A Sense of History: An Interview with Arif Dirlik

Arif Dirlik with Jeffrey J. Williams A Sense of History: An Interview with Arif Dirlik Arif Dirlik has taken to task postcolonial criticism and other "culturalisms" far their weak sense of history. Dirlik established his reputation as an historian of modern China with the books: Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919-1937 (Li of California P, 1978); Origins of Chinese Communism (Oxford UP, 1989); and Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Li of California P, 1991). Through the 90s he turned to considerglobalization and thefate ofMarxism in After the Revolution: Waking to Global Capitalism (Wesleyan UP, 1994); the advent of postcolonial studies in The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (Westview, 1997), which includes the influential title essay thatfirst appeared in Critical Inquiry 20.2 (1994); and the general tendencies of postmodern criticism and historiography in Postmodernity's Histories: The Past as Legacy and Project (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). Other relevant essays include "Culturalism as Hegemonic Ideology and Liberatory Practice" (in The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse, ed. Abdul JanMohammed [Oxford UP, 1990]); "Postmodernism and Chinese History" (boundary 2 [Fall 2001]); "Markets, Culture, Power: the Making ofa Second Cultural Revolution in China" (Asian Studies Review [March 2001]; and "Global Modernity? Modernity in am Age ofGlobal Capitalism" (European Journal of Social Theory [Aug. 2003]). Since 2001, he has been Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology at the University ofOregon and adjunct professor ofthe Centers for Contemporary Literature and European Studies at the Beijing Language and Culture University. This interview tookplace in the Wyndham Garden Hotel in Pittsburgh on 6 June 2003, in the midst ofthefounding meeting ofthe Cultural Studies Association. It was conducted by Jeffrey J. Williams and transcribed by Laura Rotunno, managing editor ofthejournal and now assistant professor ofEnglish at Penn State-Altoona. JeffreyJ. Williams: You've long had an established reputation as an historian of modern China, but people in literary and cultural studies would more likely know you through your challenges to postcolonialism and postmodernism , particularly your Critical Inquiry essay "The Postcolonial Aura." Whafs do you see as the problem with postcolonialism? Arif Dirlik: Since that essay has been appredated and also misread, I want to be dear about certain things that I did say in it the postcolonial was a new way of thinking that was probably needed, and there were good material reasons for its emergence. It also provided the grounds for the introduction of non-Euro-American literature into universities, which, I think, was a major contribution. That was a positive contribution in its academic role. 80 the minnesota review But what it meant beyond that is another kind of question. Aijaz Ahmad [in In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992)] made a very useful distinction about changing meanings of the postcolonial. As a concept of periodization , in the immediate aftermath of decolonization in the 1960s and early 1970s, the postcolonial was quite dearly entangled in Marxism and revolutionary movements. Then there is the next moment of the postcolonial , beginning in the late 1970s, with people like Edward Said. From the early 1990s, there is a new kind of meaning. It seems to me that the postcolonial , as it flourished from the late 1980s on, was anti-revolutionary in its emphases. Being anti-revolutionary is not a crime, but the whole notion of revolution has been repudiated. I'm not just talking about post-socialist societies here but many Third World societies, and even the original home of revolution in Europe. Let's not forget that 1989 was the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. It wasn't just sorialism that fell in 1989; on its 200th anniversary, the French Revolution itself was repudiated. Whether due to the failure of the socialist regimes, the failure ofThird World radical regimes or, on the other side, the reconfiguration of the globe by the globalization of capital, revolution became a meaningless concept. Imagine the moment of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China. It was a moment when intellectuals came under attack. If they were tainted, let's say, with hybridity, theybecame comprador, they became the bourgeoisie . In fact, Appiah used the term comprador...