prescriptions about developments in the Western world are too easily carried over into the Third World generally, often as an oversight. Second, to understand the passage of modernity in Africa and its effect on various nonWestern identities more generally, the fact must be acknowledged that, for the most part, the modernity theorized in the majority of Third World contexts is of a different order from the modernity theorized in many late modern and postmodern accounts. What is required is a spatialized and historical account of modernity that takes into consideration uneven development. As part of this endeavor, postcolonial critics such as Krishna and Dirlik insist on a differentiated modernity in their critique of the relevance of the postmodern for the Third World. Their idea is that the currency of postmodernism in the West proceeds from a profound disillusionment with modernity, a disillusionment that is not necessarily present in or appropriate to developing societies that are still coming to terms with the modern and its challenge to the traditional and the premodern. In this reading, modernity in the Third World produces a different set of demands and opportunities, not the least being, as Dirlik points out, “the attractions of modernization” to vast numbers in Third World populations.2 There is both a divergent temporal and spatial framework in the experience of modernity in the Third World. Although modernity may truly be a global phenomenon in the sense that it touches all contemporary cultures, there is, as Jean Chesneaux has cogently argued, a “modernity differential” between the Third World and the West.3 This differential must not be lost in a consideration of how particular societies experience modern processes. Indeed, a similar differential exists within what can be loosely termed the First World. Although the various processes of globalization are at their most visible and far-reaching here, there are still significant differences in how this globalization is experienced, especially in terms of class and gender. Mike Featherstone, himself a keen disciple of globalization, is aware of this divergence of experience and the attendant difficulty in characterizing the global. He notes a nostalgic element in the response to globalization in the West, visible in the re-creation of local and regional histories and cultures. This has been particularly evident in the architecture and organization of space in inner-city areas (for example, the London Docklands). The postmodern use of pastiche and the playful collaging of styles and traditions in this so-called return to local cultures is, however, particularly evident in what Featherstone terms the “new middle class, especially those who have had higher education or work in the culture industries and the professions.” Presaging my focus on the local and the everyday in Chapters 7 and 8, Featherstone concludes that the picture of globalization, at least within the West, is not necessarily straightforward:

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We therefore have a very uneven picture, the possibility of misreadings and misunderstandings as different class fractions, age and regional groupings mingle together in the same urban sites, consume the same television programmes and symbolic goods. Such groups possess different senses of affiliation to localities and the propriety of engaging in the construction of imagined communities. They utilize goods and services in a range of different ways, and a careful analysis of their everyday work and liminal practices is necessary if we are to discover the range of affiliations to locality which operate.4

Consequently, specific cultures and peoples across both North and South interact with and make sense of modern and global processes differently. In fact, the transformations and dislocations that affect contemporary identities under the banner of the global are both of a different cast and more intense and ambiguous in the various Third World contexts. In this respect, the global frames identity in Africa, but not necessarily in the way envisaged in globalization discourses operating around the motif of homogenization. As mentioned, the global is useful in directing attention toward what is generally distinctive about the late modern age, particularly from a Western angle. However, globalization tends to reinforce the peripheral location of Africa in dominant discourses about the contemporary world and is thus unable to move toward a more specific and fundamental understanding of the everyday navigation of modernity there. How should the global condition be mapped, or, more to the point, how is it mapped in the various discourses that have taken on a global perspective? Those writers committed to a global prospectus broadly agree on the existence of a global condition, although they may differ on its parameters and scope. There is little agreement, however, on more normative questions of social, economic, and political organization, emancipatory value, and questions of gender. The specific concern in this chapter and Chapter 7 is with the characterization of globalization and its implications for the place of Africa in the global system. Although such representations often carry an implicit normative or ideological agenda, this will not be my focus. As noted by Featherstone, the idea that we live in one world has become a cliche.5 What is perhaps missing from accounts of globalization is a sense of its distinctiveness and novelty. To what extent is globalization different from what came before, specifically European imperialism of the nineteenth century? After all, the incorporation of the Third World into the international economy and the international political system was not a result of late modernity. Most of Africa and significant parts of Asia were partitioned and colonized in the wake of the second expansion of Europe. India’s incorporation into the British Empire has an even older history. Similarly, parts of Asia and the Americas (including South and Central

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America) were subject to a much earlier expansion of Europe. From the sixteenth century onward, imperialism brought with it patterns of trade, investment and the extraction of resources, which facilitated a substantial interaction between the West and the non-West. Crucial imports such as modern cities and the nation-state came before late modernity. The city, in particular, plays a pivotal role in globalization scenarios of an integrated global culture. Yet as many geographers have pointed out, colonial cities formed the launching pad for the subsequent inclusion of the South into the world system. Whole societies were made over in the Western image and the city became the terrain upon which boundaries were drawn between West and non-West, a process drawn out in Timothy Mitchell’s excellent study of colonial Egypt and the reordering of Cairo.6 This material is central to the work of world system theorists such as Wallerstein and Anthony King but has not been substantially taken up by sociologists and international relations scholars who have engaged with globalization. The focus in these discourses has been on contemporary global patterns and the intensification of modernity and the greater spread and reach of global forces in the latter half of the twentieth century. Although they have captured something distinctive about the intensified, more accelerated nature of modernity that has made it perhaps more farreaching, this focus has tended to obscure the role of an earlier process of imperial expansion that was the conduit of and precursor to contemporary globalization. This has particular implications for a consideration of Africa that I will take up at the end of the chapter. Thus the uniting thread of the various global scenarios is an attempt to categorize the new, more recent and profound institutional and social transformations that are occurring in the world at large. These transformations include new information and communication technologies, universal consumerism, the massive movements of people between and across states leading to a series (some interlocking) of diasporas on a scale unprecedented in human history, the spread of universal norms and social movements organized around human rights and ecology with both national and global constituencies, and the various and increasing moves toward both regional and global governance. Some feel because of these transformations that the world is shrinking, values are becoming more global, cultures more integrated, and national boundaries either less significant or irrelevant depending on which global scenario they subscribe to. Underpinning all these developments is modernity or, to be more precise, the globalization of modernity beyond its specifically Western borders to encompass non-Western societies such as Japan, the newly industrialized countries, Eastern Europe, and most of the Third World. The feeling is that with the spread of modernity the world is tuned into a shared frequency, particularly in an economic sense.

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Although this focus on a so-called global condition is relatively recent, there is broad agreement across disciplines on the scenario briefly mapped out above. In fact, the emphasis on globality, global culture, and globalization appears to be ubiquitous in academic discourse. According to one of globalization’s central proponents, the sociologist Roland Robertson, “globality is a virtually unavoidable problem of contemporary life”; even explicitly antiglobal movements such as those at the fore of communal and ethnic uprisings are merely a response to globalization.7 Anthony King, whose world economy focus on modern cities and the impact of imperialism and colonization have incorporated a more historically informed and less Western-centric perspective than that of many other global writers, nevertheless argues that the term global has assumed a new urgency. He views the world, particularly in its built environment, as encompassing “one large, interdependent city,” organized through a single, interacting urban system that is the product of a global system of production and division of labor. Echoing Robertson’s famous remark about the world being a “single place,” King points to a greatly increased sense of globalization in the contemporary age.8 He believes this global sense conditions the very canvas of academic discourse. Frank Lechner contends that sociology is undergoing a profound change in response to an emergent global order so that “new core problems spring from a basic awareness among contemporary sociologists that we are now living in a truly global society, in a world-system.”9 Although Lechner hastens to add that this global culture is abstract and open, his insistence on a global focus is mirrored throughout contemporary sociology and social theory, evident particularly in the journal Theory, Culture and Society and its recent edited publications. The editor of this journal, Mike Featherstone, while pointing to the diversity of discourses under the global banner, argues in one of these collections that the globalization process is an extension of global cultural interrelatedness leading to a “global ecumene.”10 The writer most associated with globalization discourses is Robertson. The significant shift in academia toward globalization receives probably its least problematic treatment from him. Having gone perhaps the furthest in globalizing gestures, Robertson argues that the explosion of the use of the adjective global, the higher degree of “global density” and complexity over the last twenty years, and the almost universal reach of modernity mean that there is now no denying his much earlier observation of the world as a “single place.” Indeed, Robertson maintains that the process of globalization is so extensive that in sociological-theoretical terms it should be regarded as subsuming the classical concern in sociology with the transformation of societies, which centered on industrialization, development, and modernization. These are now self-evident features of world society; the task, for Robertson, is to chart and explain their global character.

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It is no longer a question of establishing the credentials of globalization; it is a given for scholars to incorporate into their work. The condition of globality encompasses even world system theory. Although Robertson praises world system theorists as having accomplished “something of significance in emphasizing the idea that the world is a systemic phenomena,” he nevertheless admonishes writers such as Wallerstein and Jameson because they still insist on the primacy of the economic infrastructure in their view of a globalized world rather than globality itself, which includes and transcends the global economy. Thus Robertson is interested in “explicitly globe-oriented ideologies, doctrines and other bodies of knowledge,” which he defines as those that espouse as their central message “a concern with the patterning of the entire world.”11 This recognition of a global culture permits Robertson to construct typologies of the contemporary “global-human condition” and refer to successive phases of globalization. The current phase of globalization (the “uncertainty phase”), which began in the 1960s and has displayed “crises tendencies” in the 1990s, is outlined as follows: the arrival and inclusion of the Third World; the heightening of “global consciousness” in the late 1960s; the increase in the number of global institutions and movements; increasing problems posed to societies by multiculturality and polyethnicity; gender, ethnic, and racial considerations rendering the conception of the individual more complex; a more fluid, post-bipolar international system; the rise of ideas about humankind as a “species-community”; an interest in concepts of a world civil society and world citizenship; and the rise of the “global media village.”12 Sociology has made the running on globalization discourses. Yet outside this circle, much the same pattern of thinking is evident, albeit at times directed to different conclusions. Fredric Jameson’s account of postmodernity or “late capitalism” refers to the “new global space” in which “we can achieve no distance from it,” and subsequently resistance to global forces is disarmed and absorbed.13 Robertson claims that Jameson attunes much of his work to Wallerstein’s world system ideas. As indicated above, world system theory has played a key role in providing the theoretical basis for conceiving the world as globally integrated and has the benefit of a longer historical focus. Although this has mostly constituted a materialist account of the globalization of capitalism and has hence tended to elevate the economic as the key dynamic in the global, of late there has been a significant shift of emphasis, so much so that even Wallerstein now views culture as “the key ideological battleground” of the opposing interests of the modern world capitalist system. Although this view does not signify a complete change of heart in Wallerstein’s understanding of culture, what is fascinating is the manner in which Wallerstein effortlessly weaves “geoculture” into his previously economic-centric model of “geopolitics.”14

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On related terrain but from a critical international relations perspective, Robert W. Cox points to a new “global perestroika,” which is fundamentally an extension of the liberal, free-market economic system across the globe. Although the system is unstable and lacks an “explicit political or authority structure” directing it, there is nevertheless a “new global political structure emerging” that no longer approximates the old Westphalian concept of a system of sovereign states. The new system is instead characterized by a “multilevel structure” underpinned by new global social forces (based on ecology, feminism, peace, and democracy), regional groupings, “world cities,” transnational corporations, and multilateral institutions providing for both order and functional cooperation. Cox views this world order as vulnerable and thus ripe for an emancipatory project revolving around local action. However, this local focus will not be sufficient in itself: “The counterforce to capitalist globalization will also be global, but it cannot be global all at once.”15 In another critical international relations piece, Stephen Rosow finds common meanings and a “common reference world” within a global political space marked by fragmentation and diversity. Whereas this commonality is based on a distinctively Western modernity, the globalizing process, at least at the level of discourse, incorporates into its orbit identities outside the boundaries of the West.16 There is an increasing attention to global issues in international relations as a whole. As already mentioned, much of this focus revolves around the question of the state. This is certainly true of mainstream international relations, which has been forced by the global transformations of the past twenty years to address the challenge that globalization poses to traditional conceptions of state sovereignty and the state system. From the rationalist reworking of realism evident in Hedley Bull and Martin Wight to the neoliberal body of writing evident in the concept of “interdependency” in world politics (in, for example, Nye and Keohane), mainstream international relations has made some attempt to rethink the parameters of the state system in light of the proliferation of actors and processes that move across national boundaries. However, in the majority of such revisions, the state has remained central to the analysis and indeed to future projections of world politics. In this respect, (neo)realist orthodoxy regarding the primacy of the state remains dominant in spite of the increased sophistication and adjustments in perspective. At one level this indicates the adaptive capacity of the realist paradigm and is evident in analyses of the end of the Cold War. In many respects, the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Eastern bloc, rather than provoking a radical reassessment of assumptions and approaches, seem to have reaffirmed many of the key realist articles of faith concerning the behavior of states, the cyclical nature of hegemony, and the appeal of nationalism.17

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Even in critiques of realism, the end of the Cold War and the intensification of globalization have not provoked as radical a rethink of the disciplinary boundaries and agenda of international relations as might have been expected. James Rosenau is exemplary in this regard. As one of the doyens of North American international relations, Rosenau has attempted of late to critically engage emergent discourses such as postmodernism, feminism, and critical theory. Although genuine in his desire to expand the disciplinary scope of international relations, his openness to critical voices is instructive not so much in what it attempts to incorporate as in what it continues to exclude. In a novel edited work entitled Global Voices: Dialogues in International Relations, Rosenau and various other voices of international relations (principally postmodernism and gender) attempt to construct an exchange between different perspectives in international relations around an expanded “global social science,” invoking the dramatic form to promote the idea of a dialogue. Employing the character voice of “SAR” (“Senior American Researcher”), Rosenau dominates the narrative as the critic of realism who is nonetheless concerned to work toward a grand theory of world politics that incorporates a truly global canvass. The end of the Cold War and the decline of U.S. hegemony loom large (typically) in Rosenau’s landscape; the significant other in the text is the feminist voice (represented by Christine Sylvester’s “westfem” and “tsitsi,” that is, “western feminist” and “her third world alter ego/identity”; and Jean Bethke Elshtain’s “SAFS,” that is, “Senior American Feminist Scholar”), with the various postmodern personae of James Der Derian constituting an alternate marginal perspective. Although the presence of tsitsi indicates some space for a Third World voice, in fact, the Third World is largely outside Rosenau’s dialogue. Indeed, tsitsi is merely westfem’s alter ego. Rosenau makes clear this omission in his prologue and justifies it on the basis of “space limitations.”18 Rosenau unintentionally makes manifest the way in which political space is constructed and restricted within certain markers that both include and exclude. Although Rosenau’s omission of the Third World is alluded to almost casually, the fact that it is one of the voices left out is significant, as is Rosenau’s passing comment that the Third World does not constitute one of the “major perspectives” that needed to be “captured” for the purposes of his global dialogue. 19 One could go further and argue that the omission of the Third World is no accident and indeed confirms the criticism of various characters throughout the text that SAR (read Rosenau) employs a North American, hegemonic vantage point in his view of world politics despite the protestations to the contrary. Rosenau limits space not in terms of the restrictions of word limit but in the prioritization of those voices he deems essential to a global dialogue in international relations. Further, he delimits the boundaries of international relations despite his

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stated desire to include critical voices at the margins. Thus, SAR gives the following response when pressed on the claim that he is unconventional regarding realism: “I was unconventional within the parameters of agreement on what constituted international relations as a subject matter separate from other subjects like literary theory or women’s studies. The IR focus is more or less on states as actors, international structures of production and exchange, international regime formation, foreign policy decision-making, and so on.”20 As Sylvester implies, this is no radical departure from the mainstream agenda of international relations. At the more critical edges of international relations, the global has received a sustained and sympathetic reception. Here, a commitment to a global project is evident in the revisioning of international relations; the state no longer operates as the linchpin in prescriptions and analyses of world politics. Thus in the critical theory perspective of Cox and Linklater, for example, there is an attempt to reconstruct the ideals of the Enlightenment and modernity within a global, universal framework that places at the forefront ideas about community, autonomy and global citizenship as a way out of the state impasse. A broad emancipatory project is envisaged as the key to “universal cosmopolitanism” based around social movements and transnational civil societies.21 A similar impulse lies behind the Programme on Multilateralism and the United Nations System initiated by the United Nations University in Tokyo under the coordination of Robert Cox. The concept of multilateralism takes as its focus the transformations of civil society and the democratization of political authority as components in an emerging world order.22 The notion of a global civil society is also central to the work of Richard Falk. Working through the World Order Models Project and various other projects of global governance, Falk views the “visible contours of an emergent global civil society” and the decline of the state and the state system.23 Environmental and economic pressures will lead to a network of institutions and procedures “cumulatively contributing to governance structure at the global level.”24 According to Falk, the world is witnessing a “globalism-from-below,” which refers to the “many facets of transnational democratic initiatives, often given expression by social movements, voluntary associations, and non-governmental organizations and linked in a new configuration identified . . . as the glimmerings of a global civil society.” 25 For Falk, the crucial impetus for this emergent global order is from local sites of political struggle and organization looking beyond state parameters for more universal action and solutions. Other perspectives follow much the same pattern of thinking. In the postcolonial vein, Arjun Appadurai, who has previously cautioned against conflating globalization, which he views as valid enough, with homogenization, writes of a “global force” that is “forever slipping in and through

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the cracks between states and borders.”26 He goes further along the global spectrum with his notion of an emergent postnational world. While advancing certain caveats, Appadurai argues that we are in “the process of moving to a global order in which the nation-state has become obsolete and other formations for allegiance and identity have taken place.” Even the United States, that bastion of patriotism and national allegiance, is “awash with global diasporas” and is increasingly the exemplification of the postnational world.27 Doreen Massey’s postmodern geography critique develops a similar thesis, but it also highlights certain countertendencies and the dangers of universalizing. Although there is no single condition of postmodernity or globality, there has occurred “a truly major re-shaping of the spatial organization of social relations at every level, from local to global. Each geographical ‘place’ in the world is being realigned in relation to the new global realities, their roles within the wider whole are being re-assigned, their boundaries dissolve as they are increasingly crossed by everything from investment flows, to cultural influences, to satellite TV networks.”28 The postcolonial world is caught up in this new globalized space, no matter how diverse and contradictory it may appear. Yet this argument immediately presents an obvious problem. The new global space may encompass both the postcolonial and postnational worlds; however, in important respects, these worlds are far apart. The communal and ethnic upheavals of the last few years in South Asia and Africa (and even in the postnational world itself in the Balkans) suggest that if globalization is to have any purchase for much of the Third World, it cannot be simply on the basis of claims of postnationalism and global civil society. Further, the state is alive and vigorous in many parts of the Third World.29 We need to return here to Chesneaux’s notion of a “modernity differential” in the experience of globalization between North and South. In a consideration of Africa, in particular, the terms modernity and globalization must be used with caution. As various critics of globalization make plain, globalization has fairly obvious and drastic economic consequences for Africa; I will explore this issue in Chapters 7 and 8. These consequences, in turn, have clear cultural implications. This is not difficult to concede considering that an older paradigm concerning the dangers of Western cultural imperialism has advanced much the same argument. The precise relationship between the cultural and material realms of globalization will be explored further in Chapter 7. For now, it will suffice to break down globalization into its component strands and then provide a benchmark for understanding modernity in Africa against which the material on globalization can be ranged. In particular, key areas and test cases that can be drawn on to give a consistency and solidity to the understanding and critique of modernity and globalization in Africa must be specified. Globalization is constantly in danger of becoming a catch-all category that tends to lose any analytical vigor. What is labeled “globalization” is

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mostly a series of contemporaneous, not necessarily compatible processes that have more or less coalesced around the feeling that the world has entered a new historical phase. Globalization can be broken down into the following discrete headings: 1. Economic—related to the developments of late capitalism in production, distribution exchange and investment that have taken on an increasingly monopoly, nonstate character and are believed to structure most of the economies of the world. 2. Governance—referring to the various mechanisms of the UN system and regional integration that increasingly organize governing functions beyond and above the nation-state. 3. Civil society—at times runs parallel to aspects of global governance and involves the spread of universal values and norms around the concepts of human rights, democracy, ecology, gender, and ideas of world citizenship carried forward by a myriad of interlocking, crossnational, nongovernment organizations. Ideas about a universal process of democratization are relevant. 4. Information—proceeds on the basis of the technological developments of late capitalism and refers to the realization of a global media village in which communications and information networks are increasingly integrating the world (at least the Western world) into the same grid. 5. Cultural—includes both older notions of cultural imperialism (cultural transformation as an adjunct to economic globalization) and more contemporary ideas about cultural hybridity and creolization, in which a world or a global culture is emerging, based on interconnected diasporas and increasingly multicultural, cosmopolitan societies. A related factor (although it obviously feeds off economic globalization) is the rise of a global consumerism revolving around Western commodities. Most of these categories clearly intersect; others, such as the economic and civil society components of globalization are not so harmonious. According to a materialist reading of globalization, all these facets basically proceed from the economic nature of late capitalism. However, outside of this materialist perspective, there is much less coherence given to the component processes of globalization. This makes assessment precarious, more so in the context of most African societies, where not all of these aspects of globalization are prominent nor indeed evident. Certainly elites in most Third World societies take part in the globalization of governance, culture, economics, information, and civil society: They have delegates and officials in Geneva and New York at the various UN agencies; they have access to computers and other sources of global information;

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they work and sometimes sit on the boards of mutlinational companies; and they are part of the crosscultural traffic in music, fashion, and ideas. Even below the elite level, some Africans are involved in the global civil society through their activism in human rights, development, and ecology movements, whether it be Oxfam, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, or the many local affiliates of such groups. Yet these efforts still constitute a small minority. In any case, a person’s involvement in a social movement and civil society does not mean that he or she ceases to be subject to the perils of the state or communal division, for that matter. In the realm of everyday life that affects the mass of ordinary people, the intensity and reach of the facets of globalization listed earlier are not always so keenly felt or experienced. It is difficult to deny the impact of economic forces, from the onset of colonial modernity to late capitalism. Beyond this realm, particularly in most of Africa, globalization tends to have much less purchase. Even at the economic level, although Massey is correct in pointing to a world in which boundaries are crossed by investment and cultural flows and technological transfers, modernity in Africa has a more specific and perhaps older character. After all, modernity has been a significant process in Africa before its more intensified manifestation under late capitalism. Its antecedents can be found in the second expansion of Europe and imperialism. The arrival of the modern in imperial times and its interaction with indigenous cultures have a bearing on contemporary understandings of globalization. In this respect, the globalization of modernity in Africa can be located with reference to the following processes: the breakdown of the subsistence economy and self-sufficient village with the introduction of market mechanisms and the cash crop economy; the move from a predominantly rural and village lifestyle to one now increasingly anchored in the city and urban centers; the greater emphasis on the individualist ethic and its attendant effect on more traditional notions of community; and the erosion of indigenous belief systems in the face of Western religions and philosophies. This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor are some of the factors unique to Africa (for instance, the movement from the village to the city has occurred in most parts of the Third World). Yet by delimiting the precise nature of modernity’s passage into African societies, the implications of globalization for African cultures and identities can be more accurately understood. Not only can certain reference points be identified that are so Western that they do not connect to Africa, but the manner in which modernity has been mediated in Africa may be observed, bringing into view the key themes of agency and ambivalence; a comparative historical perspective may also be given to the analysis. In Chapter 7 I attempt to characterize the unglobal nature of many globalization discourses, in particular how the emphasis on global space has worked to restrict Third World space, in particular Africa’s place. In

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doing so I provide a more sustained critique of some of the key premises of the globalization discourses surveyed in this chapter. In Chapter 8 I focus on the manner in which modernity is consumed in African societies and seek to connect various Western notions of place and subjectivity to specific episodes of African navigation of global, modern processes. My hope is to establish a bridge between Western theoretical perspectives and the politics of the everyday in Africa and, in the process, delineate the scope and significance of globalization.

NOTES 1. See Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). 2. Arif Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism,” p. 337. See also Sankaran Krishna, “The Importance of Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations,” Alternatives, 18, 1993, p. 388. 3. Jean Chesneaux, Brave Modern World: The Prospects for Survival (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), p. 57. 4. Mike Featherstone, “Global and Local Cultures,” in Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, George Robertson, and Lisa Tickner, eds., Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 179–180. 5. Featherstone, “Global and Local Cultures,” p. 170. 6. See Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 7. Roland Robertson, “Globality, Global Culture, and Images of World Order,” in Hans Haferkamp and Neil J. Smelser, eds., Social Change and Modernity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), p. 409. 8. Anthony D. King, Global Cities: Post-Imperialism and the Internationalization of London (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 4, and Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spatial Formations of the World Urban System (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 2, 100. 9. Frank J. Lechner, in William H. Swatos Jr., Religious Politics in Global and Comparative Perspective (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989), “Cultural Aspects of the Modern World-System,” p. 11. 10. Mike Featherstone, “Global Culture: An Introduction,” in Featherstone, ed., Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (London; Newbury Park, CA; and New Delhi: Sage 1990), p. 6. 11. Robertson, “Globality, Global Culture, and Images of World Order,” pp. 395, 396, 403, 405. 12. Roland Robertson, “Mapping the Global Condition: Globalization as the Central Concept,” in Featherstone, ed., Global Culture, p. 27. See also his attempt to construct theoretical typologies of images of world order in Robertson, “Global Culture, Globality, and Images of World Order,” pp. 404–409. 13. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991), p. 49. 14. Immanuel Wallerstein, Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971; Paris: Editions

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de la Maison des Sciences L’Hommes, 1991), p. 166 and passim. For a critique of this conversion to culture, see Roy Boyne, “Culture and the World-System” in Featherstone, ed., Global Culture. See also Wallerstein’s reply in the same volume, “Culture Is the World-System: A Reply to Boyne.” 15. Robert W. Cox, “Global Perestroika,” in Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch, eds., The Socialist Register 1992 (London: Merlin, 1992), pp. 30, 34–41. 16. Stephen J. Rosow, “The Forms of Internationalization: Representations of Western Culture on a Global Scale,” Alternatives, 15(3), Summer 1990, pp. 288, 293, 294. 17. See, for example, John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security, 15(1), Summer 1990, who displays an unashamed nostalgia for the certainty of the Cold War and confidently expects a return to power politics after the warm inner glow of the new world order. 18. James N. Rosenau, ed., Global Voices: Dialogues in International Relations (Boulder, CO, San Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993), p. x. 19. Ibid., p. x. 20. Ibid., p. 37. 21. See Richard Devetak’s overview of critical theory perspectives in “The Project of Modernity and International Relations Theory,” Millennium, 24 (1), Spring 1995, pp. 35–36. 22. See, for example, the first volume in the MUNS series, which tackles the somewhat conventional role of the state system in the emerging global order, Yoshikazu Sakamoto, ed., Global Transformation: Challenges to the State System (Tokyo, New York, Paris: United Nations University Press, 1994). I should note that the publishing of books is not the sole focus of MUNS. As outlined by Cox, the MUNS programme has built up a network of scholars committed to the study of multilateralism and the world order. . . . This network may prove to be its main legacy. The network embraces senior and junior scholars, people from the South and North, women and men. . . . A particular point has been to encourage younger scholars, among whom lies the promise of continuing development of the intellectual process initiated through MUNS. Young academics and graduate students . . . have been invited as participants to the various symposia convened under the auspices of MUNS. . . . The network will continue the initiative of MUNS beyond the termination of its formal existence as a UNU-financed programme. (p. xi) 23. Richard Falk, Explorations at the Edge of Time: The Prospects for World Order (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, in association with the United Nations University Press, 1992), p. 103. 24. Ibid., p. 123. 25. Ibid., p. 124. 26. Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in Featherstone, ed., Global Culture, pp. 307, 366. 27. Arjun Appadurai, “Patriotism and Its Futures,” Public Culture, 5(3), 1993, pp. 421, 422, 424. 28. Doreen Massey, “A Place Called Home?” New Formations, 17, Summer 1992, p. 6. 29. See the essay by Beverley Blaskett and Loong Wong “Manipulating Space in a Postcolonial State: The Case of Malaysia,” in Joseph A. Camilleri, Anthony P.

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Jarvis, and Albert J. Paolini, eds., The State in Transition: Reimagining Political Space (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995), for an account of how a vigorous postcolonial state such as that in Malaysia can manipulate political space to suit its own ends. This, at times, entails restricting outside processes or at other times turning them to the state’s advantage.

7 Globalizing the World and Incorporating the Third World

The canvas of postcolonialism is replete with others, difference, margins, and subaltern resistance: It is a discourse that is obviously Third Worldist. One of its central shortcomings, according to critics such as Ahmad and Dirlik, has been an excessively discursive approach that takes insufficient account of asymmetrical relations of power between North and South within the broader context of global capitalism. In short, postcolonialism ignores the phenomena of globalization, particularly its economic manifestation. However valid this criticism, it is perhaps not surprising, given their radically different starting points, that postcolonialism is antithetical to globalization discourses. Whereas postcolonialism proceeds from the assumption that the various others outside the Western orbit are in some form of resistance against the West’s hegemony, globalization proceeds from the acceptance of the world as a single place in which previous distinctions such as East and West, and even North and South, are being increasingly subsumed within a larger totality, with global processes as their pivot. At a very basic level, one gestures toward the particular, the other embraces the universal. The place of the Third World, and in particular Africa, is quite different under both paradigms. Whatever its limitations, postcolonialism attempts to foreground the Third World. Under globalization, however, Africa is mostly condemned to invisibility, which is ruptured only by Third World critics who resist the incorporations and repressions of many globalization scenarios. Yet despite such voices of dissent, there is mostly a convergence on the basic premise of globalization: that political space has become globalized and consequently subject positions and cultural particularities make sense increasingly in relation to a global reference point. Whereas globalization discourses are characterized by a heterogeneity of perspectives in which the accent regarding the extent and reach of the global, not to mention the implications to be drawn, varies, they 147

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coalesce around the category of the global as the key defining feature of late modernity. In this regard, globalization challenges us to make sense of all contemporary experience, in particular identity, with reference to the condition of globality. In discourses about global culture and globality, Africa becomes incorporated, repressed, and homogenized. In this respect, ironically, it mirrors the fate of the Third World in international relations, both traditional and postmodern.1 Directed as it is primarily to an understanding of the First World and encased in a Western epistemology, globalization is evident only at the margins of international relations. Although this is particularly the case with sociological perspectives, it is no less true of other discourses that have attempted to embody a global overview in their revision of traditional international relations; in particular, world system theories, the World Order Models Project, and critical theory approaches, among others. These discourses, unlike perhaps sociological perspectives, are not unknown to international relations. In fact, writers such as Falk and Linklater explicitly define themselves as international relations scholars. They remain marginal, however, because of their specifically non-statecentric approach and their underlying brief, whether normative or theoretical, that the global better frames the contemporary structure of world politics than does the national. They challenge international relations to rethink the narrow boundaries of the discipline; the inside/outside logic that R. B. J. Walker views as so constricting and artificial. 2 The crux of disagreement remains the role of the state. However, there is common ground. It can be argued that both international relations and globalization discourses share a universalist perspective and Eurocentric grounding, and consequently, their blind spot remains an appreciation of particular identities and cultures in the Third World. The danger of embracing globalization as a means of rereading international relations is that, however useful and overdue this critique may be in reconsidering the state’s centrality, it results in the reinscription of a marginalized Third World. In this respect, the Third World, however diminished the utility of the term, 3 is a salutary sign of discomfort for the various scenarios and projections advanced in globalization discourses. My argument in this chapter is that a focus on global space, though it enlarges the field of vision in world politics, simultaneously loses sight of the specifics and particularities of places such as those in Africa that may not conform to the overall picture. This argument proceeds on two fronts: an exploration of how Africa is an afterthought in globalization in that so much of what is presumed to be happening globally is mostly read off the First World; and an attempt to answer the challenge posed by Third World/Marxist critiques that focus on the material basis of globalization. My hope in the latter respect is to bridge the material and subjective understandings of how global space affects Africa.

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So much of the discussion about globalization is couched in terms of an expanded spatial terrain in which the world is increasingly interconnected. It is perhaps not coincidental that the increased emphasis on globalization has been accompanied by a focus on spatiality. At precisely the historical moment that we witness a turn to globalization, space and spatiality have come to the fore in contemporary academic inquiry. By way of social theory and especially postmodern geography, the “spatial vogue” has served to renovate the architecture of social and political analysis, so much so that Michael Keith and Steve Pile claim that politics can be seen as the “invocation of spatiality.”4 Certainly, spatial metaphors have come to dominate the language of analysis: mapping, landscape, place, (subject) position, location, situation or situated, center/margin, inside/outside. Space is important in two particular ways. First, the emphasis on space has gone hand in hand with a rethinking of politics along global lines. Indeed, one could argue that the idea of space, in both its metaphorical and material senses, enables a conception of global politics. Thus it is no accident that both Jameson and Harvey argue that the triumph of space over time is particular to postmodernity, by which they mean that space is implicated in the very processes of globalization.5 To think along global lines is to invoke politics as space, and an understanding of contemporary political space is increasingly the invocation of globalization. Second, space is constitutive of identity, particularly in the interaction between the local and global. Liz Bondi reiterates this when she reflects that one consequence of the centrality of spatial metaphors of place, location, and positionality is that the traditional question of identity politics—“Who am I?”—becomes “Where am I?”6 Place thus replaces essence as the basis of contemporary identity. How is this appreciation of the spatial nature of politics relevant to my attempt to locate the place of Africa in globalization discourses? Spatiality concerns itself with two key interactions that are central to this book: the relationship between the local and the global under modernity and the interaction between the material and the cultural/subjective in globalization. In this respect, an understanding of space can shed light on the local/ global, material/cultural intersections, if only to confirm their complexity and problematic nature. Indeed, it is important to concede the complex nature of spatiality. Pointing to the spatial basis of politics does not in itself resolve perennial questions of political belonging and being. If anything, it reminds us that politics is inherently contested and in the making. Massey tells us that despite the gratification with which she (as a geographer) looks on the embrace of spatiality in political analysis, she is still uneasy about the way in which the terms space and spatiality are used.7 Keith and Pile claim that spatial metaphors are always going to be problematic.8 Importing space into the analysis brings with it its own difficulties and controversies. Notwithstanding these problems, it is useful to chart the local/ global, material/cultural intersections as aspects of the spatial nature of

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contemporary politics, opening out to the concept of consumption in Chapter 8. Chapter 6 outlined some of the literature suggesting that political space has become more global in the latter part of the twentieth century. In this respect, globalization proceeds on the basis of a truism. However, much theorizing on this point assumes a homogeneity and displays a particularized vantage point that tend to make globalization discourses decidedly unglobal. To claim that we live in a more globalized space should not imply a standardization of experience. Global space is not one-dimensional. The global canvas is spatially complex and encompasses a heterogeneity of circumstance and position. In spatial terms, we witness a series of “multiple spatialities” that, due to the processes of globalization, crisscross along a spectrum that runs from the local (village, suburb, marketplace) to the global (CNN, transnational corporations, free trade zones). Like the identities it helps shape, space is not fixed or immanent. According to Massey, space is constructed out of simultaneous interrelations from the local to the global level; it is created out of “vast intricacies,” “incredible complexities,” and interlockings of networks of relations that, crucially, “can be intimately local or expansively global, or anything in between.” For Massey, this interlocking of the local and the global is possible because of the simultaneity of spatial relations under globalization, that is, the fact that relations and processes that are classified as global have the capacity of occurring at the same time at both the local and global levels.9 Foucault earlier made a similar point: “We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and the far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at the moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is . . . of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein.”10 Yet unlike Foucault’s privileging of space over time, Massey insists that space and time cannot be separated in political analysis (a tendency she notes in recent social theory). It is precisely because spatiality and temporality cannot be conceptualized “as the absence of the other” that the local and the global can be viewed as intimately linked.11 Yet to claim that globalization discourses are unglobal with reference to the category of the local takes us only part of the way to a nuanced conceptualization of global space. There is a danger in pointing to a local/ global nexus by which the rubrics of the “local” and the “global” have been set up as discrete and dichotomous levels that monopolize political space. To claim that they interlock does not preclude other possibilities along the spectrum; that is, the very space of the in between referred to earlier. The local-global relationship is itself not one-dimensional or exclusionary. According to Keith and Pile: “It may be that there is more to space than merely being in the center or confined to the margin. Indeed,

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space can be seen to be full of gaps, contradictions, folds and tears.”12 The contradictory nature of space indicates that the outcomes of various local and global encounters are not obvious or predictable. Further, the “powergeometry” of globalization, the fact that different people in different places experience time-space compression (that is, late modernity) differently and unequally,13 means that there are no preordained positions under globalization. Even within what are conveniently labeled the “local” and the “global” levels, there are internal differences and conflicts. In other words, there are differentiated positions and multiple relations within the local/global nexus, leading to often unintended consequences. We do not remain rigidly confined to our “territorial choice,” precluding other combinations of subjectivity and community.14 Even within the margin, as bell hooks has claimed, there is a certain “radical openness.”15 It is this very openness at the heart of the more globalized space of modernity that complicates the understanding of the local-global relationship and renders many globalization discourses simplistic and unhelpful to an analysis of Africa’s place within the global. The turn to a spatial understanding of politics and globalization appears to be part of the wider postmodern move to deconstruct received notions of self and society. On first glance, this move seems to confirm the move away from certain material realities in world politics toward more cultural and subjective phenomena. However, what is noteworthy about the spatial vogue is that, for the most part, it has been carried forward by neo-Marxist writers such as Jameson, Harvey, and Massey, who seek to understand political space in both the metaphorical and material senses. Indeed, many critics have pointed to the fact that space is simultaneously real and metaphorical so that the interconnectedness of both must be understood.16 In this context, political space encompasses both a real and a representational basis. Space is at once located in specific material contexts and geographically mobile; contextualized and grounded, yet freefloating and transgressive (that is, it reaches across established borders and boundaries). It constitutes both a sense of place and position and a more symbolic, imaginary realm of signification and belonging. Keith and Pile use the example of the West: “A description of economic development but also an imagined locus of a particular form of rationality, sometimes reified by caricature in postcolonial inquiry. Symbolically at the heart of global power, ‘the West’ is a linguistic condensation of the globally powerful.”17 Presumably one could design a similar dual understanding of the Third World, albeit with appropriate adjustments to the properties ascribed to the West. Understanding the simultaneity of space as both representational and material is the key dilemma for both Harvey and Massey. For Harvey, although relations of difference and identity cannot be abstracted from

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broader material circumstances, the importance of “situatedness” and “positionality” (that is, the particular) is beyond dispute.18 All knowledge is situated and universal, based on material processes and imaginary constructions. According to Harvey, it is important to understand not merely how places “acquire material qualities” but how they are evaluated “through activities of representation,” so that “our understanding of places here gets organized through the elaboration of some kind of mental map of the world which can be invested with all manner of personal or collective hopes and fears.” He continues: Representations of places have material consequences in so far as fantasies, desires, fears and longings are expressed in actual behaviour. Evaluative schemata of places, for example, become grist to all sorts of policy-makers’ mills. Places in the city get red-lined for mortgage finance; the people who live in them get written off by city hall as worthless, in the same way that much of Africa gets depicted as a basket-case. The material activities of place construction may then fulfil the prophecies of degradation and dereliction. Similarly, places in the city are dubbed as “dubious” or “dangerous,” again leading to patterns of behaviour, both public and private, that turn fantasy into reality. The political-economic possibilities of place (re)construction are, in short, highly coloured by the evaluative manner of place representation.19

In this respect, the material and representational interact in much the same manner as the local and the global. This interaction further reinforces the idea of the complexity of space. My contention here is that the material and the subjective or representational are part of an interactive process whereby each resides in the other. The argument is similar to Foucault’s idea of the power/knowledge nexus and is exemplified by the quote from Harvey above. One dimension without the other is impoverished because it cannot do justice to the complex manner in which individuals and communities and structures and processes interact with one another and how both are conditioned by representation and discourse. A brief detour into social theory will be useful in fleshing this contention out. The old divide between agency and structure in social theory has mostly given way to an appreciation of how they enter into a dialectic with each other in society. Giddens, for example, has advanced his structuration thesis to account for this dialectic. Because of its ability to condition human affairs, Giddens is willing to give structure its due, and he acknowledges that structures certainly form “personality” and “society.” But, he argues, in neither case do they do so exhaustively, “because of the significance of unintended consequences of action, and because of unacknowledged conditions of actions.” 20 Lois McNay’s feminist reading of Foucault advances a similar thesis and goes further in granting human agency an active role: “The relationship between structure and agency must be grasped as dynamic, not

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static; existing structures are reproduced by human agents who modify and change these structures to differing degrees as they are shaped by them.”21 The connecting rod between material structures and human subjectivity is representation. Foucault is perhaps the most significant writer to have made this connection between discourse, structure, and subjectivity. In his earlier work Foucault can be criticized for allowing his power/ knowledge nexus (the conduit of discourse) to swallow human agency and to privilege material structures such as the clinic and the prison. The discursive became all important, and although it broke with structuralist analyses of society, it inadequately theorized the space for subjectivity. In the last two volumes of his History of Sexuality, however, Foucault goes a long way to bringing the self and the subjective back into an analysis of how social systems are constituted. In The Use of Pleasure, for example, Foucault writes of the various “practices of the self” or “techniques of the self” that subjects in classical Greece utilized in their mediation of social and ethical codes of conduct and systems of thought. In this schema, subjects were able to “monitor, test, improve and transform” themselves in an interaction with the dominant ideological processes of the times.22 In The Care of the Self, Foucault extends his notion of subjectivity by identifying the “cultivation of the self” and the “arts of existence” through which subjects exercise “self-knowledge” as a social practice capable of modifying prevailing systems of power/knowledge.23 Foucault is thus useful in linking the constitution of subjectivity and agency to social practices and systems and their expression in discourse. We can begin to see how the subjective (expressed here as human agency and cultural practice) resides in the very fabric of the social and the systemic and how in a very real sense each feeds off the other. However, the material still needs to be confronted in the sense that it is employed by Marxist critics as signifying economic inequality, lack of access to resources, endemic poverty, and so on. The dialectic posited in social theory between structure and agency takes us part of the way in conceiving how agents are capable of action and reflection in a political space involving material inequalities. Yet there is clearly a need to proceed with caution when applying this dialectic to the African context, where the possibilities of Foucault’s “practices of the self” and the “arts of existence” are circumscribed. Within this context, subjects in Africa and the Third World in general cannot simply wish away barriers of inequality and asymmetrical relations of power. These are part of the material realities of the subjects’ circumstance, realities that have become intensified in the local/global intersection of globalization. However, such material factors do not deny a space for navigation and innovation on the part of individuals and cultures in marginalized positions of power. Globalized modernity in all its dimensions provides for both local indigenization and material

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marginalization. They need not be mutually exclusive and, following Harvey, can be viewed as mutually constitutive. Thus, globalization can be understood in part as a spatial phenomenon that has produced both global effects and an awareness of the particular and the local.24 As part of this greater interface between the local and the global, globalization has both a material and a subjective dimension, in particular at the level of how individual subjects or cultures understand and consume modernity. To privilege one over the other is to simplify the nature of global space unnecessarily. Understanding the spatial nature of much globalization thinking enables us to grasp how it is that Africa might be viewed as part of a global network of relations despite the complications of time, distance, history, material circumstance, and, indeed, geography in its traditional sense. Yet the widespread conviction that we live in this space of globalization prompts a crucial question: Is it possible to overglobalize a world situation in which certain global processes are of increased and perhaps increasing significance? The attempt to arrive at a holistic understanding of recent transformations, particularly evident in Robertson’s desire to construct typologies and phases of globalization, too often strays into the overdetermined. To be fair, other writers advance certain qualifications in order to mitigate a false universalism. Featherstone, for one, emphasizes diversity and plurality in his account. Global culture is to be understood in a plural sense; there is little prospect of a unified world culture, even if the import of much of his analysis would seem to suggest otherwise. Appadurai, for instance, reminds us that globalization is constituted around disjuncture as much as homogenization and conjuncture of world cultures and ideologies, although one could reasonably point out that his emphasis on disjuncture has as much to do with his explicitly postmodern reading than with a sense of what is happening on the ground in various parts of the world. Like Cox, Appadurai at least recognizes that the global forces are inherently unstable and hence not necessarily facilitating a smooth passage toward a standardized global (read Western) culture. Even Robertson allows for uncertainty in the current phase of globalization, particularly in light of the arrival and inclusion of the Third World. Yet the broad brush, the sweeping generalization, the creeping ethnocentrism—the last no more evident than in Robertson’s notion of the “arrival” and “inclusion” of the Third World into contemporary globalization—too often mark such writing. At times allowance is made for the local, some space is accorded to the particular, yet the move is more often than not abstract, the reference nonspecific. A good example of such is Featherstone. He rightly points to the problem of who is defining the local culture, and for what purposes. He goes on to claim: “We are slowly becoming aware that the West is both a particular in itself and also constitutes the universal point of reference in relation to which others recognize

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themselves as particularities.” 25 Unfortunately, the universal point of reference becomes just that; it subsumes the many particulars. Featherstone admits as much in positing the other as particular only in relation to the universal West. The specific point of reference, the West, becomes universalized. Particularities are also left out of account in Robertson’s schema. Thus, his claim that gender, ethnic, and racial considerations are rendering the concept of the individual more complex is made from the Western standpoint. Where exactly is this concept of the individual complicated? That ethnic and racial expressions are seen as a problem for the ethic of individualism can only proceed from an understanding that the concept of the individual is somehow the universal norm. Yet if one looks to Africa and India, for example, one could plausibly argue that individual considerations have rendered older concepts of community, caste, and ethnicity complex. This argument is the import of much fictional writing, from Chinua Achebe to Vikram Seth. If the tables are switched in this fashion, it is difficult to view the current phase of globalization with the same coherence and connectivity as Robertson does. Indeed, one can legitimately ask to what extent are racial or ethnic identities in Africa and the Third World a product of contemporary globalization? Robertson is partly correct in suggesting that the dislocations brought about by economic globalization have fueled ethnic and racial explosions. The tensions that have arisen between the global imperatives of oil exploration and drilling and local agitation for indigenous rights in southern Nigeria are a case in point. By the same token, one would have to concede that such expressions of indigenous or tribal identity have a dynamic that predates contemporary global processes. The problems of particularity and standpoint especially become evident in Feathersone’s analysis of the reception of globalization. Despite his awareness of difference and the space of the local, his outline of possible positions within the global framework provides a useful analysis on the precarious position of Africa and the Third World in globalization discourses. Featherstone sets out with the bold statement that the world is witnessing the “beginnings of a shift in the global balance of power away from the West,” only to return to this claim later and admit that such a shift, significant as it is as an indication of the postmodern celebration of non-Western others, will not necessarily benefit the Third World in any material sense. Indeed, in light of the rise of Japan and East Asia (as the most visible non-Western powers), the Third World may well be confronted by a “further source of globalizing and universalizing images which provoke a new range of problems and defensive strategies.” 26 He goes on to argue that the notions of global and local are relational and that at least one consequence of globalization has been the increased awareness

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of diversity in the world and the extensive range of local cultures. Within this relational framework, he sets out a range of different responses to the process of globalism, “which could be heightened or diminished depending upon specific historical phases within the globalization process.” 27 These responses, which Featherstone stresses are by no means exhaustive, can be summarized as follows: “immersion” in a local culture that may be faced with “erecting barriers” or resistance to cultural flows or, alternately, “ignoring” the outside, “being left alone” and “remaining undiscovered”; seeking a return to one’s “roots” and searching for “authenticity” after becoming disillusioned with modernity, which may draw hostility and suspicion from those locals who have not modernized; the rediscovery of ethnicity and regional cultures in Western societies that allow and even encourage multiculturalism, thus allowing a moving backward and forward between ethnic and national cultures; the experience of expatriates who travel and take their local cultures with them, seeking comfort in stereotypes of home and thus limiting intercultural encounters; a cosmopolitan mediating of various cultures mostly by those whose geographical mobility and professional status allow them to live, work, and move in “third cultures”; and the “post-nostalgic,” “post-tourist” cosmopolitans who have forgone the pursuit of the authentic and real and instead are content to “experiment with cultural play,” “packaging and representing the exotica of other cultures and ‘amazing places’ and different traditions to audiences eager for experience” (mostly more highly educated and middle class).28 What is striking about this range of responses to globalization is the very narrow, Western-related nature of their articulation. Only one response, immersion in local culture, is specifically related to the Third World, and even so, the characterization of the local/global nexus is overly dichotomous and, at least in regard to the strategy of being left alone, fanciful. Although it is true that the search for authenticity, the expatriate romanticizing of home, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and even the postnostalgic response are available to people in the Third World, only a very small number there make up what Chesneaux calls the “modernity jet-set” who are able to exploit such elevated pursuits. 29 Aside from the postcolonial diaspora in the West, most of the responses outlined are available to people living and working in the First World or traveling between the First and Third Worlds. The rediscovery of ethnicity and regional cultures may seem novel to a Western audience, but not to Africans and Indians. What Featherstone outlines is a particularly Western, postmodern range of experiences under globalization. A further indication of this is his attempt to account for the turn to otherness in the West and the related shift of power toward the non-West. The contemporary fascination with

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the other may merely constitute a Western realignment of its self-image and hegemony: Hence the discovery of the different voices of a wider and more complex range of localities and modes of otherness, may occur at particular phases of a process in which powerful establishments are forced to recognize and acknowledge the claims of outsider groups. This need not mean that a dramatic levelling has taken place, rather it may point more to a struggle to reconfigure the conceptual apparatus to take account of the implications of this shift: a reconfiguration in which notions of detail, particularity and otherness are used to point to the difficulty of conceptually handling a greater degree of cultural complexity.30

In other words, it is a response to a specifically postmodern problem of understanding and representation. Detail and particularity figure only as indicators of increased complexity; rather than problematize globalization, they merely confirm its expanded significance. This is the realm of the global signifier, with the local illuminating the intensified glow of globalization. Particularity may be acknowledged, but once again the reference point is the West as universal. This tendency to view globalization from the vantage point of the West has led critics such as Massey and Stuart Hall to note how “un-global” is the perspective from which the nature of globalization has been analyzed.31 How global processes are played out on the ground in a specific locale, be it Lagos, Dar es Salaam, or the myriad of villages in sub-Saharan Africa, or in the so-called Fourth World conditions evident in Central and South American cities such as Mexico City and São Paulo, is left out of account despite the implicit assumption in most analyses that the impact is pervasive and homogeneous. No one doubts that globalized modernity is a real phenomenon in these places, albeit at times modernity may constitute anything from Green Revolution technology to the humble transistor radio or bicycle rather than CNN, the Internet, or the TGV fast train. Although relations of space and time are effected by all of these modern innovations, obviously there is a vast difference in the degree of, not to mention a significant economic differential in terms of access to, these technologies. Even so, the mere presence of such tools of modernity does not inevitably result in a uniform reception. Nor, in fact, does the presence of new technologies in Third World locations necessarily affect local populations directly. A good example is the French space base of Kourou in French Guiana. Although such space technology is often said to bring the world together in making us aware of our common destiny on “Spaceship Earth,” the simple fact remains that only the rich and powerful can finance and maintain such projects, and they remain outside the reach of the poorer countries, even those that host them. Indeed, as Chesneaux points

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out, such projects may work to “consolidate the international hierarchies of our planet”: From above the clouds we can observe, with all the detail of a laboratory test, the Amazon on fire, Abyssinia starving, Afghanistan suffering, Armenia struck by an earthquake at the very moment the Mir satellite station was proudly overflying it and sending its triumphal messages to the open-mouthed gapers below. From high in the sky, the wretched of the earth seem far away.32

The inability to view globalization from a more grounded, local perspective is a significant shortcoming in globalization. Ulf Hannerz has highlighted this shortcoming in a series of critiques that foreground the local. He argues that a central difficulty in assessing the influence and effects of global cultural flows is trying to understand the sense that people in a given place make of these flows. Assumptions are often made without much direct experience. “The meaning of the transnational cultural flows is thus in the eye of the beholder; what he sees we generally know little about.”33 The consequences of these processes also need to be understood as they unfold over time. Elsewhere, Hannerz posits the same problem in broader terms: “There is surprisingly little of a postcolonial ethnography of how Third World people see themselves and their society, its past, present and future, and its place in the world; a cultural analysis of their fantasies and what they know for a fact.”34 A global analysis, without a specific and nuanced sense of time and place, merely replicates the Western experience. Massey touches on this dilemma in her analysis of approaches to the “time-space compression” under postmodernity. Noting that this concept tends to embody “a very restricted, one-sided, social context” that remains unexamined (not so much by the author of this concept, David Harvey, but by others’ utilization of Harvey’s idea), she traces the postmodern nature of this temporal and spatial compression in the late twentieth century to a different time and space: [There] is the question of to what extent its current characterization represents very much a Western, colonizer’s point of view. The sense of dislocation which so many writers on the subject feel at the sight of a once well-known local street now lined with a succession of cultural imports— the pizzeria, the kebab house, the branch of the middle-eastern bank— must have been felt for centuries, though from a different point of view, by colonized peoples all over the world as they watched the importation of, maybe British (from new forms of transport to liver salts and custard powder); later US products, as they learned to eat wheat instead of rice or corn, to drink Coca-Cola, just as today we try our enchiladas.35

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The casual, almost innocent use of “enchiladas” to illustrate Massey’s observation of Western theorizing about modernity points both to the critical role of place and location (and hence of space) and the crucial interplay between the cultural and the material that lie at the heart of any discussion of globalization. At first glance, Massey’s use of the terms seems an ironic confirmation of her (and Hannerz’s) very own criticism of how globalization discourses tend to privilege the cultural experience of the Western writer surveying global processes from a First World perspective. After all, the use of Mexican enchiladas to signify the foreign at the heart of the West would seem a particular North American experience. The universal “we” that Massey alludes to in this respect is not necessarily inclusive of all the Western world (say, for example, Australia). By the same token, although the cultural experience of the Mexican other may not be universal, enchiladas as a commodity product appropriated by Western transnational corporations and exported to most parts of the World (First, Third, and ex-Second) is indicative of a global material process that cuts across any cultural logic (that is, the consumption of a staple Mexican foodstuff in a country such as Australia, where there is almost no history of direct contact with Mexico and very few Mexican migrants). Aside from the obvious importance of vantage point, at this stage I wish to highlight the complex relationship between material realities and cultural/identity politics. Far from trying to privilege one over the other, I reiterate that what is evident is an interactive process. Even if the existence of a global condition is conceded, the key question remains, where exactly do Africa and the Third World in general fit into this globalization scenario? Featherstone’s Western representation of the local has already been explored. There seems to be three basic representations of the Third World’s place in late modernity. Africa is mostly ignored in this literature. Certain references are made to a cross-cultural traffic in music and fashion, but aside from these attempts to suggest an African presence in global space (in Hannerz and Friedman, for example), Africa simply does not figure in accounts of globalization, except as an adjunct to the Third World in general. Even in this way, the understanding of the Third World tends to be amorphous and poorly informed. It is thus necessary to explore conceptions of the place of the Third World in globalization discourses that by extension include, however tenuously, the African continent. I will then return to a consideration of how globalization is to be understood as it impinges on Africa. First, the Third World is mostly either incorporated by default or simply ignored. In this respect it becomes a significant blind spot in global projections, a repository for what Jameson views as the “political unconscious” of the global narrative: silences and omissions that act as “repressions” or “strategies of containment.” 36 Robertson’s “inclusion” of the

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Third World in the latest phase of globalization is one such instance. Similarly, Cox points to the liberal/laissez-faire paradigm, which preaches the virtues of a global free market and the necessity for various structural adjustment programs, as an instance of incorporating the non-Western world into the global camp. Even when the Third World is incorporated into the new globality on its own terms, there is an insufficient attempt to distinguish its radical heterogeneity. The result is that the Third World is understood quite selectively and with reference to what are essentially atypical examples, such as Brazil, Mexico, or the newly industrialized countries. The Third World is thus flattened into a single dimension and read off mostly unrepresentative case studies. What is distinctive about Hong Kong or parts of Brazil does not equate to much of sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the problem relates to the inadequacy of the rubric “Third World,”37 particularly when Africa is considered. Cities across developing countries may appear, as King argues, locked into an interconnecting global space, yet this is not true of all cities or all parts of these cities, nor of the many villages and towns outside their orbit. There are different modernities operating in these sites that do not yet make for one world. One needs to keep in mind that it is only of late that more people across the globe live in the city rather than the countryside. In fact, if the First World were removed from the picture, the countryside would still predominate as the most common form of modern living. In Africa, the move to the cities has been unfolding since colonial times, but the village or rural town is still significant. This situation is suggestive of Julius Nyerere’s argument in Freedom and Socialism of the necessity to view Tanzania’s immediate and long-term future in a rural context and thus base the economy around the village (hence Ujaama). Rural life should be the focus of government policy and planning because society was likely to remain agricultural for a long time to come.38 The limits of Western concepts of modernity in Africa are evident, as is the need to temper assumptions about globalization and the importance of cities in societies that have a substantial rural population. The second representation of the Third World in globalization discourses is typically postmodern. In this representation, the significance of the Third World is located in its otherness and its capacity to work as a discursive rupture in the narrative of Western dominance. The Third World is seen mostly in terms of a metaphorical, representational space on the outside of or opposite to the West. It becomes what Bhabha (borrowing from Michel de Certeau) has referred to in a different context as a “nonplace” in the discourse of modernity. It is not merely “terra nulla,” but a “time-lag” in the understanding of modernity, “a lag which all histories must encounter in order to make a beginning.”39 In this respect, the wish is not to ostensibly deny its place in the modern, but to reinscribe its other-

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ness and emphasize its difference. It exists on the outside of globalization/ modernity as an other that forces the global and the modern to encounter themselves and interrogate and interrupt their assumptions about the nonEuropean world. The desire behind such a reading, evident in Jameson and Nandy, for example (and prevalent across postcolonialism), is actually to empower the Third World and cast it as a subversive place of resistance to Western hegemony. Thus, as already noted, Santiago Colas argues that part of the Third World’s “paradoxical double function” in Jameson’s theory of postmodernism is to exist outside the cultural logic of late capitalism.40 The same view is apparent in Featherstone’s notion that one possible response to globalization is an immersion in the local: remaining undiscovered and ignoring the outside as strategies open to local cultures in the Third World. In a similar vein, Nandy, not a theorist of globalization but one subscriber to the existence of a global civilization, has argued that the Third World has become the other of the West and that this otherness opens up, theoretically at least, many possibilities, one of which is that the Third World “holds in trust the rejected selves of the First and Second Worlds.”41 Nandy opens his critique with the observation: “We are living in a global civilization, even if it does not look to us sufficiently global. This civilization has certain features and ‘ground rules’ and those who want to consolidate, transcend or dismantle it, must first identify them.” The first criterion of this global civilization is that “all surviving civilizations define themselves with reference to it.” For Nandy, “the recovery of the other selves and cultures and communities, selves not defined by the dominant consciousness, may turnout to be the first task of social criticism and political activism and the first responsibility of intellectual stock-taking in the first decades of the coming century.”42 Both Nandy and Jameson, in attempting to confront the Third World directly as part of their taking globalization to task, present the flip side of the dominant tendency outlined in the first representation, which is to repress or incorporate the Third World. Yet this flip side is also problematic: By placing the Third World outside modernity in some mystical or pure state of non-modernity, they are not only effectively denying its engagement with the modern but setting up an untenable binarism that effectively marginalizes the Third World. The danger is that the Third World merely becomes a narrative or representational technique of deconstruction that systematically ignores the key factor of how the many cultures of the Third World already navigate the processes of the modern and the global, albeit in differing degrees. It is one thing for the marginalization of the Third World to serve as a discomfort to globalization; it is quite another for this nonplace to imply an existence outside the influence of global processes. At the very least, it seems a peculiar denial of the economic reach of global capitalism.

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A third approach to the place of the Third World in globalization is propelled by a more traditional concern to expose the inequality and injustice of the contemporary North-South relationship. Not surprisingly, the emphasis is on the material basis of this relationship and the economic structure of globalization that underpins it. In this account globalization is accepted as the logic of late modernity, and Western hegemony is seen to drive global processes. However, the Third World is not left out of the account as either a nonplace or an inclusion. Rather, the marginal and peripheral position of the Third World is directly confronted and held up as indicating the unevenness of globalization’s reach. The critique here is not of the existence of globalization per se but its failure to properly address the exploited position of the Third World. Thus Aijaz Ahmad, regarding the Third World in general, and Colin Leys, focusing on Africa specifically, both attempt to temper the celebratory, triumphal tone of global capitalism. Ahmad argues that globalization leads not to homogenization between and within the First and Third Worlds but to increased differentiation between the haves and the have-nots in the global system, with the gaps likely to increase as globalization intensifies. 43 Similarly, Leys’s summary of the “African collapse” paints a bleak portrait of economic weakness and exploitation with the “logic of global capitalism” merely reinforcing Africa’s decline.44 Jean Chesneaux’s critique of global modernity reinforces this reading. Despite the “decentered” character of the global system, globalization becomes the “new master” of the Third World and the West continues to call the tune. Although both the West and the Third World are part of the same global system, the Third World is only entitled to a “cast-off development” and a “counter-modernity.” Chesneaux admits that the precise demarcation between First and Third Worlds is increasingly complex. However, “what separates the West and the Third World—the two terms are still useful— is perhaps the ‘modernity differential’ which brings them both into the globalization circuits but in opposite directions, to the advantage of one and the detriment of the other.” Further, the Third World is sinking; its modernization is a dramatic failure; but it is not “behind.” Rather, it cannot “catch up.” One of the intellectual pitfalls of globalization is our tendency to interpret what is in reality an interdependence, a polarity in space, as simply an historical gap, and hence view it in terms of time. The success of the developed West—including those parts of it that lie outside the geographic West—and the disasters of the Third World are an integral part of the same global system.45

This critical approach to the homogenizing tendency of globalization seems a vast improvement on the two previously outlined. Yet the argument can at

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times lead into certain dead-ends. The very pessimism of the analysis raises important implications for agency and, ironically, can have the effect of denying whatever space subjects in the Third World may currently have in mediating and, at times, mitigating the combined effects of modernity and globalization. Part of the difficulty lies in what Paul James terms the theory of “structural wretchedness” that underpins such analyses.46 There is a logic to the system that tends to dictate a subordinate function to the Third World. The Marxist influence is obvious in this idea, and though such influence certainly drives an oppositional sensibility that is directed to resisting global capitalism, it tends by the rationale of its own argument to constrict the space for individual and collective action. This is evident in the very characterization of globalization in such analyses, which portray the reach of global forces in such a comprehensive and destructive manner that it is difficult to envisage a way out. The effects of globalization on the Third World, in particular on Africa, are represented so pessimistically that despite the calls for resistance it is almost impossible to imagine what space could exist for any effective counteroffensive. Again, Chesneaux is a good illustration. His account of the “whirlwind of modernity” notes certain “pockets of resistance” worldwide, and he writes of people’s choices and the capacity for effective agency in confronting the “unreason” of modernity. However, his journey through the wreckage of modernity in the Third World and on the environment in general does not, frankly, fill one with much hope for the way ahead. The apocalyptic vision of “deculturation” and loss of identity in the face of global forces is bleak. His vague and utopian conclusion merely reinforces this bleakness. Although it is difficult to disagree with the general principles Chesneaux outlines, the tentative mapping of future pathways pales in comparison with the energy and conviction that go into his argument that globalization is ubiquitous, hegemonic and inert.47 These three representations of the Third World’s place in globalization are only partly useful in explaining how the various cultures and identities in Africa and beyond confront and make sense of the global forces of modernity in the here and now. Certainly the latter two representations contribute to our knowledge of the Third World’s position. The radical commitment of the materialist approach is perhaps a necessary and initial step in exposing the myth of globalization’s homogeneity. Likewise, the postmodern approach is a reminder of the complexity and ambiguity of the Third World’s place within the modern. However, one could argue that the material account over-emphasizes the very real systemic considerations that need to be addressed in any analysis of the North-South divide. The postmodern reading is perhaps too detached from what is happening on the ground and experiences what one critic has termed a “distancing effect”

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from material realities.48 Both, in their own ways, provide little sense of a way forward out of the respective impasse they each describe. Further, they each strike me as inadequately addressing the reception of the modern and the global in the everyday experience of peoples and cultures in Africa. I instead posit an intermediate path that takes into account the material realities of modernity, which have long been present on the African continent, while according a prominent place to the subjective and the cultural. In this respect, I want to avoid the implicit reductionism of Dirlik: “Concrete problems of the everyday world” involve questions of subjectivity and identity as much as they refer to material considerations.49 Further, pointing to the necessity for resistance and the insidiousness of globalization does not obviate the need to acknowledge the local strategies already in place that empower Third World agents, not so much to resist modernity outright but to modify, distort, or bend it to their particular desires via processes of appropriation, indigenization, and creolization. Terence Ranger has long argued for the creative and resilient pluralism of African societies during and after colonial capitalism that have witnessed “cheerful adaptations to urban life, the innovation of new structures of fraternity and association, the evolution of an urban popular culture,” as well as the capacity of religions to transform themselves.50 Even if Chesneaux is correct in arguing that politics has been reduced to “navigation by sight” under globalized modernity, so that people can only manage or steer global forces rather than reject or resist them,51 this navigation politics allows for a significant range of possibilities and maneuvering under globalization, indicating the existence of a space for agency. Finally, othering the Third World merely distances it further from the mediation of modernity that takes place, so that concepts of difference, authenticity, and essentialism that often lurk beneath constructions of otherness are as misleading as the notion that globalization inevitably leads to a homogenized global culture. How can one account for the specific experience of Africa under globalization? One needs to look both backward and beyond the gloss of globalization to locate the place of Africa. Africa is certainly part of the global economic circuit, and most writers agree that it is suffering badly in the liberal, free-market system enforced by Western economies and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. The explicit neoliberal ideology behind the many structural adjustment programs that have been imposed on African nations is part of a global ideology of Westernization. Even the various moves toward democratization in Africa carry with them a liberal capitalist model. This globalization of economic prescriptions is integral to contemporary African societies. Yet Africa, except for obvious exceptions such as South Africa and Nigeria, is still marginal to the capitalist penetration of the South in terms of trade, resources, and investment.

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In this respect, economic globalization has only begun to get under way. Writers such as Leys partly blame this global economic marginalization for Africa’s economic backwardness. Even so, the capitalist penetration that has occurred has carried with it Western patterns of consumerism. Whether it be clothes, soft drink, or technology, this Western-style consumerism has had its effect in Africa. Even if people have scant resources, the consumption of such products is noteworthy, as the example of Sape in Chapter 8 illustrates. Although economic globalization is significant in Africa overall, it has only intensified a process begun under colonialism. It has exacerbated already existing tensions between the individual and the community, city and village, economic self-sufficiency and development, which in turn have had a significant impact, since colonial times, on identity, lifestyle, and cultural patterns. Other elements of the globalization process have had less impact in Africa. Resistance to the activities of Western economic penetration has been evident in an emerging civil society sparked in part by global movements. A multitude of externally funded groups and initiatives have been noteworthy in this respect, among them women’s collectives and local ecology organizations. Africa has hardly featured in global integrations in governance, although some regional bodies such as the Economic Community of West African States and the South African Development Coordination Conference, continue to operate in an environment not financially conducive to the effective functioning of such groupings.52 The information superhighway and other modern innovations in communications technology have mostly bypassed sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa), except at the level of gathering images of tribal savagery (Rwanda, Liberia) and famine (Somalia, Ethiopia) for CNN and other Western media outlets. Certainly in spatial terms, Africa continues to occupy a position of otherness, at times romanticized, as in some postcolonial accounts. It is more likely, following Massey and Keith and Pile, to inhabit the “in between,” the “folds and tears” of the global/local nexus under globalization. Given the complexity of political space, what is remarkable is how often Africa is shunted to the margins or simply left to float inchoately. Although it is presumably part of the global theater it rarely gets a walk-on role, let alone a speaking part. In short, it is placed on the blind side of globalization discourses: It is assumed to exist, yet it never quite comes into view. When it is glimpsed, most prominently in materialist critiques of late capitalism and underdevelopment, the impression gained is of a people and cultures whose economic plight is such that Africa becomes unredeemable. Perhaps such perspectives are inevitably a reflection of the peripheral structural position of Africa in the global economy. In this respect, the realities of economic marginalization produce despair in the eye

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of the critic. Yet as I will show in the next chapter, this is only part of the story of Africa’s place in the globalization of modernity.

NOTES 1. See Sankaran Krishna’s argument in “The Importance of Being Ironic: A Postcolonial View on Critical International Relations,” Alternatives, 18, 1993. 2. See R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 3. See Aijdaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London and New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 304–311. 4. See Michael Keith and Steve Pile, “Introduction Part 1: The Politics of Place” and “Introduction Part 2: The Politics of Place,” in Keith and Pile, eds., Place and the Politics of Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 2 and 31, respectively. Massey amplifies this sense of the increased significance of spatiality, invoking Berger, Jameson, Braudel, Bhabha, and Laclau as key writers who have emphasized the importance of space. See Massey, “Politics and Space/Time,” in Keith and Pile, eds., Place and the Politics of Identity, p. 141. 5. See Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991), and Harvey “From Space to Place and Back Again: Reflections on the Condition of Postmodernity,” in Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, George Robertson, and Lisa Tickner, eds., Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). 6. Liz Bondi, “Locating Identity Politics,” in Keith and Pile, eds., Place and the Politics of Identity, p. 98. 7. Massey, “Politics and Space/Time,” p. 141. 8. Michael Keith and Steve Pile, “Conclusion: Towards New Radical Geographies,” in Keith and Pile, eds., Place and the Politics of Identity, p. 223. 9. Massey, “Politics and Space/Time,” p. 155. 10. Michel Foucault, cited in Edward J. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London and New York: Verso, 1989), p. 10. (Originally in “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics, 16, 1986, pp. 22–27). 11. Massey, “Politics and Space/Time,” pp. 155–156. 12. Keith and Pile, “Introduction Part 2,” p. 36. 13. Doreen Massey, “Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place,” in Bird et al., eds., Mapping the Futures, p. 61. 14. Edward Soja and Barbara Hooper, “The Space That Difference Makes: Some Notes on the Geographical Margins of the New Cultural Politics,” in Keith and Pile, eds., Place and the Politics of Identity, p. 194. 15. bell hooks, cited in Soja and Hooper, “The Space That Difference Makes,” pp. 190–191. 16. See Soja and Hooper, “The Space That Difference Makes,” p. 184, and Neil Smith and Cindi Katz, “Grounding Metaphor: Towards a spatialized politics,” in Keith and Pile, eds., Place and Politics of Identity, p. 68. 17. Keith and Pile, “Introduction Part 2,” p. 22. 18. See Harvey, “From Space to Place,” p. 23, and “Class Relations, Social Justice and The Politics of Difference,” in Keith and Pile eds., Place and the Politics of Identity, pp. 41 and 50.

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19. Harvey, “From Space to Place,” p. 22. 20. Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (London: MacMillan, 1979), p. 70. 21. Lois McNay, Foucault and Feminism. Power, Gender and the Self (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), p. 60. 22. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume Two: The Use of Pleasure (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1992 [first published in French, 1984]), p. 28. See also pp. 5–7, 10–11, 29–31 for a development of his argument. 23. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 3: The Care of the Self (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1990 [originally published in French 1984]), pp. 43, 45, 58. The relationship between the self and the social context is such that “the cultivation of the self would not be the necessary ‘consequence’ of . . . social modifications; it would not be their expression in the sphere of ideology; rather, it would constitute an original response to them, in the form of a new stylistics of existence” (p. 71). 24. Harvey argues that although on the surface globalization captures the nature of postmodernity, he seeks to explain “why it might be that the elaboration of place-bound identities has become more than less important in a world of diminishing spatial barriers to exchange, movement and communication.” Thus, one unintended consequence of globalization has been to throw difference, otherness, and particularity into greater relief. I will pursue this more fully in the next chapter. See “From Space to Place,” p. 4. 25. Mike Featherstone, “Global Culture: An Introduction,” in Featherstone, ed., Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (London; Newbury Park, CA; and New Delhi: Sage, 1990), p. 12. 26. Mike Featherstone in Bird et al., eds., “Global and Local Cultures,” Mapping the Futures, pp. 171, 183. 27. Ibid., p. 181. 28. Ibid., pp. 181–182. 29. Jean Chesneaux, Brave Modern World: The Prospects for Survival (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), pp. 45–46. 30. Featherstone, “Global and Local Cultures,” p. 183. 31. Doreen Massey, “A Place Called Home?” New Formations, 17, Summer, 1992, p. 10, and Stuart Hall, “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity,” in Anthony D. King, ed., Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 24–25. It is interesting to compare this to an earlier piece by Hall in which he advances the provocative notion that marginality and migranthood become both centered and the representative (post)modern experience. See “Minimal Selves,” in Postmodernism and the Question of Identity (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts), pp. 44–46. See also Chapter 4, pp. 100–101, for the extended quote and analysis of Hall’s position. 32. Chesneaux, Brave Modern World, p. 88. 33. Ulf Hannerz, “Notes on the Global Ecumene,” Public Culture, 1(2), Spring 1989, p. 72. 34. Ulf Hannerz, “The World in Creolization,” Africa, 57(4), 1987, p. 547. 35. Doreen Massey, “Power-geometry,” p. 59. 36. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 32, 53–54. 37. This problem of accurately defining the Third World is alluded to in Paul Rabinow’s “A Modern Tour of Brazil,” in Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, eds.,

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Modernity and Indentity (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwood, 1992). See Note 60 in Chapter 1 for an elaboration. 38. See Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism/Uhuru na Ujamaa: A Selection of Writings and Speeches, 1965–1967 (Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, London, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). See especially the essay “Socialism and Rural Development,” pp. 337–366. In his analysis of contemporary African cities, Alessandro Triulzi, citing UNDP figures, comments: “By 2015 half of the ‘Third World’ population will be living in cities and already today the population of many African cities, such as Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Lagos, Lusaka and Kinshasa, has multiplied sevenfold. . . . Forty per cent of today’s African population lives in cities.” Thus, as we approach the new millennium, the majority still live in villages and towns outside the major cities and urban centers. See Alessandro Triulzi, “African Cities, Historical Memory and Street Buzz,” in Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, eds., The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 80. 39. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 246. 40. See Santiago Colas, “The ‘Third World’ in Jameson’s Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” Social Text, 31/32, 1992, p. 14. 41. Ashis Nandy, “Shamans, Savages and the Wilderness: On the Audibility of Dissent and the Future of Civilizations,” Alternatives, 15(3), 1989, p. 273. 42. Ibid., pp. 263–265. 43. Ahmad, In Theory, pp. 313–316. 44. Leys, “Confronting the African Tragedy,” New Left Review, 204, March/ April 1994, pp. 44–47. 45. Chesneaux, Brave Modern World, pp. 53, 55, 56–57. 46. See Paul James, “Postdependency,” in Phillip Darby, ed., At the Edge of International Relations: Postcolonialism, Gender, Dependency (London: Pinter, 1996), Chapter 3. 47. Chesneaux, Brave Modern World, see in particular pp. 174–182. 48. Leys, “Confronting the African Tragedy,” p. 43. Leys juxtaposes his material realism with the hope and commitment of Basil Davidson and the poststructural approach of Jean-Francois Bayart, whom he sees as producing the “distancing effect” referred to. See pp. 41–44. 49. See A. Dirlik, “Culturalism as Hegemonic Ideology and Liberating Practice,” Cultural Critique, 6, Spring 1987, pp. 13–50; and A. Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism” Critical Inquiry, 20, Winter, 1994, pp. 328–356. 50. See Terence Ranger, “Concluding Summary: Religion, Development and Identity,” in Kirsten Holst Petersen, ed., Religion, Development and African Identity (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Seminar Proceedings No. 12, 1987), pp. 150–151. 51. Chesneaux, Brave Modern World, p. 117. 52. See Kwame Anthony Appiah for an optimistic account of the role of such bodies, in In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Cuture (London: Metheun, 1992), pp. 271–272, 286.

8 The Consumption of Modernity and the Politics of the Everyday

To argue that globalization forms the most significant feature of late modernity, particularly for the First World, need not deny African societies their distinctive space. It is precisely the mutable and inchoate nature of political space and the fact that it cannot be occupied by one set of relations or interactions to the exclusion of other tendencies and possibilities that political space can be seen to encompass dominant as well as latent, emerging, and even contradictory features. In this respect, globalization is best understood as an open process. Although it certainly informs and frames identity and subjectivity in the Third World, it does so in neither a standardized nor predetermined fashion. By the same token, to deny that globalization touches Africa is to further marginalize the place of nonWestern cultures, placing them off the map, as it were. However, globalization is by no means a passive process that involves compliance to the external and destruction of the internal. Modernity is consumed, not merely as some fetishized commodity but as an appropriated, hybridized feature of everyday life. It thus becomes as much a part of the local and particular as the traditional and “indigenous.” To accept the modern as an integral aspect of everyday life in Africa and most of the Third World is not to concede defeat to the global, nor does it imply a downgrading of tradition or signify a loss of agency on the part of those experiencing this modernity. The effects of globalization, economic and cultural, are by no means straightforward, and any analysis of modernity in the Third World that is not attuned to complexity and ambivalence is likely to overlook the subtleties involved. Even if one accepts the materialist case that the position of Africa is marginal and exploited and likely to remain so in the global era, there is still a case to be made that proceeds not from a general sense of hopelessness but, as Terence Ranger has long argued, from the acknowledgment of the capacity of even the most ostensibly powerless subaltern to manipulate the forces of domination and change. 169

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In this chapter I attempt to revise the narrative of globalization with a dual intent: to posit modernity in Africa as a process of consumption in which the very act of consumption is implicated in the unfolding of subjectivity and the capacity for agency; and to recover the space of the everyday and the local in Africa as a critical site in which this agency is played out, particularly in the indigenization and creolization of modernity. I am particularly interested in developing some of the ideas of Jonathan Friedman, David Harvey, and Michel de Certeau, who provide the basis for understanding the way in which the local, everyday practices of agents cut a distinctive path through the broader processes of modernity and globalization in the constitution of subjectivity. Underlying this focus on the consumption of modernity and the practices of the everyday is a concern to trace the imaginary or psychic processes that connect the individual, subjective realm to the intersubjective, social-political world. My argument is that a full account of the subject’s navigation of modernity in Africa and the Third World generally needs to engage the primary bases of selfhood. In this respect, identity is not solely the outcome of social processes. The individual’s capacity for critical self-reflexivity provides a vital basis for the reimagining of political space. It provides the spark for the ignition of agency. In many globalization discourses in some postcolonial and postmodern analyses, modernity often comes across as an immanent system or process with its boundaries clearly demarcated around a Western, First World inside and an amorphous outside inhabited by the various others of the West. In unreflective globalization scenarios, the boundaries of modernity are steadily widening to incorporate and annihilate the Third World. In certain postcolonial and postmodern accounts, modernity is almost frozen in time and space, hence the invitation to take a postmodern stance in the sense of after or beyond modernity. Yet modernity is not a complete or closed chapter in time or space, with only one face. It is neither moving forward in a linear or one-dimensional fashion nor confined to the dustbin of history. The fixation with the various end limits of our age (of ideology, of history itself) assumes a stasis in modernity. Yet, as Richard Devetak argues, “the project of history is not to be understood as fixed or bounded in any way. Rather, it signifies an open question around which conflicting responses will revolve. The meaning and idea of the project of modernity are not to be determined or foreclosed in advance, but are to be constantly worked out anew.”1 For Devetak, modernity is deeply implicated in normative questions of identity, community, emancipation, self, and other. Praising recent poststructural and critical theory interventions into international relations as useful in the critical rethinking of modernity’s limits and possibilities, Devetak views the issues of closure and boundaries as crucial to the project of modernity, for it is

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only in thinking across these issues toward a more open notion of modernity that the points of articulation will be marked between inside and outside, association and disassociation, attachment and detachment, bonding and separability, and a range of other important questions pertaining to relations across boundaries. 2 In other words, the intersubjective relations across and between the divides North and South can begin to be charted only if modernity is approached as an open project in which the global and the local form a critical meeting place where identities are formed and reformed. The crucial first move is an appreciation of how modernity is navigated in various contexts, lending it a radical heterogeneity. Modernity is implicated in questions of identity, community, self, and other in both the First and Third Worlds. Obviously, the nature of these questions and the specific issues involved differ from, say, Africa to Japan, yet modernity in its various guises is relevant to both. Thus modernity is truly a global phenomenon in that it reaches into the fabric of most cultures and identities. Chesneaux is thus correct in referring to a “modernityworld” that we all experience at different intensities and levels. How should the notion of the “consumption of modernity” be understood in the Third World, and particularly in Africa? Jonathan Friedman maps out certain local strategies of manipulation as part of “being in the world.” Modernity is consumed as an aspect of appropriation. This consumption is understood as a cultural strategy of self-definition and identity that works as a negotiation between selfhood and the array of possibilities offered by globalization. The process is fluid and protean, and the very flexibility involved in the appropriation of modernity allows for a complex interaction between the modern and the traditional. In Zaire, for example, les Sapeurs, the designation for the outwardly Westernized BaKongo in the cities, consume French clothes and other foreign goods “by means of a set of transformed traditional practices” that strengthen their self-identity. Even though there are cargolike aspects to the “hypermodernization” evident in these practices, they represent, according to Friedman, “authentic strategies that elaborate on a language of power in which modern trappings are encompassed within local hierarchy.”3 Yet this example, which I will pursue later, is singular in terms of other strategies evident in Third World societies. Friedman goes on to describe other instances of mediating modernity among the Ainu people of Japan and native Hawaiians that deviate from La Sape in Zaire. This suggests that modernity is experienced in a space where cultural specificity, historical circumstances, and material position are crucial differentiating factors. To put it simply, there is no single response to modernity even if we all relate to it in some manner.4 In this reading, modernity and globalization are not simply one-way processes, for their various effects are indigenized and creolized. In this

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respect, assumptions of sameness are as precarious as those of difference. Ideas about the emergence of a global culture both overestimate the homogenization of world cultures and underplay the diversity of responses to modernity in the Third World. These responses are necessarily differentiated because modernity does not simply confront an empty space or a common, preexisting history and culture across the Third World. Global discourses also tend to ignore the more ambiguous processes of indigenization and appropriation, which point to the postcolonial or Third World subject carving out a meaningful space between the axes of tradition and globalization. Ulf Hannerz’s notion that the relationship between modernity and tradition is a two-way process rather than a binary opposition is instructive. The interplay between imported and indigenous cultures (however artificial the boundaries between the two may be in the first place) is part of an “intercontinental traffic of meaning” where there is much overlap and cross-cutting. In the example of Nigeria that Hannerz advances, particularly in its popular culture and music, “an international flow of culture has continuously entered into varying combinations and syntheses with local culture.” Because of the two-way traffic in travel and migration, major Western cities such as London and Paris become part of this creolized world: “Along the entire creolizing spectrum, from First World metropolis to Third World village, through education and popular culture, by way of missionaries, consultants, critical intellectuals and small-town storytellers, a conversation between cultures goes on.” As Hannerz is at pains to emphasize, this conversation is just that, a dialogue that does not simply or necessarily imply the impoverishment of local culture. In fact, modernity “may give people access to technology and symbolic resources for dealing with their own ideas, managing their own culture, in new ways.”5 Central to the thesis advanced in this chapter are the related notions of indigenization and creolization. Although their meanings may appear selfevident, it is worthwhile clarifying the connotations they carry for an analysis of culture and identity in Africa. The indigenization of modernity refers to the complex process by which Third World societies (from the village to the cities) appropriate, adapt or rework outside (in this context, Western) values, technologies, products, and knowledge in a local space whereby the nature of this foreign import inevitably changes to accommodate local conditions and already existing structures of meaning. More to the point, what was previously Western and outside becomes distinctively localized in its hybrid form. In this interactive process, identity is continually refashioned and renegotiated. The idea of the creolization of culture is thus useful because it captures this hybridization of identity in the constant intermingling of cultures. In a strict sense creolization refers to the creation of a new language by the merging of two or more languages. Extended as a metaphor for the meeting of various cultures, creolization may

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refer to the combining of aspects from different cultures that results in the creation of something new or distinct from the particular sources yet having elements of each, hence its Caribbean roots and the classic example of Cajun culture in the U.S. state of Louisiana, where the fusion of Anglo, African, and French elements have created a distinctive language, culture, and music. As defined by Hannerz, creole cultures like creole languages are those which draw in some way on two or more historical sources, often originally widely different. They have had some time to develop and integrate, and to become elaborate and pervasive. People are formed from birth by these systems of meaning and largely live their lives in contexts shaped by them. There is that sense of a continuous spectrum of interacting forms, in which the various contributing sources of the culture are differentially visible and active. And, in relation to this, there is a built-in political economy of culture, as social power and material resources are matched with the spectrum of cultural forms.6

Often, as Ivor Miller points out, there is a relationship of domination and subordination between these cultures.7 Yet this in itself does not preclude the (re)creation of a novel or uniquely indigenized identity. Hannerz notes that global paradigms such as world system theory are “a little too ready to forget that the influences of any one centre on the peripheries may not be wholly monolithic, but may be varied, uncoordinated and possibly contradictory.”8 It is the very variety and unpredictability of the indigenization of modernity, or, in Hannerz’s terms, the “world creolization” of modernity, that undercuts any pressures toward homogeneity and sameness. Rather than creating global cultural homogeneity, the globalization of modernity creates new diversities that, according to Hannerz, are “based relatively more on interrelations and less on autonomy.”9 Every specific consumption of modernity is therefore distinctive because it necessarily mediates “structures of feeling”10 that are already in place and differ from similar structures in other cultural contexts. The resultant creolization is not, as Chesneaux intimates, “sterile like all hybrids,”11 but alive and intense and the basis for further dialogue between world cultures. A good illustration of the process of indigenization and creolization embedded in the various consumptions of modernity is the development of the concept of inculturation to account for and indeed encourage the Africanization of the Roman Catholic church. The spread of Christianity forms part of the various globalizing processes of the West (intensified in the past thirty years, though present in Africa from the arrival of the first missionaries) that have undoubtedly transformed traditional African society. Yet its effects have been particularized to the African experience and the process has involved a significant degree of accommodation and

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ambivalence on both sides. Although the spread of Christianity has been profound, it has not been one-way and monolithic; Christian churches have recognized the need to Africanize theology and practice. In the Catholic church, particularly post–Vatican Council II, a significant amount of thinking has gone into making the church truly African. Cecil McCarry prefaces a collection on inculturation written by African priests by arguing that “the Church, to be truly the Church of Jesus Christ, must be both universal and particular. In these years the churches in Africa must become truly African as well as universal. And within the African continent the Church in each country must reflect the characteristic culture of its peoples.”12 In the same collection, Theoneste Nkeramihigo writes of the need of the “host” culture to embrace the system of the outside and mold it to its own self-image so that it is “henceforth fundamental to and the foundation of its future history.” Thus what is really at stake in the phenomena of inculturation, is the identity search of a people, to whom it has become clear that this identity cannot be found either in the importation of a foreign culture (acculturation), or in the restoration of its past (tribalism, nationalism). Rather, it is to be sought in the acceptance of the present conflict resulting from two heterogeneous past situations whose meeting constitutes the beginning of a new phase of its history.13

In more specific terms, inculturation is seen by John Mary Waliggo as “the honest and serious attempt to make Christ and his message of salvation evermore understood by peoples of every culture, locality and time. It means the reformulation of Christian life and doctrine into the very thought-patterns of each people.”14 Although his intent is undoubtedly sincere, what Waliggo overlooks in his call for a more culturally attuned church is the refashioning of Western Christianity by Africans themselves. This refashioning has been particularly evident in the fusion of traditional rituals and beliefs with Christian theology, leading to some notable attempts by Africans to articulate a distinctly African theology within the broader Roman Catholic church. In other words, inculturation is not merely a matter of the church making the Christian message relevant to Africans but has long involved the bottom-up indigenization of Christianity by African people. Inculturation has been as much driven from below as from above. Indeed, V. Y. Mudimbe cites the indigenization of the Christian church in Africa as a key instance of the reinvention of Africa by Africans. The Africanization of Christianity became an African initiative from the mid1960s. This endeavor is best captured by Cardinal Paul Zoungrana (subSaharan Africa’s first cardinal in Rome): “Beyond refusing all external domination, our wish is to link up in depth with the African cultural her-

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itage, which for too long has been misunderstood and refused. Far from being a superficial or folkloric effort to revive some traditional or ancestral practices, it is a question of constructing a new African society whose identity is not conferred from the outside.”15 Not conferred but surely influenced from the outside. According to Mudimbe, the desire to construct something novel out of what was initially seen as two competing traditions has led to a new discourse on Christianity in Africa that could have come about only through “cross-cultural breeding.”16 Within the reality of Western religion’s encroachment into African societies, the effort to indigenize an outside system of belief has led to a process of renewal and perhaps even empowerment. Although religion is obviously not a modern phenomenon, the example of the inculturation of Christianity exemplifies the broader passage of modernity into the Third World. My contention is that the processes of the indigenization and creolization of modernity allow for the revitalization of self and culture. It is the capacity of modernity to provide for empowerment, however smallscale or marginal, that remains a neglected dimension of globalization discourses and indeed of postcolonialism. This contention should not trivialize material inequalities or asymmetries of power nor downplay the destructive force of global processes on local cultures. It does, however, indicate that subaltern agents are not merely passive and powerless. They affect the passage of modernity in their social and personal lives. In this respect, Chesneaux’s argument that we are all condemned to “navigationpolitics” under globalization is puzzling,17 because it seems to imply that the bulk of cultures and peoples under previous historical systems (feudalism, industrialization) somehow had access to a politics that enabled something substantially different, or indeed, better. To navigate and steer modern, global elements is not a sign of powerlessness or an inability to produce change. In fact, change is found increasingly in more subtle processes such as adaptation, appropriation, and hybridization. Navigation is an active response suggesting a conscious effort to mediate the novel and the imported, perhaps, at times, modifying it for certain local ends.18 Michel de Certeau captures this course of action in his example of Spanish colonization and the response of the American Indians. Arguing that scholars need to attune their analysis to the usage or consumption of certain representations and processes rather than their production per se, de Certeau points to what the American Indians “made of” the rituals and laws imposed on them despite their submission. According to de Certeau, this response was quite different from what the Spanish conquerors had in mind. They subverted the American Indians not by outright resistance or rejection but “by using them with respect to ends and references foreign to the system they had no choice but to accept.” Further, “They were other within the very colonization that outwardly assimilated them; their use of

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the dominant social order deflected its power, which they lacked the means to challenge; they escaped it without leaving it. The strength of their difference lay in procedures of ‘consumption.’”19 De Certeau introduces a key distinction between consumption and production. Although he does not wish to diminish the economic importance of production in terms of how surplus value is extracted and unequally distributed in the making of goods and services in the global economy, the focus on the actual utilization of modernity is instructive. For de Certeau, “the presence and circulation of a representation . . . tells us nothing about what it is for its users. We must first analyze its manipulation by users who are not its makers. Only then can we gauge the difference or similarity between the production of the image and the secondary production hidden in the process of its utilization.”20 Or more important, only then can the importance of this distinction between production and the secondary production or utilization of modernity be determined. Foucault draws a similar distinction between the existence of a particular code or system of thought and its variegated and particular reception by individuals so that the continuity or otherwise of the code is not as pertinent as the “practices of self” individuals employ to modify, recast, and diversify these codes.21 We have reached a crucial juncture in the argument, which necessitates further exploration of the nature of globalization and modernity in Africa. The processes of adaptation and renewal described above are not unique to late modernity. Indeed, the literature on religion in Africa clearly locates such processes from the onset of missionary contact and colonialism. This might imply that the contemporary material on globalization lacks distinctiveness and novelty. But two important caveats need to be inserted. The first concerns a recognition of history. As Ranger argues, “Things didn’t just ‘fall apart’ with the coming of colonialism.” Despite the profound changes brought about by first colonial and then neocolonial policies, “Africans have been much less bewildered than we often imagine, much better able to negotiate new identities and to express them.”22 Yet globalization discourses essentially miss what has always been present. There is little sense of this reality of African autonomy and agency in the globalization literature. This in itself requires the type of analysis that brings to the fore histories and strategies that undercut the monolithic expression of globalization. The second caveat concerns an awareness of late modernity’s difference. Although it is true that the navigation of modernity has taken place in Africa for quite a while, there has been greater intensity and reach of modernity in the era of globalization and, consequently, greater possibilities and pitfalls for African societies. The terrain of modernity has altered under late capitalism. It is arguably of greater significance in contemporary Africa precisely because it is increasingly pervasive in the more globalized

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space of the late twentieth century. One obvious illustration of this expanded reach is the structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund that have been applied to most African countries whatever their ideological orientation. This certainly constitutes an expansion of modernity’s (in this case, Western liberal economic regimes’) capacity to shape the lives of people in even the most marginal countries (Uganda, Tanzania). One could also point to the fact that the more people leave their villages and migrate to the cities in search of work, the greater their exposure to modernity, be it in the form of technology or processes of capitalist production. The ability of Third World subjects to appropriate or modify aspects of modernity carries with it, as I have suggested, the scope for empowerment or even enrichment of culture and identity. It is precisely in the vibrant space of the local and everyday world that this enrichment takes place, even in the face of (and simultaneous with) forces of conformity and homogenization. Edgar Morin has argued that “if initially the world market sterilizes local sources, in a second moment it revitalizes them.”23 This is to say that at the same time that the universalization of Western capitalism and consumerism works to crowd out what is particular and indigenous in African societies with, for example, the spread of U.S.-style fast-food chains, it also provides the opportunities not only to put such processes to local advantage but, in some cases, to place a distinctive stamp on the imported culture by subtly modifying it and fusing it with the local culture. An example, albeit open to interpretation, is the manner in which the explosion of small publishing houses in Africa has enabled the publication and distribution of African works (sometimes incorporating local dialects such as “Sheng,” a combination of English and Swahili in Nairobi24) that have worked to supplant oral traditions yet have also given a new voice to previously marginalized Africans. Music provides further illustration. There is a double movement in what Steven Feld terms the “revitalization” of both the traditional and the new or modern. Feld’s anthropology of popular music points to the duality of appropriation; its simultaneous discourse of material/power considerations and innovation and creativity. Feld speaks of a “complex traffic in sounds, money and media” in the increasing Africanization of popular U.S. music. In a passage that can read as a metaphor for local cultures under globalization, Feld argues: Musical appropriation sings a double line with one voice. It is a melody of admiration, even homage and respect; a fundamental source of connectedness, creativity, and innovation. This we locate in a discourse of “roots,” of reproducing and expanding “the tradition.” Yet this voice is harmonized by a counter-melody of power, even control and domination; a fundamental source of maintaining asymmetries in ownership and

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commodification of musical works. This we locate in a discourse of “ripoffs,” of reproducing ‘the hegemonic’. Appropriation means that the issue of “whose music?” is submerged, supplanted, and subverted by the assertion of “our music.”25

Whether the key issue of “whose culture?” in the Third World can be so confidently supplanted with the assertion of “our culture” under the cover of the various material realities of globalization remains to be seen. The contention that can be advanced at this stage is that such assertions are indeed possible in the global cultural space of late modernity, particularly when the focus is attuned to the level of the everyday in the Third World. This vantage point allows globalized modernity to be viewed as an intersubjective process in which the global and the local interact, producing at times unintended and unforeseen circumstances that, far from signifying the death of agency and the impoverishment of identity, allow for a revitalized subjectivity under conditions of hybridity and indigenization. In this respect, hybridity becomes significant not as an indication of a weakened capacity for resistance but as the locus of an unfolding of identity in which local actors and movements are able to shape the global forces that are seen, in globalization and postcolonialism respectively, to either shackle or subsume them. Understanding modernity as essentially a grounded, multifarious experience helps avoid the universalizing, homogenizing tendencies highlighted in writers such as Robertson. Recovery of the local not only allows globalization to be viewed more critically but affords an insight into the contours of modernity, particularly as it affects and is shaped by the various cultures of Africa. In this respect, a turn to a localized perspective is not only necessary but, as Harvey has suggested, inevitable given that one consequence of globalization has been to lend more rather than less importance to “place-bound identities,” otherness, difference, and particularity. How does the local become more prominent under globalization? Harvey posits four interrelated factors that hinge on the material dynamics inherent in the global spread of capitalism: uneven capital investment and a proliferating geographical division of labor. First, patterns of capital accumulation over the past twenty-five years have made previously secure places vulnerable and threatened (for instance, the industrial cities of northern England such as Manchester, Liverpool, and Sheffield). Thus, according to Harvey, “we worry about the meaning of place in general when the security of actual places becomes generally threatened.”26 Second, the increased geographic mobility of production, distribution, and finance has led to a freer choice of location in which transnational corporations in particular have taken advantage of differences in qualities, quantities, and costs between places. Capital has consequently become more sensitive to

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place and locale in its search for profit accumulation. Third, places have become highly competitive in attempting to attract capital. “Places therefore differentiate themselves from other places and become more competitive . . . in order to capture or retain capital investment.”27 As a result, different places attempt to offer distinctive “packages” in which advertising and images are employed to sell a place. Fourth, the selling of places and the highlighting of particular qualities (tourist resorts, eco-friendly lifestyles) have been heightened in light of the overinvestment by capital in speculative real estate development. Trying to make good on a bad investment, speculators have intensified the marketing of difference in specific locales in order to attract outside interest. Although the factors outlined are clearly driven by material considerations, Harvey inserts a cultural variable into his analysis that he views as encouraging the awareness of difference and locality. Because of the need to attract consumers, a cultural as much as an economic product is put on offer. “Investment in consumption spectacles, the selling of images of places, competition over the definition of cultural and symbolic capital, the revival of vernacular traditions associated with places, all become conflated in interplace competition.”28 Notwithstanding this cultural dimension, Harvey essentially locates the increased importance of place in the greater spread of capitalist processes under globalization. Although this is undoubtedly true and is a reminder of certain material realities, the political economy of place outlined by Harvey tends toward a narrow view of the significance of the many local sites under globalization. Although the four factors outlined can and do apply to various places in the Third World, they do not capture the heterogeneity of experience in relation to modernity, in particular those places, such as the shantytowns and villages in Africa, which are as much a part of the global-modern circuit as cities yet do not fall under the political economy of place described by Harvey. In this respect, the local, particular place is of increased significance under globalization not only because the diminishing spatial barriers to exchange, movement, and communication bring them within the greater reach of capital but also, importantly, precisely because this process of uneven capital accumulation marginalizes and ignores, and in doing so still profoundly affects, other locales not in a position to compete for its favors. This is what Chesneaux alludes to when he states that the “Third World of shantytowns is as modern as that of banks or campuses.” 29 Modernity, in this account, does not hinge purely on the economic significance of place but on the spatial and temporal transgression it brings about that propels the local into a nexus with the global in the late modern world, even where there is no particular product to sell or exchange. In this context, the local becomes more important under the globalization of modernity not solely in Harvey’s terrain of rather privileged locales but in the shadow lines along the global-local

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spectrum that do not conform to an economic rationale. Put another way, modernity has become globalized to the extent that it reaches, with varying intensity and according to different pressures, all places irrespective of material importance. A more fundamental problem in Harvey’s political economy of place is its top-down view of the significance of the local. The local is important because it is made so by the logic of capital and the global division of labor. The local is registered in its active competition for global attention. Yet if one looks at the local from the vantage point of the local and without the economic determinism of Harvey’s formulation, one might reach different conclusions. Accordingly, the local can be seen as important because it enables a less homogenized view of modernity. On the ground, modernity’s effects are multiple, unpredictable, and sometimes unintended. Massey argues that places have multiple identities and are highly differentiated in their relationship to global forces because they are full of internal conflicts and differences. Further, the specificity of any particular place is constantly reproduced in the context of ongoing local-global interaction.30 The local also allows us to look further into the particular histories that make up modernity.31 In other words, the story of modernity is not simply the increased speed of capital accumulation but the various histories of different cultures (particularly after the second expansion of Europe and colonialism) coming to grips with modern processes. In this respect, Iain Chambers argues that modernity presents us with “heterogeneous subjectivities, with histories and languages intent on transforming the traces and fragmented inheritance of the past, together with other more immediate borrowings and suggestions, into a meaningful present.”32 Or it may be that the local allows us to critically view the silences, failures, and, in Chesneaux’s terms, the “unreason” of modernity.33 Consequently, if the perspective is altered and modernity is viewed from the bottom up, that is, through the lenses of the local and the everyday, there inevitably comes into view a differentiated and at times contradictory picture of its trajectory. Harvey’s rather neat formulation fails to capture this complexity. He rightly points to the increased importance of the local without fully addressing its critical significance within the broader space of globalization.34 The engagement with the local has led to misgivings in certain quarters regarding the efficacy of this move. There are two particular criticisms advanced in this respect that address the dangers of embracing a localized, particular perspective. First, there is the argument that a positioning at the local level is a retreat from a broader project or analysis, which can lead to an embrace of a relativist stance in political and social analysis. Such a criticism is particularly directed at postmodern approaches that posit the epistemological impossibility of undertaking anything but localized studies. Harvey addresses the postmodern suspicion of universality and points

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toward a dialectic between universality and particularity as a way out of what he terms a postmodern relativist impasse.35 He concedes the importance of “situatedness” and “positionality,” but also maintains that given the global, universal condition of capitalism, we need to “break out of the local” and resurrect some notion of universal values and action that enables movements or cultures to address the global nature of capitalism.36 According to Harvey, “while too much can be made of the universal at the expense of understanding particularity, there is no sense in blindly cantering off in the other direction into that opaque world of supposedly unfathomable differences.”37 Universal values and actions need to be “situated” in the context of specific, locally based knowledges. This is possible, according to Harvey, precisely because individuals are “heterogeneity constructed subjects” who move in and out of various situated knowledges and contexts.38 The recovery of the local in the context of a critique of globalization should be mindful of such concerns. The local is employed in this analysis to suggest the radical heterogeneity of modernity rather than to argue from some retreat from more universal action. Although the basis upon which universal action and values may be constructed is not the focus of this study, it is interesting to observe in passing that many social movements and global civil societies operate on the basis of the maxim “Think globally, act locally,” suggesting that Harvey’s dialectic between universality and particularity has long been acknowledged in practice. The second criticism revolves around the suspicion that a recovery of the local equates to little more than a romantic retreat into authenticity and essentialism. This criticism is often leveled at Heidegger’s concept of place as bounded, static, authentic, and immemorial.39 George Revill notes that studies of locality are often strongly criticized for reproducing romantic, parochial, and repressive visions of society, highlighting a sense of community (following Heidegger) that has reactionary implications.40 The local is employed in this chapter not in terms of simply recovering cultural essence or arguing for bounded communities somehow outside the province of modernity. Although some form of resistance to modernity is possible and indeed visible in certain places in global politics, such resistance does not and cannot proceed on the basis of marking out a pure, traditional identity untouched by global and modern processes. These processes need to be engaged with because, as previously argued, we all maneuver within the space of the global and the modern irrespective of our specific geographic position or response. Notwithstanding this argument, the recovery of the local inevitably carries with it an underlying essentialism. At the very least, we need to acknowledge the gray area between the local as the site of a creative reworking and navigation of global pressures and the local as an attempt to escape from modernity and retreat into a bounded community.

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Gustavo Esteva’s call for a “regeneration” of people’s space on behalf of the Mexican peasantry is a case in point. Esteva writes of a localized space that is simultaneously concrete—in a physical and cultural sense, to which Mexican peasants “belong and which belongs to them”—and “unlimited” in that it reaches out and is touched by outside forces beyond the specific place.41 Employing the metaphor of the hammock, which “adapts itself to any shape” rather than predetermines the shape of the user, the peasant community is a “living hammock” that is “hospitable” to the outside.42 For Esteva, cultural isolation is no longer possible: “There are no groups, peoples, ethnic communities, cultures or societies living without ‘contact’ with the ‘outside’. In addition, it means that there is intertwining, that we are a social mesh on a world scale. Hence inter-action, inter-penetration, inter-dependence is inevitable.”43 Yet this is only part of the equation. Despite the intertwining, the peasantry is “learning once again to first rescue and then to master our space” despite being persuaded (presumably by the West) “to lose interest in mastering space.” As “owners” of their localized space, the peasants can become “radically de-linked from the institutional and ideological world that attempts to control us and which antagonizes and blocks us.” This delinking occurs through “authentic cultural creation” or recreation and the erecting of “protective umbrellas.”44 In this respect, the hammock by itself is inadequate for the project of regenerating the people’s space. The dialectic between the local and the global that Esteva sets out seems contradictory and irredeemably split despite his confidence that the peasants are able to “regenerate a hospitable world, following their traditional paths which are now enriched by the lights and shadows of modernity.”45 Part Heidegger (belonging to and owning place) and part postmodern geography (space as both grounded and unlimited), Esteva illustrates the difficulty in reconciling some notion of a recovered local space while accepting the intermeshing of the local and the global under late modernity. We have seen how, within the broad canvas of globalization, lies a multitude of local sites in which modernity is consumed through a set of practices that are constitutive of self and society. Subjectivity comes into being in part through the navigation of modernity. The capacity for individual and collective action is affirmed in the positioning and repositioning brought about by the spatial reordering of global change. At times the navigation becomes treacherous, but always subjects are called into action in response to the constant movement of modernity. The bearings of tradition and history are often employed in setting a course, yet the destination can never be fixed or predetermined. The individual subject is constantly in flux in an intersubjective space that makes for indigenization, hybridity, and ambivalence. This characterization of modernity is one of people and cultures mediating an interactive space in which individual and collective

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identity is formed and reformed. To account for this process without an engagement with the primary bases of selfhood is to do what the discipline of international relations has done with the study of states and order: to depersonalize politics and, indeed, to depeople it. In Part 1 of this book I argued for a move from international to intersubjective relations precisely because the human element could be inserted into the study of the NorthSouth relationship. Given that my main concern is subjective and in tersubjective relations, some notion of how the personal connects to the social world and thus to the broader processes of modernity and globalization is needed. The very capacity for agency and the refashioning of subjectivity identified throughout this analysis of the consumption of modernity reside in the individual’s psychic, imaginary realm that links the unconscious to the conscious and the social world. The work of Freud and the broader body of psychoanalytic thought is central in this respect. After all, at the heart of Freud and psychoanalysis lies the self’s encounter with the other, an encounter that takes place mostly inside the psyche (the unconscious) but also connects to various others outside the individual psyche. Like some of the other material utilized in this chapter, these perspectives are of a predominantly Western origin. The key question is, Are there not serious difficulties in transposing such concepts to a non-Western context? I have employed Harvey and de Certeau mindful of their Western ethnocentrism and the limits of their analysis. Yet the ideas themselves have proven useful and of considerable merit when applied to relations of dominance and hierarchy in the North-South encounter. Similarly, psychoanalysis, in providing us with key insights into the nature of selfhood, provides us with useful tools of analysis that are helpful in exploring the self’s relationship to the broader social context. Although cultural considerations are crucial mediating factors that affect the applicability of Western psychoanalysis to African society, it is important to remember that such an application is not novel and indeed, in Fanon and Memmi, for example, provided the basis of seminal critiques of colonialism and imperialism from the point of view of the colonized. Memmi, in a preface to a later edition of The Colonizer and the Colonized, warned of the danger of Western paradigms such as psychoanalysis or Marxism, “under the pretext of having discovered the source or one of the main sources of human conduct,” preempting “all experience, all feeling, all suffering, all the byways of human behaviour.”46 Yet an awareness of this danger did not prevent the use of psychoanalytic perspectives to explain the mindset of colonial relationships. Similarly, the Indian psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Ashis Nandy employs psychoanalysis in his exploration of the Indian colonial and postcolonial psyche. He argues for a non-Western basis of psychoanalysis that has strong resonances with Western

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concepts of the self and other. In an essay on the prospects of cultural survival under modernity, Nandy identifies various native languages that he believes contain implicit non-Western theories of oppression and survival. The last he characterizes as the “language of self,” which embodies a theory of the “not-self”—of oppression and social transformation. In this language of self-in-society, Nandy connects the individual to the social world in non-Western traditions: the impulse toward “self-correction and selfrealization,” which include “the principle of intervention in the outside world.”47 As I argued in Chapter 5, the concept of self-in-society that Nandy develops for the non-West has obvious similarities and connections with the key ideas of critical psychoanalysis I wish to develop. In the intersubjective space of the North and South engagement, modernity is the terrain upon which an interaction between self and other occurs (between West and non-West, the traditional and the modern, village and the city). Also crucial to the psychoanalytical project is the role of the imaginary or imagination, an essentially representational realm of activity in which the self constantly receives and sifts through a range of representations of the “real” world and reconceptualizes these representations in a dialectic with psychic drives, material circumstances, and a discursive frame of reference that embodies existing knowledge about the social world. This twin focus—self/other relations, the imaginary—makes psychoanalytic theory particularly well suited to account for the elements of ambivalence, contingency, and flux contained in the individual’s experience of both modernity and postmodernity. Anthony Elliott and Stephen Frosh, for example, argue that it is the self-referential nature of the psychoanalytic enterprise and the “remarkable fluidity of its encounter with subjectivity” that make it well-attuned to contemporary cultural conditions in which meaning is continually dislocated and dispersed by the hypermodern processes of globalization.48 Psychoanalytic thought in this regard not only is able to inform us about the unfolding of subjectivity and its interaction with external structures of society and culture (and hence to modernity and globalization), it can also be read as an interesting metaphor for modernity itself: just as “Within psychoanalysis, whenever the analyst speaks, it sparks off some new struggle for autonomy and selfdefinition in the patient,”49 modernity, too, when it is consumed, sparks off new reworkings of subjectivity and hence identity. What follows is a brief sketch of imaginary or psychic processes and the way in which they allow the intersections between self and society to be charted. It is only of late that the creative role of the imaginary domain of the psyche has been resurrected in psychoanalytic theory. There has been a move in some psychoanalytic thinking to emphasize the creative, inventive aspects of the imaginary realm within psychic life alongside the more repressive or destructive impulses evident in processes of projection, splitting,

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sublimation, and denial. An individual’s capacity for critical self-reflexivity— that is, the ability to reimagine self and society along more emancipatory lines—is only one psychic possibility in the current age. In many respects, it is the most difficult. (I will return to this later.) First, let me ask, How is subjectivity constituted, and how does it connect to external structures?50 According to Freud, human subjectivity comprises three key agencies: the id (the center-point of unconscious processes), the superego (the seat of moral prohibitions), and the ego (radically split between conscious and unconscious). In engaging with the wider social world, all individuals bring a range of psychic dispositions to bear upon their interpretations and involvements with the self, with others, and with cultural processes. This praxis between the self and the social—the way in which we are linked to social relations of authority, domination, and even exploitation through the ambivalent desires and anxieties of the superego—also contains within it the seeds of resistance and transformation of our social conditions. We are constituted by both our desire for order and control and the profound ambivalence at the center of the human psyche, driven by our unconscious desires that tend toward rejection of and resistance to the very authority and certainty we crave. It is this very ambivalence toward established structures that can potentially feed into counterdiscursive strategies and representations against prevailing systems of social power. This doubleness of psychic reality underpins selfhood. The unconscious desires that shape our psychic and cultural worlds can never be totally bound by existing social systems. The self is capable of carving out a critical and creative space in the social world precisely because unconscious desires are always working against external ordering and control. Unlike previous readings of Freud, which viewed the unconscious as dissolving human agency and autonomy, the imaginary realm in this interpretation is potentially emancipatory. Put simply, the imaginary is a rich, diverse source of selfhood that lies at the heart of human subjectivity. Fantasies and affects are constantly erupting, but significantly, the imaginary also produces representations of the world that allow for critical self-reflection. For Freud, subjects can reflect and become more conscious of their unconscious, imaginary investments—from the level of self-representation to social organization. Importantly, inherent in this critical selfreflexivity is the possibility of reshaping the links between the self and the social world. The imaginary realm, from this angle, offers “the possibility of an alternative future.”51 The unconscious is productive because of its very creativity in constituting the self. It can become transformative, in both an individual and social sense, because of its capacity for self-renewal and its move to always reflect on the social world. The crucial insight is the way in which the imaginary continually links the self to the social world in a constant act

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of reflection and representation. This is what Castoriadis sees as the distinguishing feature of humans: “Man’s distinguishing trait is not logic, but imagination, and, more precisely, unbridled imagination, defunctionalized imagination. As radical imagination of the singular psyche and as social instituting imaginary, this sort of imagination provides the conditions for reflective thought to exist.”52 This “unbridled imagination” allows us to critically reflect and “break the closure in which we are each time necessarily caught up as subjects, whether such closure comes from our personal history or from the social-historical institution which has formed, i.e., humanized us.”53 The critical imagination breaks such closure in that it always pairs established truths or representations with “the positing of new forms/figures of the thinkable.”54 The imaginary, by its very nature as unconscious representational activity, encourages an ongoing engagement with otherness and difference, if only to reflect back on the self. This means that the self is constantly plugged into the other, first at the imaginary level but inevitably at the social or cultural level. Thus Castoriadis concludes: It is because the human being is imagination (non-functional imagination) that it can posit as an “entity” something that is not so: its own process of thought. It is because its imagination is unbridled that it can reflect; otherwise, it would be limited to calculating, to “reasoning.” Reflectiveness presupposes that it is possible for the imagination to posit as existing that which is not, to see Y in X and, specifically, to see double, to see oneself double, to see oneself while seeing oneself as other.55

There is much in this conclusion that connects to the previous discussion of the consumption of modernity, the constitution of subjectivity, and Nandy’s notion of the language of self-in-society. In particular, the capacity of subjects to mediate different social and cultural contexts—seeing oneself double, in Castoriadis’s terms—is precisely the type of local processing of modernity and globalization evident in the notions of indigenization and creolization. It also amplifies Nandy’s suggestion that postcolonial hybridity contains within it empowering possibilities for future action. It is this double vision, so to speak, that leads to “new forms/ figures of the thinkable.” As I have already intimated, the entry into prevailing social systems of power does not always allow a smooth passage for the subject’s capacity for self-transformation. The reflexive, emancipatory tendency outlined above, which is constitutive of agency, is but one possible response allowed by the imaginary’s interaction with the social world. The conditions that frame the subject’s capacity for critical self-reflexivity are particularly hazardous and risky in the modern age, as writers such as Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens have made clear. In short, the outcome of various

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encounters with modernity are not always positive and self-affirming. Concrete material conditions frustrate the paths toward human fulfillment. Although people are certainly capable of self-reflection and renewal, the hurdles imposed by the asymmetrical structures of power in society and the uneven distribution of material wealth under globalization indicate that the likelihood of transformation at the individual and social level is not always so clear and facile. Indeed, as Elliott notes in an overview of the reflexive conditions in the age of globalization, modernity institutes much in society that undermines the productive role of the imaginary. In fact, it is as likely to induce deformations, pathologies, and displacements in response to resurgent but regressive forms of nationalism and racism (evident in former Yugoslavia) or to the broader bureaucratic systemization of modernity that works to displace and condense people’s ability to think, feel, or act innovatively. “Advanced modernity—with its globalization, its commodified forms, its liquidation of intimate relationship, its separation of time and space—makes problematic the generative social conditions necessary for deliberate, creative reflection.”56 Notwithstanding the difficulties, it is precisely what Castoriadis identifies as the unbridled, unfunctional, radical nature of imaginary activity— the fact that it is constantly occurring even in the most oppressive situations—that indicates that the imaginary and hence social capacity for transformation and renewal is ever present and significant. Because our knowledge of the social world can never be complete or full—and certainly modernity only intensifies social and cultural change requiring constant psychic adjustment—there exists always the possibility of creating a new imaginary, both at the individual and the collective level. In other words, the fluidity in subjective and intersubjective relations places change, renewal, and revitalization firmly on the agenda, particularly at the local level. The interface between subjectivity and intersubjectivity under globalization inevitably confronts the prickly issue of material and power realities in the Third World and their precise relationship to identity politics. As indicated above, the prospects for reimagining self and society in the face of such material barriers are not always hopeful. Far from trying to resolve this dilemma, I have suggested an interactive process in which each resides in the other. This signifies that subjects in the Third World (or anywhere else for that matter) cannot simply imagine away material barriers of inequality and dependency. However, such material factors do not deny a space for reflection, navigation, and innovation on the part of individuals and cultures in marginalized positions of power. In this respect, it may well be that the insidious process of globalized modernity and its attendant cultural Westernization can simultaneously produce a situation of economic marginalization and local indigenization and appropriation. The two

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are by no means mutually exclusive. I can only point toward the spaces of agency that exist within hegemonic conditions of power and direct attention to what is made of modernity rather than simply what modernity does to those who are subject to it. In light of the manner in which both globalization and international relations have tended to gloss over these spaces, it is important to excavate them and establish their importance. Of course, there is no general condition that can be theorized even within this material/subjective nexus. There are different local spaces with differing possibilities of empowerment and powerlessness. Certain situations in the Third World provide for greater maneuverability and more novel or distinctive forms of navigation and indigenization; other locales, particularly those in what have been termed Fourth World conditions, severely limit the space for agency. Moreover, the balance within the process of indigenization varies between the modern and the traditional, resistance and accommodation. One crucial mitigating factor is the pull and position of traditional culture. In this respect, the options available to people in Thailand, for example, differ radically from the situation of indigenous Indian peoples in most of Latin and South America, irrespective of contemporary economic position within the global economy. There are crucial differences in history and current circumstance that condition how modernity is consumed. It would be a mistake to attempt an overarching characterization of the process of navigation in the multifaceted Third World. It is thus better to concede that the claims set out above do not apply to the South as a whole, nor do they apply in any consistent, uniform fashion where navigation as empowerment is possible. This argument can be illustrated with reference to Chesneaux’s portrait of the Third World. As I previously indicated, Chesneaux presents a fairly bleak account of the position of the Third World within what he terms “modernityworld.” He sees the Third World as one of the key “failures” of modernity, a site of its “unreason.” As if anticipating criticism of his characterization as too apocalyptic, Chesneaux boldly states: “But the facts are too serious, the evidence too consistent, the statistical data too precise. One-third of a century after winning its independence and entering the modernity-world, the Third World is facing total collapse.”57 Yet if we look closely at a sample of Chesneaux’s “evidence,” the picture is not as straightforward as “total collapse.” The conclusions that can be drawn from his vignettes do not point decisively to a narrowing or obliteration of autonomous space. Indeed, Chesneaux admits as much: “Between the traps and constraints of modernity’s space and time, there are already signs of opposition. . . . Almost everywhere, people are exploring the paths to ‘the alternative.’” 58 The problem lies in his positing of opposition and alternative in contradistinction to modernity; the import of his illustrations point to a less binary,

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more fluid range of responses to modernity. If one’s criteria is either submission to modernity or opposition to modernity, then inevitably the Third World fails to make much of an impression. As with psychoanalysis, ambivalence is more likely to structure people’s representations and responses. Further, as I have argued throughout and Chesneaux himself inadvertently picks up, the choices and possibilities are not as stark, even in the most sordid of circumstances. Thus, when Chesneaux describes the world of the pepenadores of Mexico City—the ragpickers or scavengers of the city’s many rubbish dumps—he views them as “relatively privileged” because they have been able to purchase the right to scavenge from the official dump manager. He goes on to describe one particular dump where the pepenadores collect the various discarded articles of modernity (transistor parts, decapitated dolls), “all of which they evaluate, clean, sort and sell to chains of salvage goods dealers that are organized with the most perfect and modern efficiency.”59 The issue for Chesneaux is not that these people are improvising quite effectively in obviously wretched circumstances (note the emphasis on “modern efficiency”), but that they are not resisting in any traditional sense. The notion of resistance being invoked colors Chesneaux’s interpretation of the various navigations of modernity he illustrates. There is a similar restrictive notion of resistance in some postcolonial accounts that also worked to obscure the constant bargaining and mediation of modernity that takes place in everyday life. Yet Chesneaux is not unaware of other situations where this mediation is meaningful and suggestive of agency. Thus he writes of Bangkok, which looks “perfectly integrated” into modernity-world but where “the Thais can take what they want and leave the rest—they manage modernity in a Thai way”; and Beijing, where modernity is “officially triumphant” but where the streets belong to the millions of bicyclists, a “self-confident democratic force, a vast reserve of common sense” that will never adapt to a modern system of transport like in the cities of the West.60 The trouble for Chesneaux is that these “examples of resistance” are atypical. However, I suggest that the difficulty lies in Chesneaux’s idea of what resistance amounts to and where and when it occurs. He defines resistance as the ability to “maintain anchorage in the specificity of a unique living reality.”61 If this is the case, then what he defines occurs in a myriad of situations outside of Bangkok and Beijing that are hardly atypical. Indeed, what he is describing hardly amounts to resistance in the sense of outright opposition but captures the very processes I have suggested occur in the context of modernity’s passage through the Third World: consumption, navigation, indigenization, and creolization. That these processes proceed in the face of certain material realities and barriers is beyond dispute. The point, however, is that subjectivity is constituted at

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both the imaginary and the social level, and crucially, agency is exercized in these mediations of modernity, albeit in differing degrees depending on the specific circumstances. The argument to date has revolved around the inability of globalization discourses to see particularity and specificity in their overall representation of global space. In highlighting modernity’s expanded reach, the global becomes a blanket thrown over the various cultures of the world in the process of standardization. Certain features and processes of modern life are internationalized from a narrow Western experience and standpoint so that they seem to cover all the world. This point of perception is crucial. The undeniable veneer of globalization is mistaken for something more deep-seated and comprehensive. Bryan Turner has made a crucial distinction in this respect between “thin” and “thick” globalization in the context of ideas about “global citizenship.” The world is mostly undergoing “thin” globalization, which Turner equates to the somewhat rarefied and artificial experience of commuting between transit lounges of modern airports. There is an unmistakable sameness, but it is mostly superficial and locked into a particular circuit. Once one steps outside this global transit lounge and journeys into everyday life, one constantly experiences difference.62 Chesneaux has utilized the same metaphor in his discussion of the “jet set” of modernity, the privileged, happy few who, from “up in the altitudes where they spend a good deal of their lives,” “identify totally with the institutions, systems and currents of the wired planet.”63 The metaphor of the transit lounge is an apt departure point for a consideration of the view from the ground in Africa. Rather than reiterate the arguments in favor of the local and the particular at a general level in the remainder of this chapter, I will explore certain episodes in what de Certeau has called “the practice of everyday life.”64 These brief snippets of everyday life will attempt to chart some instances of the consumption of modernity in Africa. Framed from differing angles—literary, sociological, post-developmental—they are attuned to some of the possibilities and risks of encountering the modern outside the transit lounge of globalization. They are by no means definitive, but they at least serve to indicate the heterogeneity of experience in worlds caught up in, but not totally captured by, global, Western processes. They also highlight the way in which the self and society intersect, with at times creative and innovative outcomes and, in particular, how a specifically African experience of modernity and globalization revolves around struggles between the individual and the community, city and village, neoimperialism and local survival, the modern and the traditional. Accra, Ghana in Search Sweet Country.65 Laing’s novel is a vibrant celebration of contemporary Ghana in which the author explores the interplay between the modern and the traditional and never comes down on the side

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of one or the other. Indeed, the two are juxtaposed not as binary opposites but as contemporaneous elements of modern African identity. Accra is constantly in motion, its inhabitants living within a hybrid space in which they continually navigate the exigencies of modernity with reference to the past and the possibilities that exist in the present and the future. Kofi Loww, a university dropout disillusioned with life and in search of himself, interacts with an eclectic assortment of characters who are similarly in pursuit of meaning. These range from the eccentric Beni Baidoo, who wants to return to the village by setting up his own, to Professor Sackey, a disaffected academic who continually reflects on the dilemmas and ambiguities of modern living. Kofi, propelled by self-doubt, ponders the old and the new: In the old days, he thought—sometimes sadly, sometimes with a smile— that he would have been an old elder that others came to, especially the young, to pour out their hearts to, and then would leave feeling that they had talked to a safe man, a man who was neither traditionally or emotionally dangerous. The propellers of his soul sliced nothing in revenge, and he certainly did not want to move into an imported philosophy of action or absence, neither Marxism in palm wine nor existentialism in pito. . . . if there were any absence at all, it was merely the absence of one thing or one thought as opposed to the other; of one way of life as opposed to another way; of the collision of decisions and attitudes, one of which would not vanish but move into a different relationship, a different collision. . . . He wondered whether a quiet persistence to find out what he could do with old and new was a sin or taboo. He ate shitoh, kenkey and doubt: but what was old, what was new, after all? . . . The world was open, no matter how many cultures you shut in, including your own. (p. 36)

For Laing, the quest to find out what could be done with both the old and the new, or in de Certeau’s terms, what could be “made” of the new, is clearly not taboo. There are no momentous acts of resistance or binary choices, merely a “quiet persistence” to act on the possibilities generated by both tradition and modernity. Kojo Okay Pol, spying on Professor Sackey for the politician Dr. Boadi, reflects that “sometimes, caught between the jet and the village, he whistled; he insisted that culture was just what you did, so he was free to do anything” (p. 49). Professor Sackey, who has no time for either the “great traditionalists” or the “modern carpenters of the head,” at one point tells his friend Allotey in frustration that one either embraces the modern and becomes fragmented or remains whole and dies, to which Allotey replies: “It’s a choice I don’t accept. There must be a middle way somewhere. . . . No matter who or what is inhibiting me, I want to find this balance!” (pp. 77, 101). Ezruah, Kofi’s father, echoes these sentiments when he claims that some traditional taboos

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must remain, but people must continue to modernize: “Look at an old man like me talking about something like modernizing. But there’s been so much already in my life that I want more and more! Change everything except the roots that do the changing! And in change we must look both backward and forward” (p. 230). Here Laing suggests that the capacity for change is inherent in African society. Sackey warns against the move toward cultural authenticity: “Be careful about originality, since you may be going against your own culture!” He later adds: “Our soil can grow completely new things too” (pp. 288, 290). Laing presages not only the Ghanaian (and African) capacity for innovation and adaptation, but the processes of indigenizing the modern. The novel ends with the reflection that Accra had a yet unfinished sunsum, or soul, which serves to reinforce the consciously open and syncretic tone of Laing’s narrative and his vision of everyday life in Ghana, the ambiguous space between the village and the city in which individuals interact with community and tradition. This optimistic tone does not ignore or deny asymmetrical relations of power or exaggerate the autonomy of the African subject. One is reminded of Kojo Okay Pol, whose feeling that he was free to do anything was circumscribed by factors beyond his immediate control: “To confuse things still further, he usually felt he was bigger than any situation he found himself in, but the fact that he could not often control these situations gave him an acute sense of injustice. He therefore tried to choose a sense of innocence, which was temperamentally true, to go with his sense of ridicule. And this led him to create unnecessary complexities around people” (pp. 49–50). Agency may be real, but like Kojo Okay Pol, subjects may stumble through it. The complexity of postcolonial Africa provides a fluid context in which individual and collective agency is played out against various constraining elements. Within what Achille Mbembe has characterized as the “chaotic plurality” of Africa’s postcolony, a key feature is the capacity for African improvisation. The postcolonial subject mobilizes several identities.66 Even if the capacity for action and self-definition is not always effective in the face of global processes, at the very least three must be accorded some space for critical self-reflexivity akin to Laing’s narrative terrain. La Sape in Brazzaville, the Congo and Kinshasa, Zaire.67 Brazzaville and Kinshasa, cities that share their respective countries’ borders, constitute what materialist critics such as Leys would consider quintessential African terrain: poverty and despair, shantytowns, structural adjustment programs, political repression, and cultural Westernization.68 Modernity looms large in what Simone and Hecht term this most desperate of African settings. Indeed, looked at from the outside, the Western commodification of these African cities appears to confirm the globalization of modernity. The most striking aspect of this commodification is the fetish for Western designer

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labels, predominantly French but also from other parts of Europe. But this fetish is more than mere imitation of Western taste or an indicator of African incorporation into Western modernity. Because it dovetails with traditional BaKongo beliefs concerning wealth, power, and outward appearance, this fetish for Western clothes and dress takes on another meaning, one that suggests that the consumption of modernity that takes place evokes a more complex and ambiguous navigation of outside processes that feed into local strategies for self-definition and empowerment. “La Sape” derives from the French saper, which signifies to dress elegantly. During the 1970s, several “clubs des jeunes premiers” sprang up in Brazzaville, principally among lower-class BaKongo. Familiar with the outside world of French modernity, the members of these clubs, the sapeurs, expressed a strong desire to consume the fruits of French fashion (St. Laurent, Gaultier, Chanel, Esprit). Eventually, these sapeurs became so widespread that an institution was coined to describe them: “La Sape,” or Société des Ambianeurs et des Personnes Élégantes. According to the description provided by Friedman, distinct patterns and rituals have arisen around La Sape that invariably involve a pilgrimage to Paris (with money scraped together by hook or by crook) and the gradual accumulation of designer labels from fake replications in the marketplaces of Brazzaville and Kinshasa of originals in Paris, in a long apprenticeship that witnesses a movement through certain “status-classes” until one has become a “parisien,” or elder. A highlight of this apprenticeship is the return to Brazzaville or Kinshasa in order to demonstrate how far one has come in the accumulation of “la gamme.” These triumphant return visits are referred to as “descentes,” which even involve a special dance, “la danse des griffes,” in which the famous labels that have been sewn into a single jacket are displayed, thereby guaranteeing prestige. According to Simone and Hecht, sape pervades Congolese society and can be seen at religious services and tribal events, worn by priests and village chiefs as a sign of power. Interestingly, despite the specific class and ethnic origins, La Sape has come to encompass a more widespread self-definition among the Congolese and Zairians. In a recent film that typifies this broader appeal, Black Mic Mac One, with a guest appearance by the so-called Congolese King of Sape Joe Ballard, Zairians living in Paris decide they need the assistance of a powerful “fetish priest” from home. On the plane to Paris, a young trickster drugs the priest and appropriates his identity, arriving in Paris impersonating the priest. The Zairians are tricked into giving the impostor a house, a car, and an expense account, which the trickster promptly uses to buy expensive clothing and thereby enhances his status as a sapeur. The real priest, meanwhile, is lost in Paris, living in poverty. What does the institution of La Sape amount to against the backdrop of modernity and desperation in Brazzaville and Kinshasa? From the outside it would appear a surrender (and a slavish one at that) to Western consumerism.

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Yet, as both Friedman and Simone and Hecht point out, there is a more significant redefinition of tradition and identity going on that problematizes a straightforward scenario of submission to the West. There is evidence of an underlying historical continuity in the consumption of modernity that takes place by La Sape. The sacred BaKongo concept of Tsala, of looking good as a symbol of life force, well-being, and hence power (“You are what you wear”), feeds into a tradition, according to Simone and Hecht, that prizes fine clothing, elaborate hairdos, comportment, and the general refinement of one’s appearance. As Friedman notes, “Power is a ‘force’ that provides both health and wealth and its differential presence is expressed in the hierarchy itself. This is truly the land of ‘la distinction’” (1992, p. 350). Clothes make the person, and this is perhaps truer in Congo and Zaire than elsewhere. Friedman sees this fetish for these trappings of modernity as a cultural strategy of appropriation that expresses not only “local structures of desire” for the modern but a reworking of traditional beliefs and practices within which modernity is consumed and contemporary identity is updated. Even if one concedes that this transformation of tradition takes place in the integration of Congo and Zaire “into the French franc zone of the world economy,” the manipulation and usage made of global products of Western origin by the local Congolese and Zairians in their everyday lives inscribes a crucial difference and distinctiveness in the passage of modernity. People in Paris, Brazzaville, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, and Melbourne may all have a fetish for Gaultier and St. Laurent, but this global fetish is consumed in particular situations and with reference to distinct reference points and cultural strategies in which the interplay between history, tradition, and material position make for differentiated outcomes. Even JeanPaul Gaultier himself, stepping outside the global circuit of fashion shows and transit lounges, would encounter difference in the reception of globalized modernity in Brazzaville, beyond the obvious economic disparities between North and South. It is precisely the revitalization of tradition within a broader process of the indigenization of modernity that many globalization discourses tend to ignore or downplay as insignificant. Women’s co-operatives, Mashonaland, Zimbabwe.69 In what Christine Sylvester has labeled Zimbabwe’s “terrain of contradictory development,” women and cooperatives are perched somewhat precariously between competing pressures of global economic liberalization, progress, state socialism, traditional patriarchal values, and poverty. This is a postdevelopmental terrain—beyond traditional conceptions of modernization where attempts to tap local traditions and agents creates an ambiguous space for partnership within the global economic system. Women’s cooperatives occupy what Sylvester terms as “positions in between and marginal

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to old and new” that “struggle for space in Zimbabwe’s inherited matrix of identities, as does a state that is itself multicentered and crosspressured.”70 The political economy of Zimbabwe provides a backdrop against which it is clear that cooperatives and especially the female workforce are not doing particularly well despite state attempts to promote equal rights and the advancement of both women and cooperatives. According to Sylvester, of the collective cooperatives she studied in 1988, “not one had successfully done away with inherited practices of sexually divided labour.”71 In strict economic terms, cooperatives as a whole, and particularly those run by women, are certainly struggling. Yet within such a bleak environment, the traces of agency and the navigation of old and new, even from such a marginalized position, are visible. In a particular study of women-run silk-making cooperatives in Mabvuku, Mashonaland, Sylvester outlines the attempts by Zimbabwean women to advance their cooperatives by applying to the European Economic Community (EEC) Microprojects Program for funding. It is in the interaction between women’s cooperatives and the wider network of modernity (represented by international agencies such as the EEC) that occurs the mediation of Western ideas about development, progress, and even feminism by African women in their everyday practices. The material barriers are immense: The women are economically marginal and the lack of formal education (particularly in English) hinders the effective exploitation of EEC funding procedures. They rely on two Greek women as sponsors to put their case to the EEC investigation group that assesses the viability of the project. The EEC is initially reluctant and cynical: It highlights certain “economic realities” and fears that the cooperative venture is too reliant on the Greek women who have helped set it up. The Zimbabwean government itself is suspicious and has delayed approval of sufficient land to make the cooperative viable. Nevertheless, the Zimbabwean women, through their silk-making cooperatives, “become entangled in identity-shifting negotiations with international donors”72 in which they learn to speak a different language for the betterment of their local position. Sylvester sees these “reginas” as involved in a discourse of cooperation that is not only empowering but as worthy of attention as any macro study of regime cooperation in international relations. Indeed, the international/global and local enter a dialogue in this episode of intersubjective relations. Not only are the local reginas obviously affected by regimes affiliated to the global political economy, but in the instance of the EEC, these reginas also manage to influence the policies of this international regime. Thus the proper Western patron-client relationship is bypassed; the strict, authoritative rules slanted toward serious business enterprises are overcome. This is particularly evident in the fact that the EEC funding

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program eventually gives generous funding to the cooperatives despite the fact that they fall outside official notions of sound business practice. Interestingly, the Greek women are able to convince Greek EEC delegates to back the Zimbabwean women. Sylvester sees this situation as another instance of family values cutting across institutional rules (the cooperatives are seen by the participants as family enterprises). For the Zimbabwean women themselves, a process of empowerment takes place. The cooperatives are described as “busy” and full of “high expectations.” One woman explains: “We’ll build a factory in the future and employ men and women, although the women will manage it because the men know they have no knowledge of silk. We have many plans. It took the Ministry of Cooperatives so long to process our papers for registration that some of us were discouraged. Our possibilities for EEC funding were held up. Maybe now it will be OK.”73 They accept contingency and openness as part of their lives. They also have a dual sense of cooperation, and an instrumental view that allows the Greek women to negotiate on their behalf for EEC funding. This facilitates a more noninstrumental understanding of cooperation in which the women, through their cooperatives, share skills and nourish each other’s desire for connection and autonomy. As noted by Sylvester, in the process of the local-global interaction between the EEC and the Zimbabwean women’s cooperatives, a “strange cooperation emerges across differences”: “People who have no canonical right to narrate issues of international cooperation do so anyway. Subjectivities become mobile. Funds are dispensed to the ‘wrong’ identity.”74 This indicates that the local women, with the help of their sponsors, have managed to mold global economic processes to their ends.

NOTES 1. Richard Devetak, “The Project of Modernity and International Relations Theory,” Millennium, 24(1), Spring 1995, p. 29. 2. Ibid., p. 50. 3. Jonathan Friedman, “Narcissism, Roots and Postmodernity: The Constitution of Selfhood in the Global Crisis,” in Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman, eds., Modernity and Identity (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), p. 351. 4. Jonathan Friedman, “Being in the World: Globalization and Localization,” in Mike Featherstone, ed., Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (London; Newbury Park, CA; and New Delhi: Sage, 1990), pp. 314–315, 323; and Friedman, “Narcissism, Roots and Postmodernity,” pp. 338–355. 5. Ulf Hannerz, “The World in Creolization,” Africa, 57(4), pp. 547, 548, 550, 555. 6. Ibid., p. 552. 7. Ivor Miller, “Creolizing for Survival in the City,” Cultural Critique, Spring 1994, p. 154. 8. Hannerz, “The World in Creolization,” p. 556.

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9. Ibid., p. 555. 10. This expression was used by Raymond Williams to denote the “whole way of life” or “lived culture” of a particular society. See Williams, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1980), pp. 55–56. 11. Jean Chesneaux, Brave Modern World: The Prospects for Survival (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), p. 28. 12. In John Mary Waliggo, A. Roest Crollius, T. Nkeramihigo, J. MutisoMbinda, Inculturation: Its Meaning and Urgency (Nairobi: St. Paul Publications, 1986), p. 7. 13. Theoneste Nkeramihigo, “Inculturation and the Specificity of Christian Faith,” in Waliggo et al., Inculturation, p. 68. 14. John Mary Waliggo, “Making a Church That Is Truly African,” in Waliggo et al., Inculturation, p. 12. 15. Cited in V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 62. 16. Ibid., pp. 63–64. 17. J. Chesneaux, Brave New World: The Prospects for Survival (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992). 18. David Harvey makes a similar point even for those cultures that attempt to carve out an essential identity and “authentic community” in opposition to the predominant values of Western modernity. Claiming such alternative visions rarely survive in complete isolation to modern capitalism, he argues that those that have survived “have almost without exception done so by an accommodation to the power of money, to commodification and capital accumulation, and to modern technologies.” Yet this is only one part of the story. According to Harvey, “The survivors have also exhibited a capacity to insert and reinsert themselves into changing space relations.” In other words, they have displayed a capacity to navigate the contours of modernity in novel directions even as they take on board the material imperatives of the West. See “From Space to Place and Back Again: Reflections on the Condition of Postmodernity,” in Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, George Robertson, and Lisa Tickner, eds., Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 19. 19. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1984), p. xiii. 20. Ibid. 21. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure. Translated by Robert Hurley, originally published in French in 1984 (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 31–32. 22. Terence Ranger, “Concluding Summary: Religion, Development and Identity,” in Kirsten Holst Peterson, ed., Religion, Development and African Identity (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of American Studies, Seminar Proceedings No. 17, 1987), p. 153. 23. Edgar Morin, cited in Iain Chambers, “Cities Without Maps,” in Bird et al., eds., Mapping the Futures, p. 189. 24. See, for example, David Maillu, The Broken Drum, which is published by the author’s small independent publishing house. Zimbabwe is a particularly fertile ground for small publishing houses; Mambo, Jongwe, Zimfeb, and Baobab are among many. 25. Steven Feld, “Notes on World Beat,” Public Culture Bulletin, 1(1), Fall 1988, p. 31. Interestingly, Feld locates this revitalizing appropriation in “the mark of otherness,” that is, an indication that something new and exciting can be

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produced despite the homogenization of world music and the apparent shrinking in “human musical diversity” (p. 36). Thus appropriation and hybridization under global musical interactions does not lead to sameness. 26. Harvey, “From Space to Place,” p. 7. 27. Ibid., p. 8. 28. Ibid., p. 8. 29. Chesneaux, Brave Modern World, p. 57. (Chesneaux’s emphasis) 30. Doreen Massey, “Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place,” in Bird et al., Mapping the Futures, pp. 65, 67–68. 31. Chambers, “Cities Without Maps,” p. 196. 32. Ibid., p. 197. 33. See Chesneaux’s analysis of modernity as a “place of unreason” in the Third World, Brave Modern World, pp. 134–137. 34. Harvey returns to this issue with a further answer to his initial question of why the local has become more significant under globalization. He states: “Place is becoming more important to the degree that the authenticity of dwelling is being undermined by political-economic processes of spatial transformation and place construction.” Here he attempts to view globalization and modernity from the point of view of those affected by change on the ground. However this argument is couched in the context of a critique of Heidegger, in which Harvey eventually argues that any “authentic” sense of place or resistance to modernity is impossible and that even the most “authentic community” accommodates and engages modernity. In “From Space to Place,” pp. 12, 19. 35. David Harvey, “Class Relations, Social Justice and the Politics of Difference,” in Michael Keith and Steve Pike, eds., Place and the Politics of Industry (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 54, 63. 36. Ibid., pp. 50, 54. 37. Harvey, “From Space to Place,” p. 5. 38. Harvey, “Class Relations,” p. 58. 39. See Harvey, “From Space to Place,” pp. 9–13; and Massey, “PowerGeometry,” pp. 63–67. 40. George Revill, “Reading Rosehill: Community, Identity and Inner-City Derby,” in Keith and Pile, eds., Place and the Politics of Identity, p. 120. 41. Gustavo Esteva, “Regenerating People’s Space,” Alternatives, 12, 1987, p. 132. 42. Ibid., pp. 132–140. 43. Ibid., p. 141. 44. Ibid., pp. 147–148. 45. Ibid., p. 140. 46. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (London: Souvenir Press, 1974), p. xiii. 47. Ashis Nandy “Cultural Frames for Social Transformation: A Credo,” Alternatives, 12(1), 1987, p. 120. 48. Anthony Elliott and Stephen Frosh, eds., Psychoanalysis in Contexts: Paths between Theory and Modern Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 3. 49. Elliott and Frosh, “Introduction,” Psychoanalysis in Contexts, p. 4. 50. What follows is a critical reading of Freud taken from Anthony Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition: Self and Society from Freud to Kristeva (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), who, along with theorists such as Castoriadis, has been at the forefront of arguing for a more positive reading of

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the role of the imaginary. Elliott’s basic premise is that this reading is present in Freud but has tended to be downplayed or neglected. 51. Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition, p. 272. 52. Cornelius Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” in Elliott and Frosh, eds., Psychoanalysis in Contexts, p. 15. 53. Ibid., p. 34. 54. Ibid., p. 34. 55. Cornelius Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” Thesis Eleven, 24, 1989, p. 27. 56. Anthony Elliott, “Symptoms of Globalization: Or, Mapping Reflexivity in the Postmodern Age,” in Joseph A. Camilleri, Anthony P. Jarvis, and Albert J. Paolini, eds., The State in Transition: Reimagining Political Space (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995), p. 170. 57. Chesneaux, Brave Modern World, p. 137. 58. Ibid., p. 30. 59. Ibid., p. 43. 60. Ibid., p. 46. 61. Ibid., p. 47. 62. Bryan Turner, “Global Citizenship,” paper given at the “Citizenship and Transgression” seminar, Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia, April 6, 1995. 63. Chesneaux, Brave Modern World, pp. 45–46. 64. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 65. B. Kojo Laing, Search Sweet Country (Boston and London: Faber and Faber, 1986). 66. Mbembe “The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony,” Public Culture, 4(2), Spring 1992, p. 2. Mbembe avoids many of the pitfalls of globalization discourses with his notion of fluid identities constantly being remade. His otherwise specific and localized analysis, however, displays other problems. See my critique of Mbembe in Chapter 4. 67. This episode is drawn from the following sources: Friedman, “Being in the World,” pp. 314–319 and “Narcissism, Roots and Postmodernity,” pp. 348–353, and T. Abdul Maliqalim Simone and David Hecht, “Masking Magic: Ambiguity in Contemporary African Political and Cultural Practices,” Third Text, 23, Summer 1993, pp. 111–112. 68. The official language of both countries and capitals is French. Christianity is the predominant religion in Zaire (over 70 percent) and significant in Congo (40 percent). Their respective economies are also locked into the French/Western, International Monetary Fund orbit. 69. This postdevelopment episode is based on the research into Zimbabwe of Christine Sylvester, in particular: “Reginas in International Relations: Occlusions, Cooperations, and Zimbabwean Cooperatives,” in Stephen J. Rosow, Naeem Inayatullah, and Mark Rupert, eds., The Global Economy as Political Space (Boulder, CO, and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994); and Sylvester, Zimbabwe: The Terrain of Contradictory Development (Boulder, CO, and San Francisco: Westview Press, 1991; London: Dartmouth, 1991). See also “Urban Women Cooperatives, ‘Progress,’ and ‘African Feminism’ in Zimbabwe,” Differences, 3(1), 1991, pp. 29–62. At the time of this particular episode, the now titled European Union was still known as the European Economic Community (EEC), hence the reference to the EEC throughout this section.

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70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

Sylvester, Zimbabwe, p. 161. Ibid., p. 127. Sylvester, “Reginas,” p. 117. Cited in ibid., p. 118. Ibid., p. 117.

Epilogue

In an interview with Appiah, Chinua Achebe reflects on the nature of African identity: It is, of course, true that the African identity is still in the making. There isn’t a final identity that is African. But, at the same time, there is an identity coming into existence. And it has a certain context and a certain meaning. Because if somebody meets me, say, in a shop in Cambridge, he says, “Are you from Africa?” Which means that Africa means something to some people. Each of these tags has a meaning, and a penalty and a responsibility.1

Africa is invoked and imagined in relation to a variety of reference points. It also comes into existence under certain conditions. Hence, Achebe’s emphasis on conditionality, positionality, and signification. Appiah goes on to flesh out some of the possibilities contained in Achebe’s notion of an emergent African identity, although having rejected notions of race and philosophy, Appiah offers a conventional vision of Pan-Africanist unity. The singularity of Achebe’s expression (“the African identity”) belies somewhat his warning of the “penalty” involved in any one tag of identity. Nevertheless, his emphasis on context and variable meaning points to an African landscape that elicits and encompasses various interpretations of what it is to be African. Each of these contains an enunciation, at times implicit and unconscious, of Africa’s place in the world. Interestingly enough, Achebe’s key allusions in this passage resonate with the key loci of postcolonial and globalization discourses. The casual reference to being recognized as an African in Cambridge is a powerful reminder of the central position of the disaporic in postcolonialism, as is the signifier of difference that underwrites this recognition. However, the emphasis on context and place forms the pivot of certain globalization discourses that point to the local/global nexus as the site of modernity’s 201

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unfolding. Africa is imagined on both the inside and the outside of the continent in this respect. Africa is simultaneously rooted and elsewhere in the imaginings of people in the various diasporas. There is no single African diasporic experience or expression. Indeed, what is obvious about most accounts of identity in the many African diasporas is the distinctiveness of the particular vision of what Africa signifies. This is also true of most postcolonial discourses, which often articulate a personal or individual image of postcoloniality that is conditioned by Western context and circumstance as much as by a knowledge of marginality in the Third World. This study began with a move from a conception of international relations to one of intersubjective relations between North and South. International relations has been found to be an inadequate account of both the Third World and the human element in world politics. As Sylvester has illustrated, it blocks certain agents and forms of cooperation “from occupying the privileged inside of the discipline.”2 In this sense, international relations is seen as restrictive. It fails to take into account the subjective and cultural, which also affect interactions between states and nations. It refuses to recognize that subjects at the level of everyday practices are involved in international relations and, as Sylvester implies, that these actors take their cues from socialities and spaces that exist beyond the carefully demarcated realm of the international.3 International relations constitutes what another critic, Stephen Rosow, terms a “walled city,” particularly the dominant realism and neorealism approaches. Yet this walled city is empty: empty in the sense “of people—people with their self-understandings, hopes, fears, projects, learning capacities, histories, and social institutions” and also in the sense that its defining works “purify the philosophical ambiguities of their traditions and thereby leave their texts empty of nuance, context, and sensibility.” The result is that the rich, textured nature of world politics, illuminated by “boundary crossing,” is left out.4 Yet the terrain traversed in this book—postcolonialism, globalization, the South or Third World, identity, modernity, space, subjectivity, and culture—should concern the student of international relations. These issues are neither irrelevant nor marginal; they inhabit the space between the binary oppositions of the discipline and, consequently, “matter most in international relations.” 5 It is in these spaces between that we are able to glimpse some of the grand processes inscribed in notions of power, order, security, and the state as they affect the lives of ordinary people. Although it is necessary to keep in view the broader structures and systems that pattern societies across the world (the space of material politics), a vision of these processes without an understanding of what they may mean for various people and communities will remain necessarily one-dimensional and sterile. They will tend to say more about the conceptual parameters of the

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beholders of such constructions of world politics than about the varied landscape that is ostensibly in focus. Thus, it is important to look also to the “psychic interdependency” and “interdiscursive relationship” between North and South, where we may be able to live with and recognize the necessary heterogeneity for understanding ourselves and others.6 Because international relations stymies this intersubjective space, it is imperative to delve into other discourses that at least admit the possibility that some of the issues cited above are central to an understanding of the contemporary world. Postcolonialism directly addresses the position of the marginalized, be it histories, peoples, or discourses. It brings to the fore that which a long tradition of orientalist scholarship has overlooked or repressed. Its predominantly revisionist project is accompanied by a consciously political one; that is, in retelling the (post)colonial encounter from a counterhegemonic standpoint, it seeks to empower subaltern people and refashion subjectivity along more non-Western lines. In highlighting the significance of resistance and difference, it reminds us of the majority who are not ostensibly Western. In pointing toward ambivalence and hybridity, it seeks to inform us that Western dominance was always fragile and not so monolithic. In contradistinction to international relations, it gives us an account of the Third World experience, no matter how problematic. In place of power and states, it offers the discursive and representational, the subjective and the cultural. It not only is steeped in a different epistemology from that which usually informs international relations (though it converges somewhat with postmodern international relations in its poststructuralist sensibility) but is concerned with a radically different canvas. One needs only to glance at Homi Bhabha’s demography of the “new internationalism”: “the history of postcolonial migration, the narratives of cultural and political diaspora, the major social displacements of peasant and aboriginal communities, the poetics of exile, the grim prose of political and economic refugees.”7 Bhabha’s use of “international” does not denote a boundary of analysis beyond which certain issues and actors are irrelevant, but a boundary that becomes the place from which “something begins its presencing.” 8 This “something” incorporates sexuality, race, gender, AIDS, and nationalism. In this new internationalism, there is no clear dividing line between the inside and the outside of the West. For Bhabha (and indeed for Said), issues of postcoloniality are internal to the identity of the Western metropole.9 Following Walker, the outside resides in the inside, in terms of both history and discourse. Postcolonial discourses challenge our traditional conceptions of North and South, power and dominance, West and non-West. Yet in reaching beyond the limitations of conventional analysis, postcolonialism unwittingly betrays two key obstacles to its project of emancipation and resistance.

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The first obstacle concerns what Marxist critics have legitimately argued is a downplaying of material considerations in postcolonial revisions of identity and power. In seeking to deconstruct the power/knowledge of the West, postcolonialism advances certain claims on behalf of its project of resistance that many critics, particularly from the Third World, see as extraneous to the conditions of abject poverty and misery that affect many in the South. The feeling is that the rhetoric of resistance rarely equates with what is possible or likely for many marginalized groups. In this respect, it is certainly true that notions of otherness, difference, and identity that are integral to postcolonialism cannot be abstracted, as David Harvey has argued, from material circumstances and certain political realities.10 The second obstacle concerns the explicitly poststructural reading that informs the project of resistance. Postcolonialism seeks to uncover a dormant or deflected agency on the part of marginalized groups that is central to its refashioning of power relations between North and South. Although writers such as Bhabha and Spivak certainly provide us with a more complex interpretation of relations of dominance and submission, they do so with reference to certain poststructural tools of analysis borrowed from Lacan and Derrida that present very real problems for a contemporary strategy of resistance and change. Put crudely, if most instances of resistance are shot through with ambivalence and misrecognition and characterized in mostly subjectless terms, how is it that ordinary people in the Third World are able to empower themselves and mediate certain global processes? Alternately, how exactly does a discursive reading of resistance connect with everyday life? If postcolonialism too often floats above the fray of material circumstance, then globalization discourses, or at least those concerned with the global political economy, attempt to trace the connections between the global and the local, place and space, material processes and everyday subjectivites. In the work of Harvey, Massey, and Third World critics such as Dirlik and Ahmad, the economic realities of globalization are addressed, the former writers making an explicit link between the subjective and the material. In this body of work, the global economy is believed to be “identityinducing.”11 Modernity is seen as the linchpin in this global process that stretches across the world. Modernity is constantly consumed and forged in an interactive mediation between the local and the global. It is the encounter with modernity that brings together the West and the Third World in an intersubjective space in which identity is formed and reformed. Most globalization theorizing directly engages the concept of space (although it is less successful in exploring its precise relationship to place), and it is this movement that allows us to view the West and Africa as part of a shared topography.

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Yet the literature diverges here between those who look out onto increased homogeneity and universalization (a global culture) and those who see disjuncture and differentiation. Globalization encompasses a variety of perspectives that do not all converge on the character of the global. The important strand of thinking represented by Roland Robertson, for example, does not accord globalization a material base but prefers to view the global as constituting a distinct category that supersedes the economiccentric perspective inherent in world-system theory. Other writers emphasize a more cultural reading of globalization that has points of commonality with postcolonialism. Both Robertson and the more cultural approach to globalization betray the pitfalls of a Western vantage point. In looking out onto a world in which global processes are obviously of increased salience, the Third World and in particular Africa tend to exist on the dark side. The dazzling speed of globalization in the First World obscures a more intricate vision overall. In this respect, as Bauman has so forcefully argued, such approaches are taken in by the very “self-deception of modernity”: a self-deception that assumes greater similarity and universality despite the continual perpetuation of differentiation and difference, witnesses a “chase of uniformity as was bound to result in more ambivalence.”12 In other words, the much greater spread of modernity is taken as a sign of increasing sameness in the world when in fact not only does the global encounter difference when it interacts with the local, it becomes different. Within this context, I have defined modernity as a framework of possibilities: as always contingent and full of opportunities as well as dangers, and even more so under late modernity, when dislocation and upheaval are more pronounced. It is a process that is constantly navigated by local actors and communities that are drawn into its orbit. As I argued in Chapter 8, this is also the case for African societies, albeit with a differentiated intensity and background. This last caveat is crucial in understanding the relevance of modernity in Africa. The spatialization of politics chartered throughout this book has been an attempt to give some flesh to the resurrection of space as the key analytical notion in contemporary social theory. Much was initially made of the need to reverse the privileging of time over space, and of late some concern has been expressed that perhaps we have gone too far along the spatial road at the expense of history and of some sharper sense of what space amounts to in politics and culture. Characteristic of such concern is Lawrence Grossberg, whose tentative attempt to develop a “novel” philosophical account of space/time and its relationship to cultural politics is concerned with, among other things, overcoming any hard and fast distinction between space and time, space and place, and the global and the local (the last so often invoked, according to Grossberg, as synonymous

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with space and place respectively).13 Indeed, I have attempted to ground the concept of space in its more abstract formulations and substantially rework its significance for an understanding of identity politics in the Third World, addressing in the process some of Grossberg’s concerns. Thus space has both a metaphorical and real element; the material interacts with the subjective, the imaginary with the geographic. Temporal factors (colonial experience, underdevelopment) are integral to spatiality. The global and the local form a nexus: It is not merely a matter of place as the manifestation of the local giving substance to an empty global space. The local is always implicated in the global (and vice-versa), and various in-between sites exist that are constitutive of differences and adaptations, mostly unpredictable and unintended. Indeed, the spaces opened up at the localglobal intersection allow for a mapping of some of the central concerns in identity politics: resistance, difference, agency. In fact, intimately bound up with the conception of identity is the possibility of agency, even on the part of the most dispossessed. The capacity for agency—understood as the capacity for action, self-reflection, and initiative on the part of individuals and groups that has the effect of carving out spaces of power within dominant codes and established hierarchies— is a central element in intersubjective relations. The import of much of Part 2 on globalization was to point to agency in even the most marginalized contexts in Africa. A substantial body of Western theory from Giddens to Foucault argues for the subject’s capacity for agency within the structures of society. Even Jameson, in his notion of “cognitive mapping,” recognizes that individuals within the “seemingly disembodied force” of multinational capital invent original local tactics and practices “according to the creativities of human freedom” that guide them through the constrictions of late capitalism: “What I have tried to show here is that although my account of the postmodern may seem in the eyes of some of its readers and critics to ‘lack agency,’ it can be translated or transcoded into a narrative account in which agents of all sizes and dimensions are at work.”14 To this account of the dynamic relationship between agency and structure, I have attempted to insert a psychic or imaginary basis for the individual’s ability to think through and reflect on broader processes such as globalization and modernity. Subjectivity, without such a basis, is a fairly anemic tool of analysis.

NOTES 1. Achebe, cited in Kwame Anthony Appiah, My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Cuture (London: Metheun, 1992), p. 280. 2. Christine Sylvester, “Reginas in International Relations: Occlusions, Cooperations, and Zimbabwean Cooperatives,” in Stephan J. Rosow, Noeem Inayatullah,

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and Marie Rupert, eds., The Global Economy as Political Space (Boulder, CO, and London: Westview Press, 1994), p. 9. 3. Ibid., p. 124. 4. Stephen J. Rosow, “Boundaries Crossing—Critical Theories of Global Economy,” in Rosow et al., The Global Economy as Political Space, p. 4. 5. James Der Derian, in Rosenau, Global Voices: Dialogues in International Relations (Boulder, CO, San Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993), p. 87. 6. Der Derian in ibid., pp. 87–88. 7. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 5. 8. Ibid., p. 5. 9. Ibid., p. 6. 10. David Harvey, “Class Relations, Social Justice and the Politics of Difference,” in Michael Keith and Steve Pile, eds., Place and the Politics of Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 41. 11. Rosow, “Boundaries Crossing,” p. 5. Rosow goes on to describe this global economy as “a matrix of institutions, forces, and practices within which people struggle against identities foisted on them; within which women, men, technocrats, multinational executives and their corporations, diplomats, politicians, peasants, workers, and academics inter alia struggle both to create identities that can be effective in their everyday lives and to sort through the conflicting identities presented to them by the complexities of the global political economy.” 12. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), p. 233. 13.Working with the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (“space as becoming”; space and time not separate because reality produced in this process or “in-between” of becoming), Grossberg posits the notion of “spatial materialism” to more accurately describe global forces and their interaction with cultural factors. Thus late capitalism as a global force produces space as difference (as form), which in turn produces and distributes differences at the level of expression. In this respect, late capitalism constitutes a break with previous forms of internationalization that attempted to homogenize difference(s). To be fair to writers such as Massey and Harvey, such concerns, particularly over the relationship between space and place and the material space of politics, have already been expressed and incorporated into this analysis. See Lawrence Grossberg, “The Space of Culture, the Power of Space,” in Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, eds., The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 180, 184–185. 14. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991), p. 408. In support of his analysis, Jameson quotes Marx’s old dictum that “people make their own history, but not in the circumstances of their own choosing.”

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Index

Achebe, Chinua, 68; on multiple identities, 17, 56, 110; on nature of African identity, 201; on need for self-identity, 78; on Pan-Africanism, 111; reconstruction of African identity, 102 Adaptation, of modernity, 175–177 Africa: “authentic” voice of, 80–82; conjunction of modern and traditional, 12–13, 17, 87(n66); consumption in everyday life, 190–196; demographics, 168(n38); and globalization, 133–134, 141–143, 148, 159, 165–166; inadequacy of postcolonialism, 116–117; inculturation of Christianity, 173–174; multiple identities, 108–113; nature of philosophy, 82–83; Pan-Africanism, 113–116; place in global politics, 4–8; relevance of intersubjectivity, 15; resistance and domination, 73; resistance literature, 64–72. See also Third World The Africans: A Triple Heritage (BBC documentary), 81 Ahmad, Aijaz, 89(n79), 95, 101–102, 130, 147, 162 Alcoff, Linda, 57 Ambiguity, ix, 97–98 Ambivalence, ix, x; beyond modernity and postmodernity, 16–17; deconstruction of, 94; as product of colonialism, 92–93. See also hybridity

American Indians, 175 Anti-essentialism, 102 Appadurai, Arjun, 54, 97, 108; on deconstructing postcolonialism, 94; on globalization, 139–140, 154 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 54, 97, 118; on multiple identity, 113; on nature of African identity, 201; on PanAfricanism, 111, 115 Appropriation, 175; consumption of modernity, 171–172; of popular music, 177–178, 197(n25) Armah, Ayi Kewi, 68 Aron, Raymond, 36 Art, postcolonial, 91, 100–101 Ashley, Richard, 31 Authenticity: of African voice, 80–82; “authentic community,” 197(n18), 198(n34); recovery of the local, 181; subaltern studies and, 88(n71) Authority. See empowerment; power Bakhtin, Mikhail, 75, 77 BaKongo people, 171, 193–194 Baudrillard, Jean, 31 Bauman, Zygmunt, 9, 15–17, 205 Bayart, Jean-François, 117 Beck, Ulrich, 8, 186 Bhabha, Homi, 50, 54, 56, 160; on ambivalence, 92–93; on British colonial power, 95–96; on cultural differences, 83–85; on internationalism, 203; on international space, 10; on mimicry, 58; on resistance and difference, 63, 74, 76–78

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Binary opposition models, 69. See also Fanon, Frantz; Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 64–66, 70 Bloom, William, 46(n44) Bondi, Liz, 149 Britain, colonial power of, 74 Bull, Hedley, 33, 40, 137 Campbell, Horace, 114 Capitalism: “authentic community,” 197(n18); consumerism, 164–165; importance of place and, 178–179. See also Late capitalism The Care of the Self (Foucault), 153 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 19, 186, 187, 198(n50) Cesaire, Aime, 65 Chambers, Iain, 180 Chatterjee, Partha, 80 Chay, Jongsuk, 35 Chesneaux, Jean: on consumption of modernity, 171; modernity differential, 132, 140, 156–158, 162–164; navigation politics, 175; spatial and temporal change, 179–180; Third World as failure of modernity, 188–190 Chinweizu, 53, 80, 81, 87(n66) Christianity, 95–96, 173–174 Cities, modern, 134–135 Civil society, 139–140, 165 Clifford, James, 20 Colas, Santiago, 161 Cold War, 138 Colonialism, 97, 175–176; ambivalence and hybridity, 92–93, 95–96; binary approach to, 69; colonial history and postcolonialism, 51–53, 54; discursive approach to, 69–70; European imperialism in the Third World, 133–134; inferior-superior constructs, 65–66; Manichean organization of, 68–69; mimicry as basis of power, 74–75; rewriting history of, 69–70 The Colonizer and the Colonized (Memmi), 183 Conflict, intertribal, 1–4 Congo, 192–194, 199(n68) Consumerism, 165, 192–194

Consumption of modernity, 21, 169–172; alternatives to resistance, 188–190; examples in everyday life, 190–196; importance of place in, 178–182; indigenization, inculturation, and empowerment, 172–178; mastering space, 182; vs. production, 175–176; psychoanalytic approach to, 183–186; “La Sape” consumerism, 192–194; selfreflective aspects of, 186–188; traditional/modern fusion, 171 Continuity, language of, 105 Coombes, Annie, 80, 100–101 Co-operatives, women’s, 194–196 Cox, Robert W., 31, 130, 137, 139, 160 Creolization, 92, 171–174, 186 Critical theory, 31 Culturalism, 117–118 Culture, 19–20, 156; development through adaptation and appropriation, 176–178; effect of globalization on, 140; international relations and, 5, 22, 32–36, 39–40, 118, 130; as mode of resistance, 73; realism and, 34; re-creation of, 132; subjugation under colonialism, 65; survival under modernity, 104. See also Inculturation; Traditional/modern fusion Culture and Imperialism (Said), 55 Cust, Edward, 87(n45) Davidson, Basil, 117 Davies, A. F., 36 De Certeau, Michel, 160, 170, 175–176 Deconstruction, of ambivalence, 94–95 Deleuze, Grilles, 207(n13) Demographics: of Africa, 168(n38); rural vs. urban population, 160; Zaire and Congo, 199(n68) Der Derian, James, 31, 138 Derrida, Jacques, 31, 53–54, 74, 97 Development as globalization factor, 131–132 Devetak, Richard, 170–171 Devil on the Cross (Ngugi), 67–68 Diaspora, African: African identity and, 111–114, 201–202; migrant experience, 108–109; native voice from, 59; Pan-Africanism, 114–116

INDEX

Difference, cultural, 5–6, 52–53, 60(n12), 74; “authentic” African voice, 80–82; intellectualism and, 59; material factors of, 89(n79); multiple identity, 108–113; PanAfricanism and, 113–116; postcolonial identity, 63–64; redefinition under postcolonialism, 82–85; subjective identity and, 78–80. See also Resistance Differentiation, 18–19, 205 Dirlik, Arif, 95, 147, 164; denial of subjectivity in postmodernism, 101–103; on the material realm, 116–117, 130; on the relevance of postmodernism, 132; on Western intellectuals, 62(n47) Disempowerment, under colonialism, 65 Domination, 71–73, 93 Dovey, Teresa, 57 During, Simon, 57 Economics: of African globalization, 142, 164–165; effect of capitalism on local perspective, 178–179; effect on political identity, 204–205; funding of technology, 157–158; global, 136–137, 204, 207(n11); as identity factor, 22; spatial materialism, 207(n13); women’s co-operatives, 194–196. See also Material realm Elliott, Anthony, 16–17, 184, 198(n50) Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 138 Empowerment: through adaptation, 176–178; of blacks, 65; of navigation politics, 175–176; of women’s co-operatives, 194–196. See also Power Escobar, Arturo, 69, 71 Essentialism, 101–102, 106–108, 181 Esteva, Gustavo, 182 Ethnocentrism, 154 European Economic Community Microprojects Program, 195 Everyday, politics of, 116–119 Exile. See Diaspora Falk, Richard, 139, 148 Fanon, Frantz, 53, 64–72, 183 Farah, Nuruddin, 18

221

Featherstone, Mike, 22, 132–135, 154–156, 159–161 Feminism, 138; approach to international relations, 42; on Foucault, 152–153 First World, 171; modernity differential, 132; postmodern/ postcolonial fusion, 98–103. See also Third World; Western world Foucault, Michel, 19, 31, 53, 55; on consumption of modernity, 176; on cultivation of self, 167(n23); on resistance, 61(n24), 69, 77; on spatiality and temporality, 150; on structure and agency, 152–153 France, influence on African modernity, 192–194, 199(n68) Freedom and Socialism (Nyerere), 160 Freud, Sigmund, 97, 183, 185, 198(n50) Friedman, Jonathan, 82, 159, 170–171, 194 Frosh, Stephen, 184 Fukuyama, Francis, 38 Gandhi, Mahatma, 104–105 Ghana, 190–192 Gibbins, John, 93–94 Giddens, Anthony, 8, 42, 152, 186 Gilroy, Paul, 114 Globalization, ix, 5–7, 20, 129–131; African autonomy, 176–177; categories of, 140–142; characterization of, 133–135; effect on identity, 23–24, 164–165, 204–205; global citizenship and civilization, 139–140, 161, 172, 190; global condition, 134–136; modernity and, 7, 9–14; political space and, 20–21, 178–180; vs. postcolonialization, 147–148; vs. postmodernism, 167(n24); relation to local, 149; responses to process of, 156–157; spatiality and, 149–151, 154; successive phases of, 136; “thin” and “thick,” 190; Third World consumption of modernity, 169; Third World identity and, 6–8; Third World role in, 159–163; unproductive aspects of, 187; view from the West, 157–159; in Western

222

INDEX

world, 132–133. See also Local/ global spatiality; Material/cultural levels “Global perestroika,” 137 Global Voices: Dialogues in International Relations (Rosenau), 138–139 Gordon, David, 93 Gramsci, Antonio, 55, 61(n24), 69 Grossberg, Lawrence, 205–206 Guattari, Félix, 207(n13) Guha, Ranajit, 51 Habermas, Jürgen, 8, 10, 14 Hall, Stuart, xi, 94, 97, 157; on multiculturalism, 108–109 Hannerz, Ulf, 92, 159, 172–173 Harden, Blaine, 1–4 Harlow, Barbara, 68 Harvey, David, 22, 130, 158, 170, 204; on globalization, 167(n24); on the material and representational, 151–152; on significance of local space, 178–181, 198(n34) Hecht, David, 18, 118, 192–194 Hegemonic discourse of resistance, 70–72 Hegemony, Western, 95. See also Colonialism History of Sexuality (Foucault), 153 Hobsbawn, Eric, 56 Hoffman, Mark, 88(n67) Homogenization, 162–163, 205 Hooks, bell, 101, 151 Hountondji, Paulin, 82 Hybridity and hybridization, 60(n12), 175, 197(n25); conceptual ambiguity of, 97–98; multiple identity, 108–113; Pan-Africanism, 113–116; postmodern/postcolonial fusion, 98–103; as a product of colonialism, 92–93; as response to colonial power, 95–97; social transformation through, 105–108. See also Ambivalence Idanre and Other Poems (Soyinka), 80–82 Identity, 23; defined, 19–20; difference and, 78–80; fluidity of, 75–76, 199(n66); inculturation of

Christianity, 173–174; indigenization and creolization, 171–173; international relations and, 29, 32–36; of migrants, 108–110; multiple identity, 108–113; nationalism and, 37; nonessentialist approach to, 27(nn57, 58); postcolonialism and, 50; as product of globalization, 155; resistance and, 64; as shaped by consumption, 171; spatiality and, 149–150; survival of Third World, 104; voice from the diaspora and, 59; Western identity, 203–204. See also Hybridity; Intersubjectivity; Spatiality Identity, African, 201–203; conjunction of modern and traditional, 13; fragmentation in the diaspora, 112–113; modernity and, 6–8; recovery of African past, 56 Identity, multiple, 108–119; diaspora experience, 111–114; PanAfricanism, 113–116; politics of the everyday, 116–119 Imaginary realm, 183–187, 198(n50) Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (Lemelle and Kelley), 112, 113 Immersion, cultural, 156 Imperialism, 45(n33), 133–134 Inculturation, 173–175 India, 95; colonial, 74; survival through hybridity, 105 In-differentiation, 101 Indigenization: balancing modern with traditional, 174–176; of modernity, 171–174; self-reflexivity, 186. See also Appropriation Individualism, 155 Individual subject: consumption of modernity and, 182–183; selfreflexivity, 186–187. See also Intersubjectivity; Subjectivity Internationalism, 203–204 International Monetary Fund, 177 International relations, ix, 4–8; and Africa’s place in global politics, 4–8; alternatives to, 40; criticism of, 31; difference as a defining feature, 88(n67); exclusion of culture, 32–36, 148; expanding boundaries of,

INDEX

41–42; focus on global issues, 137–139; human element in, 46(n44); imperialism and, 45(n33); inadequacy of, 10–11, 29–31, 202–204; limitations to African context, 18; modernity and, 37–38; role of nation-state in, 44(n19) Intersubjectivity, ix, 14–19; boundaries within modernity, 170–171; international relations and, 32, 42–43; material and power, 187–188; psychoanalytic approach to, 183–186. See also Subjectivity James, Paul, 163 Jameson, Fredric, 7–8, 80, 118, 151; characterization of the Third World, 24; on late capitalism, 10, 136; on modernity, 11–13; on resistance, 73; Third World in globalization discourse, 159–161 JanMohamed, Abdul, 53, 68–69 Japan, modernization of, 73 Jeyifo, Biodun, 80 Keith, Michael, 149–151 King, Anthony, 134, 160 Kourou (space base), 157 Krishna, Sankaran, 58, 101–103, 116, 132 Lacan, Jacques, 53–54, 74, 97 La Guma, Alex, 68 Laing, B. Kojo, 69, 111, 190–192 Late capitalism, ix, 10, 176–177 Late modernity, 8, 10–12, 131, 176–177; global aspects of, 12. See also Modernity; Postmodernism Lechner, Frank, 135 Leys, Colin, 117, 162, 165 Linklater, Andrew, 130, 139, 148 Literature: “authentic” African voice in, 80–82; multiple identities in, 109–112; optimism and negativism in, 111–113. See also Resistance, literature Local/global spatiality, 149–154, 179–180 Local perspective, 149, 178–181, 198(n34) Loomba, Ania, 100, 102, 116

223

Luo tribe, 1–4 Lyotard, Jean-François, 31 Mannoni, Octave, 65–66 Marcus, George, 73 Marechera, Dambudzo, 69, 111–112, 115 Marginalization, 165–166; centering of, 108–110; limitations of, 17–18; marginalized populations, 203–204; voice of marginalized peoples, 56–57 Massey, Doreen, 59, 115, 140, 149–151, 157–158 Material/cultural levels, intersection with local/global, 149–150 Materialism, 117 Material realm, 153, 164, 187; material/representational conjunction, 152; place representation, 152; postcolonialism and, 304; role in consumption, 178–179; self-reflexivity and, 187–188; symbolism of, 153 Matigari (Ngugi), 67–69 Mazrui, Ali, 33, 35, 81 Mbembe, Achille, 18; on agency in postcolonialism, 118; on fluid identities, 20, 199(n66); on postcolonial identity, 75–77, 115–116 McCarry, Cecil, 174 McClintock, Anne, 60(n10), 91 McNay, Lois, 152–153 Memmi, Albert, 53, 183 Messeh, Anund, 95 Migration. See Diaspora Miller, Ivor, 173 Mimicry, 58, 78 Min-ha, Trinh T., 81 Mitchell, Timothy, 69, 134 Modernity, 6–14, 45(n31); balanced with hybridity and ambivalence, 104; impossibility of, 25(n20); modern/ traditional fusion, 20, 104, 171–172, 190–194; shaping African identity, 11–14; Third World–West differential, 132; unmixed modernity, 104. See also Consumption; Intersubjectivity; Late modernity; Postmodernism; Resistance; Traditional/modern fusion

224

INDEX

Modernity, analysis of: international relations, 40–41; local vs. universal perspective, 179–181; psychoanalytic approach to, 183–186; subaltern studies, 93 Moi, Daniel arap, 2–3, 85(n12) Morgenthau, Hans, 36–37 Morin, Edgar, 177 Mudimbe, V. Y., 174–175 Mugambi, J. N. K., 3 Multilateralism, 139 MUNS. See Programme on Multilateralism and the United Nations System Music, popular, 177–178 Nandy, Ashis, 104–108, 161, 183–184 Nationalism, 45(n30), 56. See also Identity Nation-state, 12–13, 44(n19) Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, 53, 66–69, 85(n12), 116 Niranjana, Tejaswini, 54, 95; on ambivalence, 92–93; on deconstruction of resistance, 73–74; on Third World–West power struggle, 50–52; on Western and postcolonial intellectuals, 59 Nkeramihigo, Theoneste, 174 North-South relations, 202–204; culture as defining factor, 33–35; global economy and, 162; hybridity and colonial experience, 102; intersubjectivity, 183–184. See also Difference; Postcolonialism; Resistance; Third World; Western world Nyerere, Julius, 160 O’Hanlon, Rosalind, 94 Organization of African Unity, 114 Orwell, George, 71 Otherness, 165, 175–176, 184, 197(n25) Otieno, S. M., 1–4 Ousmane, Sembeme, 53, 68 “Oxford, Black Oxford” (Merechera), 115 Parrotology, 67, 85(n12) Parry, Benita, 50, 53–54, 58, 62(n43)

Philosophy, origins of, 82–83 Pile, Steve, 149–151 Place, 152; consumption and, 178–182; in global politics, 4–8; importance of under capitalism, 178–179 Population. See Demographics Postcolonialism, 5–7, 21, 60(n10); abstract nature of, 116–117; colonial history and, 51–54; conceptual ambiguity of, 97–98; deconstruction/reconstruction of the past, 103; effect on identity, 50; fetishization of power, 75–77; hybridity and ambivalence, 93–94; identity formation and, xi; inadequacies of, 203–204; modernity and, 7, 9–14; native voice of, 57–59; postmodernism and, 61(n13); postmodern/postcolonial fusion, 98–103; resistance and difference, 63; resistance literature, 64–72; revision of, 118; subaltern studies, 50–51; theoretical and historical frameworks of, 53–55; Third World focus of, 147–148; visions of the future, 104–105; wide scope of, 49–50 Post-foundationalism, 93–94 Postmodernism, 8, 10–12; as explanation of modernity, 15–16; fluidity of boundaries, 94; materialism and, 130; postcolonialism and, 61(n13); postmodern/ postcolonial fusion, 98–103. See also Late modernity; Modernity; Postcolonialism Postnationalism, 140 Postpositivism, 32 Poststructuralism, 19, 41, 92–94, 204 Power: British colonial power, 95, 98; disempowerment under colonialism, 65; global, 151; hybridization as result of colonial authority, 95–96; international relations and, 38; in non-Western world, 156–157; postcolonial fetishization of, 75–77; postcolonial resistance politics and, 77–78; postcolonial struggle for, 51–52; resistance literature and, 64–72; role in international relations, 32–36; self-reflexivity and, 187–188;

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through mimicry, 74–75, 78; West as global power, 155–156, 162. See also Empowerment; International Relations Prakash, Gyan, 50, 93–95 Prasad, Madhava, 88(n71) Programme on Multilateralism and the United Nations System (MUNS), 139, 144(n22) Prospero and Caliban (Mannoni), 66 Psychoanalytical approach to modernity, 53, 183–186 Racism, 65 Ranger, Terence, 56, 164, 169 Realism, 31, 34, 40, 68 Relations, political. See International relations; North-South relations Representation, political, 71, 153 Resistance, 54, 63–64, 74–76; alternatives to, 188–189; binary models of, 69; to Christian missionaries, 96; to colonialism, 52–53; counterhegemonic discourse approach, 69–70; discursive resistance, 70–71; identity difference and, 78–80; literature, 64–72; to modernity, 5–6, 23, 181, 198(n34), 204; Pan-Africanism and, 114–115; postcolonialism and, 93; postcolonial rewriting of history, 69–70; postmodern/postcolonial fusion, 101–102; and relationship to dominance, 71–72; three topics of, 55–56 Revill, George, 181 Rituals, 19 Robertson, Roland, 135–136, 155, 159–160, 178, 205 Rosenau, James, 37, 138–139 Rosow, Stephen, 137, 202 Ruggie, John Gerard, 18, 44(n19) Rushdie, Salman, 56 Ryan, Michael, 73 Said, Edward, 50; on identity, 91–92; resistance literature, 55–56, 63, 69–71; on rewriting history, 53 Sakai, Naoki, 73 “La Sape” (elegant dressing), 171, 192–194

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Scott, James, 69–71, 116 Search Sweet Country (Laing), 190–192 Self, 167(n23); Foucault on, 153; selfin-society, 183–187. See also Identity Seth, Sanjay, 45(n30) Shapiro, Michael, 31 Shohat, Ella, 53, 60(n10), 97, 102 Simone, Abdou Maliqalim, 18, 118, 192–194 Slemon, Stephen, 64 Society: embedded in international relations, x; role of nation-state in modern life, 12–13; social context, 167(n23); social epistemes, 18–19; social theory, 30, 152 Soja, Edward, 22 Soyinka, Wole, 80–81 Space, political, 20–21, 131, 144(n29), 169; construction and restriction of, 138–140; globalization and, 149–151; international relation’s claim to, 39; mastering, 182; material/representational and local/global intersection, 152; role in societal processes, 22–23; time-space compression, 158 Spatiality of globalization, 149–151, 154, 205–206 Spatial materialism, 207(n13) Spivak, Gayatri, 50, 54, 57–58, 63, 79 Squires, Judith, 101 State politics, and African modern life, 12–13 Structuralism, 117–118, 152–153. See also Foucault, Michel Structural wretchedness, 163 Structuration, 42, 152 Subaltern studies, 88(n71); difference and identity, 78–80; hybridity and ambivalence, 93; rewriting history, 50–51; voices of practical resistance, 70–71 Subjectivity, 14–19, 29; ambivalence and hybridity in North–South relations, 98; consumption and, 170; cultivation of the self, 153; in international relations, 32; material and power, 187–188; mimicry of power, 78; under modernity, 104; through navigation, 182–183;

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postmodern/postcolonial fusion, 101–102. See also Intersubjectivity; resistance; Individual subject Sylvester, Christine, 42, 139, 194–196, 202 Technology, 157–158, 165 Theory, Culture and Society (journal), 135 Third World: ambivalence toward West, 93; characterization by Western norms, 21, 27(n60); cultural survival in, 106–108; exclusion from political space, 138–140; as failure of modernity, 188–189; globalization and, 131–132, 141–142, 159–163; identity loss through globalization, 6–7; indigenization of modernity, 171–172; international relations and, 5–8, 38–40, 148; modernity and, 11–14, 189–190; multiple identities of, 108–113; and postcolonialism, 49–52, 56–57, 98, 116–117; postmodern/postcolonial fusion, 98–103. See also Africa Tiffen, Helen, 58, 64, 79–80 Time-space compression, 158–159 Tradition: combining with hybrid present, 104–105; postcolonial literature and, 70; survival of, 104 Traditional/modern fusion, 20, 87(n66), 104, 171–172, 190–194 Triulzi, Alessandro, 13, 18, 168 Turner, Bryan, 190 Unconscious realm, 185–186 Universality, 38, 180–181 Urban life, shaping African identity, 12–14 The Use of Pleasure (Foucault), 153 Virilio, Paul, 31 Voice: of “authentic” African writing, 80–82; of the diaspora, 57–59; of marginalized peoples, 56–57; of practical resistance, 70–71 Waliggo, John Mary, 174

Walker, R. B. J., 29, 31; background of, 35; international relations and, 34–36, 39, 42 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 134; background of, 35; economic infrastructure of globalization, 136; importance of culture in international relations, 22, 34, 118, 130 Waltz, Kenneth, 37 Wamba Dia Wamba, Ernest, 73 Washbrook, David, 94 Watson, Adam, 33 Wealth. See Material realm Western world, 58; African resistance to, 68–69; difference as basis for African identity, 78–80; as global power, 162; influence on international relations, 30; orientation of globalization theory, 129–132; postcolonial conflict with Third World, 51–52; psychoanalysis of consumption, 183–186; response to globalization, 156–157; Said on selfidentity and, 56; status of postcolonial intellectuals, 62(n47); as symbol of global power, 151; Third World transformation of, 20–21; universalism and international relations, 38–39; as universal referent, 154–155; view of globalization, 157–159. See also First World; Resistance Whites’ subjugation of blacks, 65–68 Whitman, Walt, 110 Wight, Martin, 137 Williams, Raymond, 20, 35 Women: legal rights of, 1–4; voice of native, 57; co-operatives, 194–196 World Order Models Project, 130, 139, 148 World politics: global scope of, 138; vs. international relations, 42; methods of analysis, 40–41. See also globalization World system theory, 136 Worsley, Peter, 33–35 Zaire, 171, 192–194, 199(n68) Zimbabwe, 194–196, 197(n24) Zoungrana, Paul, 174

About the Book

Placing the debate squarely within the discipline of international relations, Albert Paolini assesses the key personal and political dimensions of postcolonialism—one of the major political and cultural issues of the current era. Paolini is concerned with the connections among postcolonialism, globalization, and modernity, and he offers one of the first detailed statements of those connections to be undertaken in the field of IR. Focusing on the Third World, and particularly sub-Saharan Africa, he questions dominant notions of identity and subjectivity in the social sciences. The late Albert Paolini was lecturer in international relations in the Department of Political Science at La Trobe University (Australia). Anthony Elliott is research fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne (Australia). His most recent books include Subject to Ourselves, The Mourning of John Lennon, and Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition; he is also editor of Freud 2000 and The Blackwell Reader in Contemporary Social Theory. Anthony Moran is completing a Ph.D. in the Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne (Australia); his research focuses on the areas of nationalism and racism.

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