Where Do We Go From Here?: Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies

Diaspora 12:3 2003 Where Do We Go From Here? Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies1 Arif Dirlik University of Oregon Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies. Ed. Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 1. I have chosen as my subtitle the title of the volume that I review and reflect upon in what follows; hereafter, I will refer to it as MMP. My title is a question that comes from the concluding lines of the introduction to the volume by one of its editors, Crystal Bartolovich. I do not intend to take up the discussion where she leaves off, but it seems an appropriate point of departure for further reflection. Perhaps wisely, neither the editors nor the other contributors to the volume make a serious effort to provide an answer to the question. Bartolovich follows up the question with a description of the volume that is worth quoting at some length, as it successfully captures the sense of the book and equally successfully dodges the question she raises: The essays that follow are by no means all-inclusive in their range, homogeneous in their perspectives, or representative in their approaches. What they all share, however, is a resistance to the devaluation of Marxism so evident in mainstream understandings of the world today, and, increasingly, in the academy as well—not least in postcolonial studies. Our contributors see the ongoing critique of capitalism as necessary to any project for social justice, and view the Marxist tradition as providing the conceptual tools and analytic frameworks essential to such a critique. Above all, the contributors to the volume see—and attest to—the continuing force of Marxism as a living project, neither simply a discourse nor a body of (academic) knowledge. It is this project that they propose as the most fruitful path to take in understanding both the colonial past and the contemporary world order. (16) 419 Diaspora 12:3 2003 This is the first, and the only, volume that I am aware of that takes on postcolonial studies from a self-consciously Marxist perspective (paralleling the Monthly Review special issue of a few years ago, subsequently published as a book, that offered a similar undertaking vis-à-vis postmodernism: Wood and Foster). This new volume grew out of a panel held at the 1996 “Rethinking Marxism” Conference in Amherst, MA, but has been supplemented by solicited contributions. According to Bartolovich, the panel was organized with the conviction that Marxism and postcolonial studies have something to say to each other. The editors do not name those whose positions they identify as “polarizing and exclusionary,” be it within Marxism or postcolonial studies, but they do begin by advocating a “strong and visible Marxist postcolonial studies” (1). The twelve essays that follow the introduction are divided evenly into three sections: “Eurocentrism,” “ The West and the World: Locating Modernity,” and “Marxism, Postcolonial Studies, and Theory,” in that order. The first section is the most coherent in content, as all the essays address the charge of “Eurocentrism” that has been brought against Marxism, mostly in postcolonial criticism but also by some who would be considered to be in the Marxist camp. Giovanni Arrighi offers an account of the rise and contemporary reconfiguration of capitalism that seeks to bring a broader world perspective on its history; Neil Lazarus turns the tables on postcolonial studies by examining the “fetishization of the West” in postcolonial criticism; August Nimtz repudiates the charges of Eurocentrism as a “myth” concocted by critics of Marxism and seeks to prove it wrong by pointing to the consistent support by Marx, Engels, and Marxists for revolutionary struggles around the world; and, finally, Pranav Jani offers a nuanced interpretation of the issue of Marx’s Eurocentrism by examining the contradictions presented by his writings on the 1857 revolt in India. The essays in the second part are less easily summarized, although they are at one in reaffirming the importance of Marxism in the analysis of colonialism, along with a ratification of the modern/rational in Marxism. Most explicit in this regard is the essay by Benita Parry, which reviews liberation theory as enunciated by advocates and leaders of national liberation leaders in the period...