Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse: Cultural Critique Or Academic Colonialism? Author(S): Walter D

Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse: Cultural Critique or Academic Colonialism? Author(s): Walter D. Mignolo Source: Latin American Research Review, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1993), pp. 120-134 Published by: The Latin American Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2503613 . Accessed: 23/06/2014 01:42

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE: CulturalCritique or AcademicColonialism?*

WalterD. Mignolo Duke University

Commentingon PatriciaSeed's well-informedand useful revievA essay (Seed 1991) withina limitednumber of pages requires selectivity.1 will firstoffer a briefsummary of my reading of the essay and thendiscuss specificissues thathave been of concernto me in the past decade. Seed's "Colonial and PostcolonialDiscourse" raises two distinctive topics. The introductionand conclusion are devoted to placing colonial discourse into contemporaryscholarship and tracingits debts, complic- ities, and differenceswith poststructuralism,subaltern studies, new historicism,and feministtheory. In between, fivebooks are discussed, three on Latin America and two on the Philippines. Afterdiscussing the five books in terms of currenttrends in history,anthropology, and literary criticism,Seed offersher overallconclusion:

Whatall theseworks do to varyingdegrees is to achieveone ofthe functions of a critique:to positan idea aboutthe humanities disciplines-history, literary criticism,cultural anthropology-as more than decorative knowledge, as knowledge criticalof the relations of authority within a society.The aim of the critique in each ofthese disciplines is different-economicrelations of authority, cultural relations ofauthority (the canon), conventional political relations of authority. But the basic targetof critiqueremains the same-the relationsof authorityin colonialand postcolonialstates-and it is thusan enterpriseof cultural and politicalcriticism beingcarried out in a resolutelypostcolonial era. (P. 200)

Because thewhole spectrumof contemporary trends mentioned by Seed (frompoststructuralism to new historicism,from subaltern to colonial studies) takes a criticalstance toward knowledge, the reader may wonder about the differencesof colonial and postcolonial discourse from otherforms of critical enterprises of authorityand authoritativediscourses. Seed's view is that while the "two fields" share an interestin colonial

*Forinsights incorporated in revisingmy original version of this comment, I am gratefulto Fernando Coronil and the numerous student participants in "Beyond Occidentalism: RethinkingHow theWest Was Born," a seminarthat Coronil and I cotaughtat the University ofMichigan in thefall of 1992. This essay is dedicated to thememory of Josephat Kubayanda.

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions COMMENTARY AND DEBATE discourse, the "new literaryhistoricism is ultimatelyconcerned with ca- nonicalliterature, while colonial discourse writersseek to understandthe dynamicsof the colonial situation"(p. 199). On thebasis ofthis general summary, I would liketo discuss several related concernsof my own in recent years (see Mignolo 1989a, 1989b, 1989c, 1992). The most compellingaspects of the review essay are those dealing with the notionof colonial and postcolonial discourse ratherthan the review of the fivebooks in question. The firstissue focuses on what kind of category"colonial (or postcolonial) discourse" is. Seed takes it to be a "field of study" when she compares it with the new literaryhistoricism. Althoughit seems obvious to me thatcolonial discourse is a new or emergingfield of study,new literaryhistoricism is a new perspective(or method)rather than a field.Yet when Seed definesthe colonial aspect, she seems to take it as both a perspective(comparable to new literaryhistoricism) and a fieldof study: "Colonial discourse has thereforeundertaken to redirectcontemporary critical reflections on colonialism(and its after- math) towardthe language used by the conquerors,imperial administra- tors,travelers, and missionaries"(p. 183). She furtherspecifies that "whether the focus has been on the colonial or postcolonialsituation, the central concern of these studieshas been the linguisticscreen throughwhich all politicallanguage of colonialism, includingreactions to it and liberationfrom it, needs to be read" (p. 183). Thus the method employed in analyzing colonial discourse seems to be similarto thatused to approach any kind of discourse in any imaginable historicalor social situation.We seem to be dealing with somethinglike the "discursiveturn" in various disciplines,fields of study,or even historical moments(such as poststructuralism). My interestin delving into these distinctionsfocuses on a more fundamentalquestion regardingthe politicalimplications of the scholarly decision to engage in research and teaching on colonial (or postcolonial) discourse. The issue I am tryingto elucidate is addressed by Seed toward theend ofher essay in discussing the questions ofwhere these authorsare writing,why, and about what. In doing so, Seed brings in the autobio- graphicaldimension of the scholarvis-'a-vis his or her academic pursuit:

Manyanthropologists, historians, and literarycritics writing of thosewho are lumpedtogether as "ThirdWorld people" adopta stanceof advocacyfor those theyhave been studyingand workingwith. Hence theyare reluctantto criticize post-independenceforms of nationalism.... The earlytheoreticians of the colo- nialdiscourse field-Said, Spivak,and Bhabha-are themselvesambivalently lo- catedbetween the so-called First and ThirdWorlds: born and educatedin places likePalestine and Bengal,they have nonetheless made their academic reputations in theWest. They speak from the West but are not of it. Yet by virtue of reputation and lengthyresidence in theWest, they are no longerof theEast. Hence their contributionto shaping the field has arisenwithin the same context of the interna- tionalizationthat they are attempting to study.(P. 198)

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LatinAmerican Research Review

The issue here is notwhether one who is born in Holland should be a millerand one born in New York a stockbrokernor whethersomeone born in Holland or in New Yorkhas more authoritywhen it comes to mills or the stock marketbut ratherwho is talkingabout what where and why. Certainly,most of the work discussed and cited by Seed has been published in the United States and addressed to an academic audience. There are at least two issues to be disentangledhere. One is the politicalagenda of those of us (an empty category to be filled) born in North or South America,India, Iran, or Africabut writingand teachinghere in the United States who are concerned with colonial discourse. The otherissue is the agenda of those (an empty categoryto be filled)born or writingthere in India, Iran, Africa,or South Americawho are strugglingto resistmodern colonization,including the academic one fromhere. I am aware thatin the global village of a postmodern world, such distinctionsmay be viewed with suspicion. I believe nonetheless that they should be drawn not so much in termsof national identities but in relationto thelocus ofenunciation constructedby the speaker or writer.Once again, the basic question is who is writingabout what where and why? The critiqueof what today is grouped under the label of "colonial discourse"has a long traditionin Latin America,which can be tracedback to the 1950s when the writingsof German philosopherMartin Heidegger began to catch the attentionof Latin American intellectuals.The most spectacularexample to my mind is thatof Mexican historianand philoso- pher Edmundo O'Gorman. His La ideadel descubrimiento de America(1952) and La invencionde Ame'rica(1958, English translation1961) representthe earlydismantling of European colonial discourse. O'Gorman wrotemuch before the poststructuralistwave, although he had a similarfoundation and perspective.His reading of one chapterof Heidegger's Beingand Time (1927) made him realize firstthat language is not the neutral tool of an honestdesire to tellthe truth, as nineteenth-centuryhistoriographers had assumed, but an instrumentaltool forconstructing history and inventing realities.Using these presuppositions, O'Gorman dismantled five hun- dred yearsof Western historiography-colonial and postcolonialdiscourse, as it were. Anothertelling example is Uruguayan literarycritic Angel Rama's La ciudadletrada (1982). This magnificentlittle book offersa theoryabout the control,domination, and power exercised in the name of alphabetic writing.Poststructuralism no doubt reached Rama before he wrote the book, and the guidance ofMichel Foucaultis certainlyvisible and explicit. What Rama has analyzed is a complex,changing, and growingdiscursive formationin which power and oppositional discourses fromthe colonial period to the twentiethcentury constitute the two sides of the same coin. The power of the "lettered city" helps indirectlyin understandingthe silence inflictedby writtenlanguage. One can even say that as far as

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions COMMENTARY AND DEBATE colonial (and postcolonial) discoursepresupposed alphabeticwriting, the corpus analyzed by Rama both as a discourse of power and an oppositional discourse obscured and suppressed oral traditionsand nonalpha- beticwriting systems, which were forciblyrepressed duringthe sixteenth centuryby the letteredcity. I mentionthese two examples not to claim nationalisticor patriotic rightof speech but mainlyto underscore the significanceof the place of speaking, the locus of enunciation.1O'Gorman's and Rama's concerns with differentforms of intellectualcolonialism and culturaldependency in Latin Americaled themto constructpostcolonial loci of enunciationin thevery act ofstudying colonial discourses. Thus theirwork comprised an effortto displace fieldand voices: theThird World is notonly an area to be studied but a place (or places) fromwhich to speak. Both these thinkers have aided the growingrealization that the "others" are not people and cultureswith littlecontact with the FirstWorld but that "otherness" ap- plies in disguise among equals, in what Carl Pletsch (1981) termed the apportionmentof scientific(or scholarly)labor among the three worlds. Pletsch, however, was mainly concerned with the distributionof area studies fromthe perspectiveof social scientistsand humanistslocated in and speaking fromthe FirstWorld. O'Gorman and Rama exemplifythe perspective of social scientistsand humanists located in and speaking fromthe Third World. They are in one sense contemporaryexamples of the "intellectualother," as were Inca noble Guaman Poma and Texcocan noble Alva Ixtlilxochitlin the early seventeenth century.For example, Tzvetan Todorov,at the beginningof The Conquestof America (1982), rele- gated O'Gorman to a footnotewith a shortcomment placing him among thosemerely concerned with geographicaspects of the discovery.By quot- ing Edward Said (whose book Todorovhad translatedinto French in 1978), Todorov suggested thathis own descriptionof the conquest of America could be read as some kind of "occidentalism,"perhaps complementing Said's "orientalism."But in so doing, Todorov suppressed the factthat what O'Gorman had done in the late 1950s was very similarto what Said did two decades later.The subtitleof O'Gorman's Spanish edition of La invencionde Amne'rica,El universalismode la culturade Occidente,was not a celebrationbut a criticaldismantling of such "universality."Examples like thismake one suspect thatthere is littledifference between yesterday's and today'sdiscourses of colonialism.2 For instance,Fray Juan de Torquemada's

1. One can also citeillustrious examples fromBrazil. Antonio Candido led the way in Bra- zil and has also provided a guiding example fora decolonizing criticaldiscourse (Candido 1959,1973). Candido also recognized Angel Rama's contributionto a Latin Americandecolo- nizing voice in Candido (1991). Roberto Schwarz, Candido's disciple, has been exploring the same kind of problems,most recentlyin his studyof JoaquimMaria Machado de Assis (Schwarz 1990). 2. Here I am using Homi Bhabha's expression as a synonymfor colonial discouirse (Bhabha 1986).

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LatinAmerican Research Review printedversion of the historyof the Aztecs froma Franciscan point of view, Monarquiaindiana (1615), was widely read, while the manuscript versionby Texcocanhistorian Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitlwas shelved in the archives and published only in the nineteenthcentury, when his account was approached as a historicaldocument ratherthan as a political intervention. Once again, my concernis with the locus of enunciationand with dislodgingor multiplyingits center,to use an expressioncoined by Ken- yan writerNgugi wa Thiong'o.3 In his comparativeanalysis of Joseph Conrad's Heartof Darkness and George Lamming's In theCastle of My Skin, Thiong'o concludes that although both writerswere criticalof colonial discourse,one spoke fromthe centerof the empire while the otherspoke fromthe core ofresistance to the empire. Decenteringthe centeror multi- plyingit provides new perspectiveson colonialand postcolonialdiscourse: thatof the locus of enunciationcreated in the very act of postulatingthe categoryof colonial discourseas well as the locus of enunciationcreated in the act not of studyingor analyzing itbut ofresisting it. Once the issue of colonial discourse is related to the locus of enunciation, my interestlies in the interplayamong the configurationof the fieldof study,the rules of the methodologicalgame, and the feelingsand passions of the individualplaying the game. I will explorethese issues in relationto "colonial discourse" as a fieldof study,literary studies as a case of discourse-centereddisciplines and an example of interpretingand the- orizingsemiotic interactions, and Latin Americaas a place where an alter- native(colonial, postcolonial,or ThirdWorld) locus of enunciationcan be constructed. First,the field of study.Introduction of the termcolonial discourse into the vocabularyof the humanitiesand the social sciences with a literary bent offered,in my view, an alternativeapproach to a field of study dominated by notions such as "colonial literature"or "colonial history." As definedby PeterHulme (one ofthe authorsreviewed by Seed), colonial discourseembraces all kinds of discursiveproduction related to and arising out of colonial situations,from the Capitulationsof 1492 to WilliamShake- speare's The Tempest,from royal orders and edicts to the most carefully writtenprose (Hulme 1986, 1989). The advantage of the concept of colonial discourse was thatit unifiedan interdisciplinaryroster of scholarsin historyand anthropologywho foundthe idea of "discourse"more appealing than "facts"or "information"-andin literarystudies, more appealing thanthe restricted concept ofliterature or "literarydiscourse." Thus in the fieldof literary studies, the notionof colonial discourse also allowed schol-

3. This sectionis a summaryof Thiong'o (1992). A more generalperspective of his critical position can be foundin Thiong'o (1973, 1986). For an alternativeposition on "decolonizing Africa,"see Appiah (1992, 47-72).

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions COMMENTARY AND DEBATE ars to treatthe concept of literaturein relative terms, which is highly problematic,especially in colonial situations."Colonial literature"implies a canon thatdepends on discursivecriteria established in the metropoli- tan centers,which makes it doublyproblematic: first because the "literary" productionin the colonies and in the language ofthe colonized culturesis moreoften than notperceived as a runner-upto theliterary production of the colonizingcultures; second, because "literature"is hardlya felicitous termto be applied to Amerindiandiscursive productions (which are mainly oral) and writteninteractions (which are mainlypicto-ideographic). Introductionof the alphabet in some sectors of the Amerindian populationduring the sixteenthcentury did notchange the situationdras- tically.Whatever had been "captured" in alphabetic writing(such as the PopulVuh, the ChilamBalam, and the HuarochiriManuscript) was executed by members of a population who (toward the middle of the sixteenth century)were forcedto change theirwriting habits or by Spaniards inter- ested in understandingAmerindian cultures (such as the Huehuetlattolli or theHuarochiri). None ofthese writingstransformed oral narrativeinto literature.The denial of "literary"qualities to Amerindiandiscursive production is neithera negative value judgment nor a suggestion of their culturalinferiority. It is merelythe recognitionthat literature is a regional and culture-dependentconceptualization of a given kind of discursive practice,one that is not universal to all cultures. This perspective also invitesinquiry into the natureand functionof discursivepractices in their "original"environment. When pushed to the limit,however, the concept of "colonial discourse," desirable and welcome as it is, is not the most comprehensive idea possible for understandingthe diversityof semioticinteractions in colonialsituations in the New Worldexperience. Hulme made it clear that in the area he was studying,the main documentationwas European in origin.If instead we focus on the entitythat in the sixteenthcentury was called theNew World(mainly by non-CastilianEuropeans) and the "Indias Occidentales" or West Indies (mainly by Spaniards involved in explora- tionand colonization),we musttake into account a large range ofsemiotic interactionsbeyond alphabetic written documents in European languages. The idea of discourse,although it embodies oral as well as writteninteractions,may notbe the best alternativeto account also forsemiotic interactions between differentwriting systems. The Latin alphabet introduced by the Spaniards, the picto-ideographicwriting systems of Mesoamer- ican cultures,and the quipusin the Andes each delineate particularsys- tems of interactionsthat took place duringthe colonial period. Ifwe were to limituse ofthe termdiscourse only to oral and reservethe idea of textfor writteninteractions, we would stillneed to expand the latterterm beyond therange of alphabeticalwritten documents in orderto embrace all material sign inscriptions.In doing so, scholarswould honor the etymological

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LatinAmerican Research Review meaningof text (as "weaving" or "textile")and justifyincluding the quipus into a system in which writingwas always understood as scratchingor paintingon solid surfacesbut not as weaving. Because in thefield of colonial literary studies, scholars must account fora complexsystem of semioticinteractions embodied in the discursive (oral) and the textual(material inscriptions in differentwriting systems), we need a concept such as colonialsemiosis. This termescapes the tyranny of the alphabet-orientednotions of text and discourse, even though it adds to a large and already confusingvocabulary. On the positive side, colonialsemiosis defines a field of study in a parallel and complementary fashion to existingterms such as colonialhistory, colonial art, and colonial economy.Furthermore, the concept of colonial semiosis includes the locus ofenunciation, a dimensionthus far absent from the currentcolonial fields of study.For instance,the fieldof colonial historypresupposes an "objec- tive"understanding subject and a locus ofenunciation from which a series of interrelatedevents could be mapped. Briefly,the concept of colonial semiosis reveals that language-centeredcolonial studies could move (at least in Latin Americaand the Caribbean) beyond the realm ofthe written word to incorporateoral and nonalphabetic writingsystems as well as nonverbalgraphic systems. This concept could also open up new ways of thinkingabout colonial experiences by bringingto the foregroundthe political,ideological, and disciplinaryagenda ofthe understanding subject. The nextissue is thequestion ofmethod, its philosophical justifica- tion,and theconstruction of the loci ofenunciation. Viewed in thisperspec- tive, the idea of colonial discourse invitesrethinking of the hermeneutic legacy in the contextof colonial semiosis. If the termhermeneutics is de- finednot only as a reflectionon human understandingbut as human un- derstandingitself, then the "tradition"in whichhermeneutics was founded and developed (Mueller-Vollmer1985) mustbe recastin termsof the pluralityof culturaltraditions and culturalboundaries (Panikkar1988). Thus colonial situationsand colonial semiosis presenta hermeneuticaldilemma forthe understandingsubject. Historically,the studyand analysis ofcolo- nial situationshave been performedfrom the perspectives prevailingin differentdomains of the colonizing cultures,even when the interpreter favoredcertain aspects ofthe colonized cultures.The termcolonial semiosis bringsto the foregroundthe followingquestion: what is the locus of enunciation fromwhich the understanding subject perceives colonial situations?In otherwords, in which of the culturaltraditions to be understood does the understandingsubject place himselfor herself?Such questions are relevantnot only when broad culturalissues like colonial situations and colonial semiosis are being considered but also when more specific issues like race, gender,and class are being takeninto account. Edmundo O'Gorman's The Inventionof America led the way in di- rectingattention to this issue. As a Mexican historianand philosopherof

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions COMMENTARY AND DEBATE history,O'Gorman's engagement with colonial situationswent beyond the usual relevantdisciplinary issues. What propelled his researchwas a political and ideological concern relevant in Mexico in the 1950s along with a reassessment of historiographicalgoals promptedby his reading of Heidegger. O'Gorman's demolitionof fourhundred years of historio- graphical writingabout the so-called discovery was achieved fromthe point of view of a "creole" and a historian.Although he ignored the role of Amerindians in analyzing this process, he relativized the universal understandingsubject assumed by the historiographyof the discovery and changed the culturalperspective from which the discoveryhad been construed. WheneverI raise the issue addressed by O'Gorman, I am accused ofgiving priority to the ethnicand culturalsituation of the understanding subject. Accordingto this argument,a woman or a Mexican is in a better positionto understandwomen's issues or colonial situationsrespectively. Yetthis is not the point I am tryingto make. Rather,I am concerned with the tensionbetween the insertionof the epistemologicalsubject withina disciplinary(or interdisciplinary)context governed by norms and con- ventionsas well as withits being placed in a hermeneuticcontext in which race, gender,and class compete with and shape the goals, norms, and rules of a given disciplinarygame. Disciplinarynorms and conventions are thuspermeated by hermeneuticneeds and desires. The point is thatscholars studying the culture to which theybelong (whethernational, ethnic,or gender cultures)are not necessarilysubjec- tivejust as scholarsstudying cultures to which theydo notbelong are not necessarilyobjective. In my view, theoriesare not instrumentsfor understanding somethingthat lies outside of the theory: rather,theories are instrumentsfor constructing knowledge and understanding.Hence my use ofthe word subjectiveapplies to examples,not to epistemologicalstate- ments.Within a constructivistepistemology, subjectivity implies knowledge and understandingin which the personal and social situationof the knowingsubject prevails over disciplinaryrules and procedures. The in- verse holds forobjective: rules of disciplinarycognition will prevail over personal desires, biases, and interests. Accordingly,neither approach guaranteesattaining a "better"(deeper, more accurate,more trustworthy, more informed)knowledge or understanding.For ifwe approach knowledge and understandingfrom the perspective of a constructivisticepis- temology and hermeneutic,the audience being addressed and the re- searcher'sagenda are as relevantto theconstruction of the object or subject being studied as the subject or the object being constructed.Thus the locus of enunciationis as much a partof knowing and understandingas it is of the constructionof the image of the "real" resultingfrom a disciplinary discourse (whether sociological, anthropological, historical, semi- ological, or some otherkind). Consequently,the "true" account of a sub-

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LatinAmerican Research Review ject matterin the formof knowledge or understandingwill be transacted in therespective communities of interpretationas much forits correspon- dence to what is taken for"real" as forthe authorizinglocus of enunciation constructedin the very act of describingan object or a subject. Fur- thermore,the locus of enunciationof the discourse being read would not be understood in itselfbut in the contextof previous loci of enunciation thatthe currentdiscourse contests,corrects, or expands. In otherwords, it is as much the saying (and the audience involved) as what is said (and the world referredto) that preserve or transformthe image of the real constructedby previous acts of sayingand previous utterances. One example can be found in Michael Taussig's remarkablebook on terrorand healing, Shamanism,Colonialism, and the WildMan (1987), which helps clarifythe tensions between the understandingsubject and the subject to be understood in colonial semiosis. Constructionof the locus of enunciationin Taussig's study articulatesbeautifully his opposi- tionalpractices in relationto the disciplinarytradition in anthropology.At the same time, he constructsa culturalspace in which Taussig, the Aus- traliananthropologist, attempts to find a place within a Latin American intellectualtradition via his carefulattention to essays and novels written by Latin Americans condemning colonialism and oppression (including JacoboTimerman, Ariel Dorfman,Jose Eustasio Rivera,Alejo Carpentier, and Miguel Angel Asturias). This approach indicates Taussig's openness to hearingand rehearsingthe voices ofthe otherin the oral traditionof the Putumayoand in the writtentradition of ThirdWorld intellectuals whose locus ofenunciation Taussig attemptsto join. A second example can be found in a statementmade by Mexican- Americanartist Guillermo Gomez-Peina, several years ago in L.A. Weekly: "I live smack in the fissurebetween two worlds, in the infectedwound: halfa block fromthe end of WesternCivilization and fourmiles fromthe startof the Mexican-Americanborder, the northernmostpoint of Latin America. In my fracturedreality, but a realitynonetheless, there cohabit two histories,languages, cosmologies,artistic traditions, and politicalsys- temswhich are drasticallycounterposed" (Gomez-Peina1988). The interrelationsof colonial semiosis as a networkof processes to be understood and the locus of enunciation as the networkof places of understandingdemand a pluridimensionalor multidimensionalherme- neuticat the same timethat they reveal the significanceof the disciplinary as well as cultural(gender, race, class) inscriptionof the subject in the process ofunderstanding. Anthropologist Taussig-born and educated in Australia,trained in London, and teaching in the United States-places himselfbetween a disciplinarytradition (anthropology) and in a personal and social situationoutside the discipline (certainconstructions of Latin American historyand culture,indicated by the names he cites and sec- onds or critiques). Meanwhile Gomez-Peina,a Mexican-Americanartist

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions COMMENTARY AND DEBATE livingin San Diego, illustratesboth the survivalof colonial semiosis and the need fora multidimensionalhermeneutic to account forit. While un- derstandingand constructing"our own tradition"implies a unidimen- sional hermeneutic,understanding and constructingcolonial semiosis (the dialecticbetween officialstories and suppressed voices, between signs fromdifferent cultural traditions) implies a pluralityof conflictiveand coexistingworlds and requires a multidimensionalhermeneutic.4 Finally,I wish to cite a few examples of voices emergingfrom colonial semiosis thatare constructingalternative (postcolonial) loci of enunciation. When Barbadian poet Edward Kamau Bratwhaiterecounts the storyof his search fora rhythmthat would matchhis livingexperience in the Caribbean, he highlightsthe momentwhen skipping a pebble on the ocean gave him a rhythmthat he could not findby reading JohnMilton. Bratwhaitealso highlightsa second and subsequent moment when he perceived the parallels between the skipping of the pebble and Calypso music, a rhythmthat he could not findin listeningto Beethoven.5If Brat- whaite found a voice and a formof knowledge at the intersectionof the classical models he learned in a colonial school with his lifeexperience in the Caribbean and consciousness ofAfrican people's history,his poetryis less a discourse of resistancethan a discourse claimingits centrality.Sim- ilar claims could be found indirectlyin the writingsof Jamaicannovelists and essayistMichelle Cliff, who statesthat one effectof British West Indian colonial discourse is "thatyou believe absolutelyin the hegemonyof the King's English and the formin which it is meant to be expressed. Or else yourwriting is not literature;it is folkloreand can never be art.... The anglican ideal-Milton, Wordsworth,Keats-was held beforeus with an assurance thatwe were unable, and would never be enabled, to compose a work of similarcorrectness.... No reggae spoken here" (Cliff1985). While Thoing'o, Lamming, and Bratwhaitesimultaneously construct and theorizeabout alternativecenters of enunciationin what have been considered the marginsof colonial empires, Latinos and Black Americansin theUnited States are demonstratingthat either the marginsare also in the centeror (as Thiong'o expresses it) thatknowledge and aestheticnorms are not universallyestablished by a transcendentsubject but are universallyestablished by historicalsubjects in diversecultural centers. Chicano writerGloria Anzalduia, for instance, has articulateda powerful alter- native aestheticand politicalhermeneutic by placing herselfat the cross- road of three traditions(Spanish-American, Nahuatl, and Anglo-Ameri-

4. For an example of the hermeneutic"infiltration" within disciplinary structure, see Kel- ler (1985). To the extentthat the social sciences and the humanitieshave been constructedon the basis of the combinationof certainhermeneutical configurations, they tend to restrain thosewho would gravitatetoward the authoritativeconfiguration of the disciplinarystructure. 5. I am referringhere to Bratwhaite(1992). His generalposition regarding poetic practices in colonial situationshas been articulatedin Bratwhaite(1983, 1984).

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LatinAmerican Research Review can) and by creatinga locus ofenunciation where differentways ofknow- ing and individualand collectiveexpressions mingle (Anzalduia 1987). The influentialquestion asked severalyears ago by GayatriSpivak was "Can the subalternspeak?" (Spivak 1985; O'Hanlon 1988). This query could be answered by saying thatthe subalternhave always spoken, although scholars and social scientistswere not always willing to listen (Coronil 1993; Wald 1992). The question of whetherthe colonized can be representedmay no longerbe an issue, and it could be reframedin terms of dialogues fromdifferent loci of enunciationrather than as an academic monologue performedin the act of "studying"colonial discourse and not "listening"to politicallyengaged persons (whetherinside or outside aca- deme), writersfrom colonial, postcolonial, or Third Worldcountries pro- ducing alternativediscourse. Perhaps in the intellectualarena, effortsto inventan "other"from afar and long ago disguises new formsof colonization. JeanPaul Sartrepointed out thatall non-Westerncultures have been reduced to the statusof objects by being observed and studiedby Western scholarsaccording to Westernconcepts and categories.Thus althoughthe concept of colonial discourse has opened up new areas of inquiry and helped in rethinkingthe discursivedimension of colonial (and postcolonial experience),it may unwittinglymisguide social scientistsand humanists into a new formof intellectualcolonization. I wish to close by citingan example ofmimicry, postcoloniality, and academic colonialism. On reading an essay like Roberto Schwarz's "Bra- zilian Culture: Nationalism by Elimination,"6one realizes thatthe question of "postcolonial discourse" seems farfrom the centerof his intellec- tual and political agenda. One could argue thatin Brazil, the new trend has not yet arrivedbecause it takes time fornew theories to make their way to peripheralregions. But thatis preciselywhat Schwarz's essay criti- cizes-the culturalinternal colonialism and the mimeticactions taken by institutionsand intellectualsin Brazilianpostcolonial history and in many othercountries. For those in postcolonial or Third World countrieswho believe thata sign of progress is to consume exportedtheories, the question of colonial and postcolonial discourse has not yet arrived. For those interestedin criticallyexamining the culturaldependency of postcolonial countries(which Schwartz terms "the peripheries of capitalism"), the issue has to be rethoughtin the contextof mimicryand dependency as well as in termsof intellectualinterventions and research programsfeeding the traditionsand needs of the country.For those of us in exile, when nego- tiatingthe intellectualproduction in our places of origins(whether Latin America,Africa, or Asia) and the intellectualconversation in our place of residence (the United States or WesternEurope), the question arises of whetherour functionshould be thatof go-betweens, promoting the impor-

6. See Schwarz (1989), 29-48.

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This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Mon, 23 Jun 2014 01:42:42 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions COMMENTARY AND DEBATE tationof "new theories" into our "backward" countries,or whetherwe should "thinkfrom" the postcolonial experiences in which we grew up. How this "thinkingfrom" (which implies a "thinkingin between") could be constructedis a subject thatcannot be developed here.7My concernis to underscorethe point that "colonial and postcolonial discourse" is not just a new fieldof study or a gold mine forextracting new richesbut the conditionof possibility for constructing new loci ofenunciations as well as forreflecting that academic "knowledge and understanding" should be complementedwith "learningfrom" those who are livingin and thinking fromcolonial and postcoloniallegacies, fromRigoberta Menchui to Angel Rama. Otherwise, we run the risk of promotingmimicry, exportation of theories,and internal(cultural) colonialism ratherthan promotingnew formsof culturalcritique and intellectualand politicalemancipations-of makingcolonial and postcolonial studies a fieldof studyinstead of a lim- inal and criticallocus of enunciation. The "native point of view" also includesintellectuals. In the apportionmentof scientificlabor since World War II, which has been described well by Carl Pletch (1982), the Third Worldproduces not only "cultures"to be studied by anthropologistsand ethnohistoriansbut also intellectualswho generatetheories and reflecton theirown cultureand history.

7. Some ofthe recent contributions along thisline are Anzaldia (1990), Mora (1993), Coro- nil (1992), Minh-Ha (1989), Appiah (1992), and Bhabha (1992).

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