Posts and Pasts: A Theory of Postcolonialism (review)

Posts and Pasts: A Theory of Postcolonialism. By Alfred J. López. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. xi + 274 pp. $24.95

Posts and Pasts: A Theory of Postcolonialism is one of the most comprehensive and well-documented studies on postcolonial theory available in the United States. By and large, Alfred J. López' arguments are cogent, well constructed, and articulately expressed. In academic writing, eloquence rarely characterizes writing about theory. However, López' convincing arguments are formulated in sophisticated yet accessible language. The long (41-page) Introduction serves as an excellent guide for college instructors wishing to provide their students with an overview of divergent perspectives on postcolonial theory and a solid albeit incomplete review of the literature. The author's stated goal to "critique the critique" of the postcolonial is achieved successfully, already in the introduction, taking up, with keen analysis, the contributions of such brilliant theorists as Gareth Griffiths, Frederic Jameson, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, to name just a few. Despite the complexity of the topic and the daunting nature of the author's task, López manages to maintain an entertaining sense of humor in his writing, such as when he states, in parentheses, that literary critics respect national borders far more often than guerrilla fighters (44).

As thorough as López is in theoretical considerations of the postcolonial, there are two crucial missing components, which ironically serve to further silence subaltern voices that López strives so hard to make heard in a postcolonial environment where genuine "diversity" and "cultural hybridity" are upheld as positive and desirable qualities. In most instances, the author conceptualizes Latin America as a monolithic entity (referring often to "Latin American experiences of decolonization and revolutionary struggles" (p. 40) and any discussion of Brazil—a fundamental consideration in any analysis which treats postcolonial thought—is completely absent from his analysis. At the very least, López should have included a footnoted reference to Brazilian "anthropophagy" (literary cannibalism), for its discussion would have enriched his analysis significantly. For example, when the author comments—quite convincingly—on the ambivalence of Creole society, where literary texts demonstrate "the transmutation of the dominant culture's discourses into a set of similar yet distinctly Creolized signifiers and signifieds" (79), his discussion would have been deeply enhanced by including a comparative commentary on Oswald de Andrade's post-colonialist "Manifesto Antropófago" or at least a brief consideration of the extensive literary criticism which surrounds anthropophagy. Furthermore, López devotes an entire chapter to "Whiteness and the Colonial Unconscious" without any mention whatsoever of any of the abundant controversial theories on "whitening" and miscegenation in Brazilian literature. The omission becomes a glaring defect when the author discusses Michelle Cliff's "unbleaching" of suppressed cultural histories without any reference to the movement of "enegrecimento" in 1980s Brazilian popular culture and literature.

Queer theory, and more specifically, queer diasporas, are also missing from the author's urging that peripheral voices assume a more central position in postcolonial times. Throughout his entire analysis, the author defines "concepts of identity" on the basis of the subject's position in relation to her race, gender, class, ethnicity, language, and geography (17). Much research on "queer diasporas" is being performed in today's cultural studies milieu, and the author's lack of acknowledgment of sexualities as an identity issue is an unfortunate omission.

The text, however, possesses many strong points, particularly in the student-centered approach the author has taken in chapter three, for it illustrates quite literally classroom applications of the text. In this chapter, the author details the fascinating results of the first in-class assignment one semester; in it, he asked his students to complete the sentence "Whiteness is [. . .]" and then proceeds to structure and formulate his arguments based on student responses.

In chapter four, the reader finally receives a coherent and unified definition of the body of criticisms that López so successfully critiques, collectively...