The Postcolonial Unconscious by Neil Lazarus (review)

The postcolonial condition seems to be a tragedy in the wings of colonialism. The post-colonies are unravelling at a rapid pace as human rights abuses, gender-based discrimination and regressive development policies, undemocratic governments and tyrannical dictators continue to eclipse the promise of true independence and moving beyond colonialism. Haiti, the country that fought for independence from France and is now framed as the poorest country in the hemisphere, stars in Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995). What Trouillot offers is the way the French Revolution summarily silences the existence of the Haitian Revolution, a marker of true post-colonialism where the colonised has thrown off the coloniser’s yoke. However, as the reality in Haiti today shows, as much of the developing or post-colonial world would attest, the postcolonies are in as precarious a situation, perhaps even worse than when they were under direct colonialism. Neil Lazarus masterfully takes this reality to another level with The Postcolonial Unconscious. The master of Post-colonial/Marxist criticism gives a sweeping sojourn through postcolonial thought and thinkers.

Lazarus brings out the heavy artillery in postcolonial studies to illustrate how much the area has gotten stuck in its own theorising strictures. Lazarus calls on the major theorists from the inception of the struggle to free colonial states to those who are writing now. Fanon and Said feature prominently in the texts as foundational political movers and shakers in resistance to colonialism and exploitation. He also brings Brennen and Parry into debate with his own ideas and concerns about the development of the field of study. It is a fast-paced theory book that contextualises the arguments and theorists as well as the advocates and political dissidents who have worked and others who continue to work in the field. He seems to underscore the need to recreate the bridge between theory and praxis, as in not relying on the theory to liberate the colonised from their exploitative position, and shows how the post-colonial project has actually been abandoned or sent off course by early political leaders in the geopolitical south.

As much as the Caribbean and the former colonials worldwide have moved beyond colonialism’s constricts, the reality of our subservience is sharp. Patricia Glinton-Miecholas argues that there is no vacancy in Paradise and we are allowed our bad hair days, despite all pressures and opinions to the contrary. We have been driven from plantation to resort, without ever having passed go or collecting two hundred monopoly dollars. Those, in fact, went to the politicians who go into golf-course meetings with foreign heads of agencies that control the purse strings of resort in efforts to woo them to consider their destination for their brand. The corruption and subjugation these cocktail and golf deals impose on the local populations is alarming. Lazarus, however, critiques the postcolonial condition very differently from that. He examines each heavy-hitting contributor to the postcolonial debate and their detractors. His analysis is hard-hitting and direct. He writes with scalpel-like precision as if to debunk without drawing a drop of blood, from the proverbial pound of flesh. Yet, his discussion and analysis are a blood bath of disappointment, disillusion and disenfranchisement.

Land deals seal the fate of the poor to walk through boutique cities before returning to their misery. Tourism and globalisation appear to be the new consolidation of the world’s power in the hands of the few. As Lazarus quotes from Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, “The Shadow the 2003 US invasion of Iraq casts on the twenty-first century makes it more absurd than ever to speak of ours as a postcolonial world” (16). What, he argues, is urgent that postcolonial scholars do more than simply sit up and take note of the tragedy of the usurping of political sovereignty, “… is to take central cognisance of the unremitting actuality and indeed the intensification of imperialist social relations in the times and spaces of the postcolonial...