Postcolonial Literary System: Toward an Ethics of Post-subjectivity by Shital Kumar Dahal, M.A. A dissertation In English Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved Bruce Clarke Chairperson of the Committee Jen Shelton Yuan Shu Fred Hartmeister Dean of Graduate School August 2010 Copyright 2010 Shital Dahal Texas Tech University, Shital Dahal, August 2010 Acknowledgments My mere words of thanks would be inadequate to express my gratitude to the dissertation committee. I enjoyed the unforgettable, once-in-a-life-time journey of reading volumes of literature, exploring several topics, finally pinning down on one, and that was just the beginning. The critical theory class I took with Dr. Bruce Clarke, which included Bruno Latour, must have been the beginning of all beginnings of the topic that I chose for this dissertation. Toward the end of my first attempt at the prospectus, when I was still trying figure out how to bring together Derrida, Husserl, Buddhism, and Rig Veda, I went to see Dr. Clarke at his home, and he introduced me to a series of philosophically oriented works on paradox, which included Luhmann, Maturana, Varela, Spencer-Brown and von-Foerster. A number of subsequent meetings with Dr. Clarke convinced me to pursue systems theory, instead of just limiting to paradox. The postcolonial component of this dissertation may be traced to the class I took with Jen Shelton in my first year at Texas Tech, but it had to be reignited several times by Yuan Shu’s vision. I have had a lot of fun working with these people. Dr. Clarke’s theoretical scholarship, grand patience punctuated by a couple of occasions of impatience, generous ideas, and around-the-clock readiness to offer ideas in person and through email, were a tremendous help in completing this work. Dr. Clarke is ii Texas Tech University, Shital Dahal, August 2010 not only a genius but also a great person and teacher to work with. Dr. Jen Shelton’s constructive, at times stern, criticisms undoubtedly helped me revise the draft several times and finally take the current shape. Dr. Yuan Shu’s broad theoretical knowledge eased the process of my bringing together postcolonialism and systems theory. His positive comments were much-needed encouragement, especially at those times when I was struggling with ideas. Thank you all three so much. I am grateful to Texas Tech Graduate School for the Summer Dissertation/ Thesis Research Award 2009. The financial help certainly let me concentrate fully on completing the dissertation. Last but not least, I am equally indebted to University Writing Center’s Laura Brandenburg and Kathleen Gillis, for their invaluable help in editing the final draft. iii Texas Tech University, Shital Dahal, August 2010 Table of Contents Acknowledgement ii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1. Argument 1.2. Overview Chapter 2: Systems Theory and Its Relevance 20 2.1. Why Systems Theory? 2.2. Boundary: The First Cut 2.3. Observation 2.4. Binary Chapter 3: Description of Postcolonial Literary Subsystem 38 3.1. Emergence of Postcolonial Literary Subsystem 3.2. Interaction between Literary and Critical Works 3.3. Reproduction of Colonialism within Postcolony 3.4. Diaspora: Hybrid (Wandering Gypsy?) Chapter 4: Resistance and Antagonism 84 4.1. Resistance as Realm of Conflict 4.2. Culture as Resistance and Memory 4.4. Limitation of Cultural Identity for Solidarity 4.5. Total Inclusion and Collective Movement iv Texas Tech University, Shital Dahal, August 2010 Chapter 5: Toward an Ethics of Post-subjectivity 111 5.1. History of Subjectivity 5.2. Postcolonialism and Subjectivity 5.3. Reasons for Resisting Subjectivity 5.4. Post-subjectivity as Resistance Strategy 5.4.1. Colonial and Post-colonial Animal 5.4.2. Phantoms, Avatars, and Prosthesis 5.4.3. Technological Body 5.4.4. Toward the Future Glossary 182 Works Cited 191 v Texas Tech University, Shital Dahal, August 2010 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Argument Contemporary postcolonial studies as an academic discipline owes a great deal to the explosion of anthologies of critical works in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which had their precursors in Franz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and Edward Said’s works, to name a few. Within postcolonial literary field, so far only historical accounts of the field have been attempted (Robert Fraser, Deepika Bahri, Graham Huggan, to name a few). Historical accounts of the field have their own merits, but they are limited as they lack a robust theoretical account of the evolution of the field. By embarking on systems-theory concepts of communication and interaction, I have attempted to provide the missing account of the field, in which I have added the “how” of the history to the “what” of the history. To account for the interaction between literary and critical works in the making of the postcolonial literary system, I could not find guidance in other theories but systems theory. There is simply no theoretical formulation of interaction in other theories. I chose Niklas Luhmann’s version of systems theory because it shows closeness with art, particularly literature. Moreover, on the one hand, Luhmann’s concept of system allows analyzing how postcolonial literary subsystem achieved its distinction within the literary system. On the other hand, it helps pave the 1 Texas Tech University, Shital Dahal, August 2010 way to expand the system’s horizon beyond humans so the subsystem can increase its ability to respond to other systems in the environment and, in turn, ensures its life and longevity. The subsystem achieves all this without jeopardizing its operational prerogative, while still allowing structural changes within the subsystem in its own terms. This dissertation is the first attempt at viewing postcolonial literature as an autopoietic system in that it contributes to the ongoing discussion of what belongs to the system. My first intervention is primarily theoretical in that I borrow the concept of interaction and communication from Luhmann and argue that it is not geographical location, indigeneity, colonial history of a nation, its language, culture, or origin of a text (settler or non-settler colony, postcolony, metropolis, non-colony) that automatically qualifies to be a system element. I argue that the qualification is based on communicative potentiality of a text, creative or critical; therefore, it should be theorized accordingly. By “communicative potentiality,” I mean whether the text has engaged with postcolonial themes; whether it has attracted the attention of the system; whether the text in question has generated conditions of further communication. In the same manner, whether this dissertation belongs to the postcolonial literary subsystem depends not only on whether it has participated in the ongoing discussion of the relevant topics designated by the system but also on whether it will generate conditions of further communication, i.e. whether it will attract the attention of future postcolonial texts, either in the form of constructive intervention, problematization, reconfiguration, elaboration of postcolonial topics with new twist. To be part of the system, it must make a difference for future communicative events of postcolonial literary system. 2 Texas Tech University, Shital Dahal, August 2010 With systems theoretic lens, particularly interaction and communication, we are able to avoid qualification of postcoloniality based on origin, on the one hand, and primacy of literary texts over critical texts or the reverse, on the other. The significance of this displacement of origin criterion, i.e. rendering geography non-criterion, is that the field (system) will expand geographically, which may be roughly viewed as the system’s structural opening, and the field will continue to consolidate its boundary based on communicative elements relevant to postcolonial literary subsystem and will maintain its operational prerogative and autopoiesis (guarding itself from incursion by other systems in the environment). Usually in practice, there is a tendency within the postcolonial literary system to conflate colonizer with European colonizer, ignoring the fact of internal colonization as well as some powerful postcolonies’ reproduction of colonial behaviors toward their people and neighboring countries. As a consequence of the conflation, the problem of internal colonization, i.e. reproduction of colonialism at home, in post-independence nations has not been sufficiently addressed in postcolonial critical works. My argument is that these postcolonial nation-states inherited colonial institutions and operate in a similarly colonial mode against which they fought. The relevance of systems theory with regard to the problem of internal colonialism is that it allows us to see how colonial systems of politics, economy, and education in particular created enough conditions of reproduction in former colonies before colonial powers left. These systems could not transition from stratification to functional differentiation, thus resulting in the continuation of a political super-system, which still controls all other systems in most postcolonies, if not all. 3 Texas Tech University, Shital Dahal, August 2010 Some prominent reflective works of the postcolonial field have offered solutions to the question of subject and nation, particularly with the concepts of syncretism (hybridity) and diaspora. I do not question the value of syncretism in the context of settler (post)colonies, but in the non-settler post(colonies), especially with respect to subalterns, a wholesale embrace of syncretism is problematic. However, cultural syncretism seems to underlie the assumption that colonialism in all versions has ended, thus ending the need for oppositional politics for once and all. The question regarding the binary code of colonizer/ colonized still remains unresolved, i.e. if it has any efficacy in postcolonies. My intervention is that rather than nullifying the code for all occasions, this binary code, which is not objective but strategical, can still play some useful role in non-settler colonies for oppositional politics for they continue to face both external and internal colonialism.