Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts? Author(s): Dipesh Chakrabarty Reviewed work(s): Source: Representations, No. 37, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories (Winter, 1992), pp. 1-26 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928652 . Accessed: 31/07/2012 17:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Representations. http://www.jstor.org DIPESH CHAKRABARTY Postcoloniality and the Artificeof History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts? Pushthought toextremes. -Louis Althusser I IT HAS RECENTLY BEEN SAID in praise of the postcolonial project of SubalternStudies that it demonstrates,"perhaps for the firsttime since coloniza- tion,"that "Indians are showingsustained signs of reappropriatingthe capacity to representthemselves [within the disciplineof history]."'As a historianwho is a member of the SubalternStudies collective, I findthe congratulationcontained in this remark gratifyingbut premature.The purpose of this articleis to prob- lematize the idea of "Indians" "representingthemselves in history."Let us put aside for the momentthe messyproblems of identityinherent in a transnational enterprisesuch as SubalternStudies, where passports and commitmentsblur the distinctionsof ethnicityin a manner thatsome would regard as characteristically postmodern.I have a more perverseproposition to argue. It is thatinsofar as the academic discourse of history-that is, "history"as a discourse produced at the institutionalsite of the university-isconcerned, "Europe" remainsthe sovereign, theoreticalsubject of all histories,including the ones we call "Indian," "Chinese," "Kenyan," and so on. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variationson a masternarrative that could be called "the history of Europe." In this sense, "Indian" historyitself is in a position of subalternity; one can only articulatesubaltern subject positions in the name of thishistory. While the restof thisarticle will elaborate on thisproposition, let me enter a few qualifications."Europe" and "India" are treated here as hyperrealterms in that they refer to certain figuresof imaginationwhose geographical referents remain somewhatindeterminate.2 As figuresof the imaginarythey are, of course, subjectto contestation,but forthe momentI shall treatthem as thoughthey were given,reified categories, opposites paired in a structureof dominationand sub- ordination. I realize thatin treatingthem thus I leave myselfopen to the charge of nativism,nationalism, or worse, the sin of sins, nostalgia. Liberal-minded scholarswould immediatelyprotest that any idea of a homogeneous, uncontested REPRESENTATIONS 37 * Winter 1992 ? THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIF9RNIA "Europe" dissolves under analysis. True, but just as the phenomenon of orien- talismdoes not disappear simplybecause some of us have now attained a critical awareness of it,similarly a certainversion of "Europe," reifiedand celebrated in the phenomenal world of everydayrelationships of power as the scene of the birthof the modern,continues to dominatethe discourseof history.Analysis does not make it go away. That Europe worksas a silentreferent in historicalknowledge itself becomes obvious in a highlyordinary way. There are at least two everydaysymptoms of the subalternityof non-Western,third-world histories. Third-world historians feel a need to refer to works in European history;historians of Europe do not feel any need to reciprocate.Whether it is an Edward Thompson, a Le Roy La- durie, a George Duby,a Carlo Ginzberg,a Lawrence Stone, a RobertDarnton, or a Natalie Davis-to take but a few names at random from our contemporary world-the "greats"and the models of the historian'senterprise are alwaysat least culturally"European." "They" produce theirwork in relativeignorance of non- Westernhistories, and thisdoes not seem to affectthe qualityof theirwork. This is a gesture,however, that "we" cannot return.We cannot even affordan equality or symmetryof ignorance at thislevel withouttaking the riskof appearing "old- fashioned" or "outdated." The problem, I may add in parenthesis,is not particularto historians.An unselfconsciousbut neverthelessblatant example of this"inequality of ignorance" in literarystudies, for example, is the followingsentence on Salman Rushdie from a recent text on postmodernism:"Though Saleem Sinai [of Midnight'sChildren] narratesin English ... his intertextsfor both writinghistory and writingfiction are doubled: theyare, on the one hand, fromIndian legends,films, and literature and, on the other,from the West-The Tin Drum,Tristram Shandy, One Hundred Yearsof Solitude, and so on."3 It is interestingto note how thissentence teases out onlythose referencesthat are from"the West." The author is under no obligation here to be able to name withany authorityand specificitythe "Indian" allusions that make Rushdie's intertexuality"doubled." This ignorance, shared and unstated,is part of the assumed compact thatmakes it "easy" to include Rushdie in English departmentofferings on postcolonialism. This problem of asymmetricignorance is not simplya matterof "cultural cringe" (to let my Australianself speak) on our part or of culturalarrogance on the part of the European historian.These problems exist but can be relatively easilyaddressed. Nor do I mean to take anythingaway fromthe achievementsof the historiansI mentioned. Our footnotesbear rich testimonyto the insightswe have derived fromtheir knowledge and creativity.The dominance of "Europe" as the subject of all historiesis a part of a much more profound theoreticalcon- dition under which historicalknowledge is produced in the third world. This 2 REPRESENTATIONS condition ordinarilyexpresses itselfin a paradoxical manner. It is this paradox that I shall describe as the second everydaysymptom of our subalternity,and it refersto the verynature of social science pronouncementsthemselves. For generationsnow, philosophers and thinkersshaping the nature of social science have produced theoriesembracing the entiretyof humanity.As we well know,these statementshave been produced in relative,and sometimesabsolute, ignorance of the majorityof humankind-i.e., those livingin non-Westerncul- tures. This in itselfis not paradoxical, for the more self-consciousof European philosophershave alwayssought theoreticallyto justify this stance. The everyday paradox of third-worldsocial scienceis thatwe find these theories, in spiteof their inherent ignorance of "us," eminentlyuseful in understanding our societies. What allowed the modern European sages to develop such clairvoyancewith regard to societiesof whichthey were empiricallyignorant? Why cannot we, once again, returnthe gaze? There is an answer to thisquestion in the writingsof philosopherswho have read into European historyan entelechyof universalreason, if we regard such philosophy as the self-consciousnessof social science. Only "Europe," the argu- ment would appear to be, is theoretically(i.e., at the level of the fundamentalcat- egories that shape historicalthinking) knowable; all other historiesare matters of empirical research that fleshes out a theoreticalskeleton which is substan- tially "Europe." There is one version of this argument in Edmund Husserl's Vienna lecture of 1935, where he proposed that the fundamental difference between "oriental philosophies" (more specifically,Indian and Chinese) and "Greek-European science" (or as he added, "universallyspeaking: philosophy") was the capacity of the latter to produce "absolute theoreticalinsights," that is "theoria"(universal science), while the formerretained a "practical-universal,"and hence "mythical-religious,"character. This "practical-universal"philosophy was directedto the world in a "naive" and "straightforward"manner, while the world presented itselfas a "thematic"to theoria,making possible a praxis "whose aim is to elevate mankind throughuniversal scientific reason."4 A rather similar epistemologicalproposition underlies Marx's use of cate- gories like "bourgeois" and "prebourgeois" or "capital" and "precapital." The prefixpre here signifiesa relationshipthat is both chronologicaland theoretical. The coming of the bourgeois or capitalistsociety, Marx argues in the Grundrisse and elsewhere, gives rise for the firsttime to a historythat can be apprehended through a philosophical and universalcategory, "capital." Historybecomes, for the firsttime, theoretically knowable. All past historiesare now to be known (the- oretically,that is) fromthe vantage point of thiscategory, that is in termsof their differencesfrom it. Things reveal theircategorical essence onlywhen theyreach theirfullest development, or as Marx put itin thatfamous aphorism of the Grund- risse:"Human anatomycontains the keyto theanatomy of theape."5 The category "capital,"as I have discussed elsewhere,contains within itself the legal subject of WhoSpeaks for "Indian" Pasts? 3 Enlightenmentthought.6 Not surprisingly,Marx