Does postcolonialism provide no way to take the study of history forward?

Zachariah has argued that the term 'postcolonial' increasingly appears to be devoid of the polemical and political charge that it once carried, and that it presents serious limitations as an approach to writing history. But assuming that postcolonialism is inadequate in its task or insufficiently elaborated seems to perpetuate notions of the 'new humanities' (gender studies, cultural studies, and the like) as subjugated knowledges versus the 'universality' and 'dominant' knowledge of conventional, 'proper' history. After defining what is meant by postcolonialism and presenting the case of subaltern studies, this essay will argue that because it challenges long-established (and still prevalent) historiographies and because it provides alternatives to the study of history, postcolonialism does not only provide a way forward but also sideways and upward, and for that reason still proves to be fertile to historical discourse.

Postcolonialism has been sometimes defined as an amorphous set of discursive practices, akin to postmodernism, which can be applied to a variety of cultural, economic and political practices. But this definition of poscolonialism has the danger of losing its effective meaning altogether by running the risk of denying its basis in the historical process of colonialism. Moreover, some have been critical of the term 'postcolonial theory' as it lacks an originary moment or a coherent methodology and it alienates those committed to the discipline of history as practical rather than abstract endeavor (although this view is based on a false practice-theory dichotomy). Others have critised the notion of 'postcolonial history' as a restrictive and monolithic category. To add to the terminological embarrassments, some thinkers have seen postcolonialism as referring only to the process after independence, but this approach assumes a reduced view of 'post' meaning after, and thus implies a certain linearity and progress in history. The best way to conceptualise postcolonialism may be that developed by Ashcroft et al., who define postcolonialism as a specific and historically located set of cultural strategies designating the totality of practices which characterize the societies of the postcolonial world from the moment of their colonization to the present day. This definition is aware of the fact that colonialism did not cease with the mere fact of political independence but continues in a neo-colonial mode to be active in many societies. I should just add two brief remarks to Ashcroft's definition. First, postcolonialism should be seen as relational, as it involves the metropolis as much as the colonized territories. Second, rather than designating a 'totality' of practices of the societies of the postcolonial world, it would be better to say that it designates some practices, as postcolonialism actively rejects ideas of 'totality' and Ashcroft's definition would reduce the contingent and random diversity of cultural encounters into a tired relationship of coercion and retaliation.

With that definition in mind, can postcolonialism provide something more than a critique for historiography? Tracing the birth and rise of the field of Subaltern Studies (SS) provides a good starting point. SS, with origins prior to the birth of the 'postcolonial' in academia, could be seen as one of the channels through which postcolonialism has brought the study of history forward. SS was originally conceptualised as a three-volume series to revise the 'elitism' of colonialists and bourgeois nationalists in the historiography of Indian nationalism, but soon trascended both regional and disciplinary boundaries. Conceived as an alternative history and deeply rooted in Gramscian Marxism, the field followed analogue attempts in the West (history from below, etc.) to articulate the hidden or suppressed accounts of numerous groups, or the 'subaltern.' But SS was distinguished from orthodox European Marxism by combining its critique of objective material conditions with detailed analysis of their subjective effects. SS articulated a critique of the colonial archive based on its limits and on the danger of reproducing the assumptions of the colonial state, although the implicit static view of the archive would later be revisited by emphasising the active role of the historian. The arrival of Foucauldian and post-structuralist critiques of Marxism in the 1990s resulted in an intellectual bifurcation within the project that has lasted up until today. Both seemed methodologically (and politically) incompatible projects, as one focused on recovering the material life-worlds and experiences of the subaltern as a historical figure and the other on deconstructing 'Western' modes of thought, including Marxism as an Orientalising European metanarrative. But neither the assertions of Marxism nor those of poststructuralism can exhaustively account for the meanings and consequences of the colonial encounter, and the problem of how to reimagine Marxism within the cultural logic of late capitalism remains. Postcolonialism, and SS within it, became caught between the politics of structure and the politics of the fragment.

Gayatri C. Spivak

Moreover, with the arrival of postmodernism to postcolonial theory also came the problem of whether the subaltern can speak, as presented by Spivak, and of who represents the 'subaltern' better.  The Anglo-American origin of much postcolonial thought (although SS was originated in India) and their drawing from French theory has been criticised, together with the self-evident appropriation of the right to represent that Other (the subaltern) as a sort of extension of the Self (the academic), against a new Other (the West). Leela Gandhi has argued that postcolonialism addresses the needs of the Western academy, enabling non-Western critics located in the West to present their cultural inheritance as knowledge, and anti-postcolonial critics such as Dirlick and Ahmad have contested the institutionalization of 'marginality discourse' and have warned of 'opportunistic third-worldism.' Zachariah has said that claiming a privileged position as postcolonised to represent the subjectivities of one's fellow subjects requires an identification that is as uncertain as that of the inheritor of the perpetrator community identifying with the victim community and writing from that perspective. But although these claims should be kept in mind, the risk of them leading to anti-intellectualism has to be taken with care, as all forms of activity -doing- are always informed, if not produced, by forms of thinking -theory-. Ultimately, coming to terms with the past and with forms of writing about the past are ways of coming to terms with oneself.

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Postcolonialism's 'double impasse' does not mean that it cannot provide a way to take the study of history forward. Against the colonial histories still present in much history-writing (and teaching), it is necessary to fully recognise another history of agency and knowledge alive in the dead weight of the colonial past. As argued by Prakash, full recognition requires that acts of anti-colonial resistance be treated not only as theorisable but as fully comprehensive, fully conceptualised 'theoretical events' in their own right. Postcolonialism thus becomes a theoretical resistance to the mystifying amnesia of the colonial aftermath, and calls for a therapeutic retrieval of the colonial past (and neocolonial present). To achieve this goal, postcolonialism has to be aware of the risks of becoming the new orthodoxy, and replace the desire to become major or canonical with the opposite dream of becoming minor, i.e. retaining the memory of its subjugation and deterritorialization. It requires being aware of how History has been the discourse through which the West has asserted its hegemony over the rest of the world, universalising the nation-state as the most desirable form of political community through self-justificatory narratives of citizenship and modernity, and thus being aware that the trace of European expansionism continues to exist in the bodies and minds of the rest of the world, as well as in the fantasies of the former colonisers as argued by Jose Rabasa. Against empiricist Imperial history, which reduced space to stage and whose primary aim is to legitimate, postcolonial history becomes Paul Carter's spatial history, history that does not begin in a particular year or in a particular place, but in the act of naming. And thus, in the vein of New Imperial historians, postcolonial histories look at the co-production of empire both in the metropoly an the colony. To take the study of history forward and go beyond it (the 'post' in postcolonialism) requires realising that the conservatives of today do not claim Western universalism but self-proclaimed particularity as a matter of survival. Thus, avoiding comparative victimhood and fake solidarity with the oppressed, postcolonial history (here as envisioned by Chakrabarty) rejects modernity and cultural relativism, and provincialises Europe in a non-nationalist, non-nativist and non-atavistic way. Postcolonial history is history which makes visible its own repressive strategies and practices by writing into the history of modernity the ambivalences, the contradictions, the plural and contradictory struggles. It requires going against History and dreaming of a future where collectivities are defined neither by the rituals of citizenship nor by the nightmare of tradition, as phrased by Chakrabarty.

Postcolonialism, a relational and historically-located set of cultural strategies designing some of the practices which characterize the societies of the postcolonial world from the moment of their colonization to the present day, can not only provide the means of critique for historiography but take the study of history in multiple and contradictory directions. Once terminological discussions have been ascertained, historicising postcolonial theory reveals its advance from Subaltern Studies to debates around representativity, ultimately arriving at a point in which much needed self-awareness reveals a picture of self-criticism, shifting agendas and re-orienting engagements, also present in some of the other fields of the 'new humanities' (such as gender studies), that have most certainly enriched history and made us dream with better futures and more comprehensive pasts.