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A Critical Appraisal of Sartres Theory of Colonialism

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A Critical Appraisal of Sartres Theory of Colonialism View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by MURAL - Maynooth University Research Archive Library ransactions of the Institute of British Geographers Metropolitan anxieties: a critical appraisal of Sartre’s theory of colonialism Mark Boyle* and Audrey Kobayashi** Within postcolonial studies there is now a well-established wariness of the Eurocentric or metrocentric tendencies of postcolonial theory itself. For some the charge that post- colonial theory continues to interpret the history and culture of non-European societies through European frames of reference can be traced to the provocative theory of coloni- sation developed by French philosopher, novelist and political activist Jean-Paul Sartre. We subject Sartre’s theory of colonialism to critical scrutiny and question this claim. We locate Sartre’s philosophical works and political activism against the backdrop of a twentieth-century Parisian intellectual life marked by fierce struggles over the future of Marxism. Sartre’s metrocentricism was tempered by his tortuous efforts to write exis- tentialism into the Marxist canon, a theoretical endeavour that led him to replace Marx- ism’s eschatology and linear teleology with a series of circular histories based on the complex ways in which separate anti-colonial movements spiral off following their own contingent, creolised and anarchic trajectories. Sartre’s desire to contest and rethink rather than submit to and seal metrocentric framings of colonialism and anti- colonialism derived from his weddedness to a historicised phenomenology of existence as spatial. Critical interrogation of the complicity of postcolonial theory in the global march of metrocentric ontology affords both geography and postcolonial studies a new impetus for dialogue. Any project that aspires to a transcendence of metropolitan modes of knowing must first better understand the situated production and complexi- ties of such modes of knowing. Before scrutinising how the colonising tendencies of postcolonial theory might best be handled, there is a need to map historical geogra- phies of the different theoretical projects and practices that have emerged in different metropolitan locations and at different times. key words Sartre colonialism postcolonialism existentialism Marxism spatiality metrocentricism *Department of Geography National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Co Kildare, Ireland **Department of Geography, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6 email: [email protected] revised manuscript received 2 November 2010 For my generation, he has always been one of the great intellectual heroes of the 20th century, a man whose Introduction insight and intellectual gifts were at the service of Since the publication of Said’s Orientalism in 1978, nearly every progressive cause of our time. Yet he geography and postcolonial studies have combined seemed neither fallible nor prophetic. On the contrary, to excavate the geopolitical imaginaries and global one admired Sartre for the efforts he made to under- projections that Europe (the West) mobilised and stand situations and, when necessary, to offer solidarity for political causes. He was never condescending or continues to mobilise to legitimate colonial adven- evasive, even if he was given to error and overstate- tures, build hegemonic projects and manufacture ment. Nearly everything he wrote is interesting for its consent (Said 1978). Moreover, postcolonial studies sheer audacity, its freedom (even its freedom to be ver- has stimulated Anglo-American geography itself to bose) and its generosity of spirit. (Said 2000, 1) reflect on its own emergence in and through Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 408–424 2011 ISSN 0020-2754 Ó 2011 The Authors. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Ó 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Metrocentricism in postcolonial studies 409 empire, and by encouraging a historicising and trajectory of territorial dispossessions and acquisi- relativising of geographical imaginations spawned tions, resistances and counter insurgencies that from within professional and institutional wings of might in reality be unique, particular and specific. the discipline has sought to raise awareness of the How to handle the colonising tendencies of post- complex ways in which Anglo-American geogra- colonial theory has emerged as a central concern phy has intermeshed with histories of colonialism for postcolonial scholars, especially within Indian and empire. Collectively, this body of work has contributions to postcolonial scholarship, where the effectively and critically deconstructed European charge of metrocentricism has been particularly ways of imagining, demonising and belittling and forcibly articulated. Spivak (1997) of course other, non-European, and past and present colon- has commented on the incommensurability of Wes- ised societies. tern theory and non-Western subalterns, and ques- Nevertheless, as revealed in the proliferation of tioned whether radically marginalised and such mantras as ‘unthinking Eurocentricism’, ‘his- disenfranchised (Indian) women in particular tory without a centre’ and ‘provincialising Europe’, might ever speak to or more accurately be heard within postcolonial studies there is now a well- by Western audiences. More recently, Chakrabarty established wariness that in spite of its professed (2007) has proposed a two theories of colonialism critical and radical ambitions, postcolonial theory approach that explores productive tensions itself might be open to the charge that it too is between history 1 and history 2, where history 1 is guilty of interpreting the history and culture of based on universal historical logic, for instance, non-European societies principally through Euro- Marx’s reading of capitalism, while history 2 is pean frames of reference. While aspiring to a constitutive of numerous other tendencies in his- decentring of the sovereign supremacy assumed by tory that do not necessarily follow the telos of capi- the European geographical imagination, postcolo- tal. Meanwhile, and with specific respect to South nial theory, it seems, continues to fall prey to a cer- America, Mignola (1995) has placed the ‘grammar tain kind of Eurocentricism or metrocentricism, of decoloniality’ under scrutiny and championed defined here as a set of theoretical practices predi- the importance of social movements that emerge cated on an insufficiently reflexive commitment to from forms of ‘border thinking’ that refuse both the superiority of particularly European ways of European coloniality and European modernity. rendering the world intelligible. Postcolonial the- Likewise Cooper (2005) has advocated a celebration ory, it is feared, remains dogged by a certain Euro- of a ‘politics of difference’ that foregrounds centric and colonial mentality. colonialism’s variety of cultures, the diversity of One limit of postcolonial theory stems from its colonial and imperial strategies, the material geo- reification of conceptual frameworks that betray graphies of annexation and control that result, vari- specifically European treatments of time and space. ations in the form and strategies of anti-colonial Chakrabarty labels these treatments ‘historicism’, movements and resistances, and geographically dif- defined as a ferentiated experiences of decolonisation and inde- pendence. mode of thinking about history in which one assumed that any object under investigation retains a degree of A key weakness of projects that seek to identify, unity of conception throughout its existence and attains critique and respond to metrocentricism within a full expression through a process of development in postcolonial theory is the assumption that to a secular historical time. (Chakrabarty 2007, 11) meaningful degree European ways of apprehend- ing the world are largely coherent and monolithic. Postcolonial theory asserts proprietorial control and In historicising and relativising Eurocentric scholar- authority over the right to apprehend the meaning ship, critical scholars often gloss over important of all concrete colonialisms and anti-colonialisms. spatial and temporal variations in European theo- Postcolonial theory gathers together a variety of retical framings and practices (Withers 2007). In different territorial annexations, labels them fact, the counter claim that different manifestations collectively as ‘colonialism’, ‘imperialism’ and ‘neo- of European modernity have given birth to differ- colonialism’, frames them as instances of a singular ent traditions of postcolonial theory provides both universal process, and explains them with refer- geography and postcolonial studies with a new ence to an overarching master narrative. In so impetus for dialogue (for a review of dialogue to doing, it sabotages its capacity to render legible the Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 36 408–424 2011 ISSN 0020-2754 Ó 2011 The Authors. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Ó 2011 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 410 Mark Boyle and Audrey Kobayashi date see Blunt and McEwan 2002; Kearns 2009; in western intellectual history, that of Jean-Paul Sartre McEwan 2008; Minca 2003; Nash 2004; Pickles and his associates. (Wehrs 2003, 763) 2005; Pollard et al. 2009; Sidaway 2000). There is a Likewise for Young, pressing need to write historical geographies of theories of colonialism that at once interrogate, cri- while postcolonial theory customarily traces its overt tique
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