In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Research in African Literatures 31.3 (2000) 187-190



[Access article in PDF]

Book Review

Beyond Postcolonial Theory

Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics

Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity


Beyond Postcolonial Theory, by E. San Juan, Jr. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. 325 pp. ISBN 0-312-17426-8 cloth.

Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, by Bart Moore-Gilbert. London: Verso, 1997. 243 pp. ISBN 1-85984-034-5 paper.

Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, ed. Anthony D. King. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. xiii + 184 pp. ISBN 0-8166-2953-6 paper.

A brief quiz before the reviews: Over the past two decades, the complicated and often confusing area of interdisciplinary scholarship designated "postcolonial theory" has been A) illuminating; B) mystifying; C) sometimes A, sometimes B; D) all of the above; E) none of the above. Three recently published works attempt to answer this question from disparate and, at times, mutually hostile perspectives. Beyond Postcolonial Theory is E. San Juan, Jr.'s hard-hitting critique of "orthodox" postcolonial theory, by which he means the predominantly literary theories of well-known postcolonial scholars Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, and their followers. San Juan accuses these celebrated critics of a range of unpardonable sins, most notably of promoting a "metaphysics of textualism" and a "cult of linguistic/psychological ambivalence," and of valorizing the "in-between" (22, 51). This book will be welcome reading to anyone who has been concerned that postcolonial theory's seemingly exclusive focus on discourse and its seemingly obsessive concern with hybridity, mimicry, [End Page 187] and other forms of linguistic "play" has evaded the material realities of individuals and communities living under difficult conditions of post-, neo-, or internal colonialism and actively fighting to dismantle colonial structures. Following the lead of Aijaz Ahmad, who has been extremely critical of orthodox postcolonial theory's "denial of history" (6), San Juan charges that the "indeterminacy," "deracinated sensibility," and "utopian idealisms" espoused by these postcolonial scholars, all "entrenched in the Establishment institutions of the West," actually "serve the interests of the global status quo," "mystifyi[ng] the political/ideological effects of Western postmodernist hegemony and prevent[ing] change" (22). These are serious charges against a body of theory that has articulated its own project as emancipatory. As an alternative, San Juan argues the merits of assuming an historical-materialist perspective informed by, among others, the theories of Marx, Gramsci, Bakhtin, and C. L. R. James, and inspired by the revolutionary practices of ongoing national-popular struggles in (post)colonial geographies as diverse as Guatemala, the Philippines, and the Caribbean.

San Juan is originally from the Philippines, and in many respects the plight of Filipino migrant workers and the "tortuous development" of the Filipino struggle for independence from US domination underpins San Juan's complex arguments. This is the real strength of his analysis and the most compelling support for his critique of orthodox postcolonial theory: a commitment to articulating the historical and cultural specificity of social processes, what San Juan calls the "worldly texture of collective experience" (134), including the collective experience of discursive practices. Although the book's eight chapters range widely, considering such apparently diverse topics as revolutionary struggle in the Philippines, subaltern studies, theories of multiculturalism and the politics of recognition, Asian American literary production and criticism, globalization, and materialist dialectic, San Juan consistently grounds his work in the realities of capitalist production. His primary focus throughout the book is on understanding "situated cultures in process of emergence" (18), and he insists that we must pay attention to "the law of uneven and combined [global] development," the "spatiotemporal contexts on which [postcolonial] meaning and value hinge" (14, 15). Further, unlike the postcolonial theorists he critiques, San Juan consistently evokes "the power of human agents" to guide and effect change and/or renewal (16), what he terms a "popular anticolonialism premised on historical memory and symbols of belonging and solidarity...

pdf

Share