?MLA 13 2, 1 ] RobertJ.C. Young 187 Chapter Chronological Order ::r.. ~ theories and NIA "Representation and the Colonial Text: A Critical Exploration of Some Forms e methodologies ::. of Mimeticism" (written in 1980; published in 1984 in The Theory of Reading, •• edited by Frank Gloversmith, Harvester Press I Barnes and Noble Books, " ~ pp. 93-122) ~ I 3 "The Other Question" (first published in 1983 in Screen, vol. 24, pp. 18-35) "" ! The Dislocationsof 3 CulturalTranslation 4 "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse" (first ,,.•,. published in 1984 in October, vol. 28, pp. 125-33) 0 Q;. 5 "Sly Civility" (first published in 1985 in October, vol. 34, pp. 71-80) 0 THETITLE THE LOCATION OF CULTURESUGGESTS THAT THE BOOK'S AU· 6 "Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a ~ ROBERT J. C. YOUNG THOR, HOMI K. BHABHA,PLACES AN OVERRIDINGIMPORTANCE ON A Tree outside Delhi, May 1817" (presented at the 1984 Essex Conference on the " •~ Sociology of Literature and first published in 1985 in Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, c~lture's spatial and geographic situation. Lest Bhabha's readers get pp. 144-65) too fixated on culture's site and locality, however, the title's emphasis NIA "Remembering Farron: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition" (published in on place is soon qualified by an epigraph from the book's most-cited 1986 as the foreword to Black Skin, White Masks, by Frantz Farron, Pluto Press, author, Frantz Farron, that emphasizes temporality: "The architecture pp. vii-xxvi) of this work is rooted in the temporal. Every human problem must 1 "The Commitment to Theory" (first published in 1988 in New Formations, be considered from the standpoint of time'' (qtd. in Bhabha xiv).' So, vol. 5, pp. 5-23) while culture must be located, the architecture of The Location of Cul­ 2 "Interrogating Identity: The Postcolonial Prerogative" (first published in 1990 in ture is rooted in the temporal. The place and time of its moments of Anatomy of Racism, edited by D. T. Goldberg, U of Minnesota P, pp. 183-209) production are affirmed throughout its essays with a wealth of con­ 7 ''.Articulating the Archaic: Notes on Colonial Nonsense" (first published in temporary references and opening comments like c'InBritain, in the 1990 in Literary Theory Today, edited by Peter Collier and Helga Geyer-Ryan, 1980s ... " (27). No book of theory is more self-consciously embedded Cornell UP, pp. 203-18) in its own space and time. The Location of Culture, published in 1994, 8 "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative) and the Margins of the Modern Nation)) is a very English book, written from within the political, cultural, and (first published in 1990 in Nation and Narration, by Homi Bhabha, Routledge, intellectual world of the London of the 1980s and early 1990s, in which pp. 291-322) migrant activists from the Caribbean and South Asia such as Bhabha, NIA "Third Space" (an interview published in 1990 in Identity: Community, Culture, Salman Rushdie, and Stuart Hall were challenging the verities of a Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 207-21) long-established, socialist, masculinist, English intellectual and politi­ 12 '"Race,' Time and the Revision of Modernity" (first published in 1991 in cal culture.' The brilliant innovation of The Location of Culture was to Neocolonialism, a special issue of The Oxford Literary Review, edited by Robert create a new language, a new articulation and understanding of minor­ J. C. Young, vol. 13, nos. 1-2, pp. 193-219) ity positions-which is why the response to it has been so overwhelm­ NIA "A Question of Survival-Nations and Psychic States" (published in 1991 ing, from academics, artists, and many others. The work that went into in Psychoanalysis and Cultural Theory: Thresholds, edited by James Donald, The Location of Culture was intimately related to Bhabha's own milieu Macmillan Education, pp. 89-103) and time: the book is the product of his decennium mirabile in London. Introduction Previously unpublished (drafted by 1991) ROBERTJ.C. YOUNG is Julius Silver Profes­ The chapters of The Location of Culture were-with a few excep­ 10 "By Bread Alone: Signs of Violence" (previously unpublished; drafted by 1991) sorof Englishand ComparativeLiterature tions-published as individual essays from 1983 to 1991. Reorder­ 9 "The Postcolonial and the Postmodern" (previously unpublished; drafted in at NewYork Universityand dean of arts ing the book's chapters according to the chronological sequence of 1992) and humanities at New York Univer­ these essays can help us understand the forms of its temporality. The sity Abu Dhabi. His most recentbooks "How Newness Enters the World: Postcolonial Times and the Trials of four previously unpublished essays in the book were drafted during 11 are EmpireColony Postcofony (Wiley­ Cultural Translation" (previously unpublished; drafted in 1991-93) Blackwell,2015) and, with JeanKhalfa, 1991-93.' The following list also includes some relevant texts ·pub­ FrantzFonon: lcrits sur /'alienationet la lished in the 1980s and early 1990s that did not become part of The The architectural structure of The Location ics of contemporary culture. The book begins libert.e,<Euvres II (Laoecouverte, 2016). Location of Culture: of Culture takes us from an early concern with the problem of how cultural difference is depicted in the context of colonial repre­ © 2017 ROBERT J.C. YOUNG with literary and historical representation 186 PMLA 132.1 (2017), published by the Modern Language Association of America of otherness to the transformative dynam- sentations. Bhabha's essays on the stereotype r. 188 The Dislocationsof CulturalTranslation [ PMLA 13 2. 1 J RobertJ.C. Young • and on mimicry argue that however fixed to establish his career in the United States.' theorization through his best-known concept, remaining the same: "the Bible translated the representation of cultural difference, A fellowship brought him to Princeton Uni­ hybridity, which was inspired by the fiction of into Hindi, propagated by Dutch or native "'0 .,.0 and however strong the drive to fix colonial versity in 1992, and he moved permanently to Rushdie, whose finest work came out of the catechists, is still the English book" (108). 0 representation in the colonizer's imaginary, Chicago in 1994. While it is possible to see the same 1980s London from which The Location The Bible, he shows, is translated more by its .c ... colonial difference uncannily contrives to gradual intrusion of North American culture, of Culture was produced. As it is for Rushdie, new context than by any new language into e• represent itself otherwise through means that particularly the writings of Toni Morrison and hybridity for Bhabha is a theory of cultural which it has been rendered. Its primary form .,. disconcert the viewer or reader. In his histori­ the foregrounding of the question of race, in mixture designed to contest the idea of an of translation has been to precipitate the am­ 3 c 5 •~ cal essays analyzing Indian colonial history the later chapters of The Location of Culture, English monoculture or, in the case of co­ bivalent dynamics of colonial culture. ::r • 0 that gesture toward the preoccupations of the most of the theoretical innovation in the book lonial India, the simple antithesis of Indian It was not until 1988 that Bhabha be­ .. 0 ~ subaltern studies historians- "Sly Civility" had been developed in the intellectual milieu and English as discrete forms existing side gan to use translation as a foundational 0 0 (1985),"Signs Taken for Wonders" (1985),and of Oxford and London in the 1980s, so that in by side. Bhabha formulated hybridity most .c• conceptual metaphor. He introduced it " ... "By Bread Alone" (1991)-.Bhabha shows the many ways Bhabha could be described, in his cogently in 1985, in "Signs Taken for Won­ in the context of the negotiation between • complex processes by which the introduction own phrase, as a cultural translator of the po­ ders," where it is advanced in relation to the theoretico-political positions, presenting it as of the cultural difference embodied in colo­ litical idiom of British intellectual culture for insertion of an English version of Christianity offering new ground between them. An early nialism does not amount to a passive form an American audience. Once he relocated to into an Indian environment. The originality statement in "The Commitment to Theory" of misrepresentation but enables cultural the United States, that position, in which he of Bhabha's argument about hybridity is the (1988) makes the point clearly: resistance and agency among the colonized. was writing from inside one political and the­ idea that instead of pointing to the way that His later essays turn from colonial represen­ oretical culture and translating it for another, colliding cultures produce a fusion of differ­ The language of critique is effective not be­ tation to the question of difference in more in it but not of it, inevitably changed. Bhabha ent elements, hybridity for Bhabha describes cause it keeps forever separate the terms of contemporary concerns, as he considers the brought his own distinctive interpretation of the new, distinctive forms that arise when in­ the master and the slave, the mercantilist possibility of agency for the minority cultural the British politics of difference to the United tractably different cultures collide. The per­ and the Marxist, but to the extent to which theorist, critic, or artist. He shifts, therefore, States. Though the United States had