Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies (review)

Currently, it seems an article of faith that, as a modernist project, Marxism treats knowledge to be singular, cumulative, and neutral, while postcolonial studies demonstrates that knowledge is multiple, contradictory, and powerful. The contributors to Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies, however, point out that Marx and Marxism have been attentive to the complex and varied conditions of capitalism and modernity, which create and organize the world we live in. As coeditor Crystal Bartolovich declares, the essays included in this volume conceive of "Marxism as a living project, neither simply a discourse nor a body of (academic) knowledge" (16). The thrust of this volume is that postcolonial studies must come to terms with the capitalism located within modernity.

Postcolonial studies, for the most part, has been concerned with textual analysis of the postcolonial present, paying little attention to the colonial and anticolonial past. Neil Larsen writes: "One is sometimes inclined to believe that, in fact, postcolonialism as currently practiced has a great deal more to do with the reception of French 'theory' in places like the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia than it does with the realities of cultural decolonization or the international division of labor" (204-5). While maintaining the importance of textual analysis, the contributors to this volume argue that the historical conditions and "actually existing" postcolonialism remain central.

Many of the essays in this volume critique various aspects of postcolonial studies for going too far, not going far enough, or simply being misguided. Larsen's own article attempts to reanimate the Marx that postcolonial studies has buried underneath Althusser, Deleuze, and Derrida (to name a few) and demonstrate how current postcolonial studies might benefit by returning to Marxism as "a necessary relation of theory and practice" (205). His rereading of The Eighteenth Brumaire and Gayatri Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?" exemplifies some of this volume's best efforts to put Marxism and postcolonial studies in conversation with one another. Larsen's linking of the subaltern—the (possibly) ungovernable—and globalized labor—the (possibly) unexploitable—forms a provocative connection between Marxism and postcolonial studies.

Neil Lazarus' essay shows how the fetish of "the West" has led postcolonial studies astray. He traces the use of the concept of "the West" through an array of postcolonial theorists. While affirming the significance of postcolonial studies' critique of Eurocentrism, Lazarus points out that the term "the West" elides a whole array of ideological categories—imperialism and positivism, for instance—and obscures a range of political allegiances (57). He argues that postcolonial theorists have failed to demonstrate how "the West" is a historical problematic. Using "the West" in the place of Eurocentrism, progress, reason, or the Enlightenment detaches the real processes of domination from concrete conditions and actually existing situations. In fact, it remains unclear how opposing "the West" to "the Third World" or attempting to "provincialize" Europe actually combats any number of master narratives that postcolonial studies rightly intends to counter. Fetishizing "the West" and dismissing Marxism as hopelessly Eurocentric and totalizing hinders a common project of Marxism and postcolonial studies: "to understand what imperialism is and how it works" (54). For Lazarus, the "insistence on the globality of capitalism as an historical formation" within the Marxist narrative of modernity becomes the crucial centerpiece of a dialogue between Marxism and postcolonial studies (63).

Other essays implicate postcolonial studies as going too far in its accusations that Marxism is Eurocentric, taking Europe as the primary (in both senses of the word) site of modernity, and therefore inapplicable both to the postcolonial present and the anticolonial past. August Nimtz and Pranav Jani, in separate essays, reexamine some of the writings of Marx and Engels regarding the nineteenth-century struggles of non-European peoples in colonial situations, including India and Algeria. Nimtz establishes that Marx and Engels looked toward Russia as the potential site of revolution after the failed uprisings of 1847-48. During that time Marx concluded that the revolutionary process is globally interdependent, a notable determination that has even more resonance...