Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse: Cultural Critique or Academic Colonialism? Author(s): Walter D.

Mignolo Source: Latin American Research Review, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1993), pp. 120-134 Published by: The Latin American Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2503613 Accessed: 10/08/2010 22:35
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COLONIAL POSTCOLONIAL

AND DISCOURSE:

CulturalCritiqueor AcademicColonialism?*

Walter D. Mignolo
Duke University

Commentingon PatriciaSeed's well-informed and useful revievA 1 essay (Seed 1991) withina limitednumberof pages requires selectivity. willfirst offer a brief summaryofmyreadingoftheessay and thendiscuss specificissues thathave been ofconcernto me in thepast decade. Seed's "Colonial and PostcolonialDiscourse" raises two distinctive topics. The introduction and conclusion are devoted to placing colonial discourse into contemporary scholarshipand tracingits debts, complicwith poststructuralism, ities,and differences subalternstudies, new historicism, and feminist theory. In between, fivebooks are discussed, three on Latin America and two on the Philippines. Afterdiscussing the five books in terms of currenttrends in history, anthropology, and literary Seed offers her overallconclusion: criticism, Whatall these works do tovarying is to achieve ofa degrees one ofthefunctions to positan idea aboutthehumanities criticritique: disciplines-history, literary morethandecorative as knowledge cism,cultural anthropology-as knowledge, critical oftherelations ineach ofauthority within a society. Theaimofthecritique relations ofthese is different-economic cultural disciplines relations ofauthority, ofauthority Butthebasic (thecanon), conventional political relations ofauthority. in colonialand of critique remains the same-the relations of authority target criticism states-anditis thusan enterprise and political postcolonial ofcultural outina resolutely beingcarried postcolonial era.(P.200) Because thewhole spectrumofcontemporary trendsmentionedby Seed (from to new historicism, fromsubalternto colopoststructuralism nial studies) takes a criticalstance toward knowledge, the reader may wonder about the differences of colonial and postcolonial discoursefrom other ofauthority and authoritative discourses. forms ofcritical enterprises Seed's view is that while the "two fields" share an interestin colonial
I am grateful to *Forinsightsincorporated in revisingmyoriginalversionofthiscomment, Fernando Coronil and the numerous student participants in "Beyond Occidentalism: Rethinking How theWestWas Born," a seminarthatCoronil and I cotaughtat theUniversity ofMichiganin thefallof1992. This essay is dedicated to thememoryofJosephat Kubayanda.

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discourse,the "new literary historicism is ultimately concerned with canonicalliterature, while colonial discoursewriters seek to understandthe dynamicsofthecolonial situation"(p. 199). On thebasis ofthisgeneralsummary, I would liketo discuss several related concernsof my own in recentyears (see Mignolo 1989a, 1989b, 1989c, 1992). The most compellingaspects of the review essay are those dealingwiththe notionof colonial and postcolonialdiscourse rather than the review of the fivebooks in question. The first issue focuses on what kind of category"colonial (or postcolonial) discourse" is. Seed takes it to be a "fieldof study" when she compares it with the new literary historicism.Althoughitseems obvious to me thatcolonial discourseis a new or emergingfieldof study,new literary historicism is a new perspective(or method)rather thana field.Yetwhen Seed definesthecolonialaspect, she seems to take it as both a perspective(comparableto new literary historicism) and a fieldof study: "Colonial discourse has therefore undertaken to redirect critical reflections contemporary on colonialism(and its aftermath)towardthe language used by the conquerors,imperialadministraand missionaries"(p. 183). tors,travelers, She further specifiesthat"whetherthe focushas been on the colonial or postcolonialsituation, thecentralconcernofthese studieshas been the linguisticscreen throughwhich all politicallanguage of colonialism, fromit,needs to be read" (p. 183). includingreactionsto it and liberation Thus the method employed in analyzing colonial discourse seems to be similarto thatused to approach any kind of discourse in any imaginable historicalor social situation.We seem to be dealing with somethinglike the"discursiveturn"in various disciplines,fieldsofstudy, or even historical moments(such as poststructuralism). My interestin delving into these distinctions focuses on a more fundamental question regardingthe politicalimplications ofthe scholarly decision to engage in researchand teachingon colonial (or postcolonial) discourse.The issue I am trying to elucidate is addressed by Seed toward theend ofheressay in discussingthequestions ofwheretheseauthorsare writing, why,and about what. In doing so, Seed brings in the autobiographicaldimensionofthe scholarvis-'a-vis his or her academic pursuit: and literary critics of thosewho are Manyanthropologists, historians, writing as "Third World forthose lumpedtogether people" adopta stanceofadvocacy havebeen studying and working with.Hencethey arereluctant to criticize they forms ofnationalism.... Theearly theoreticians ofthecolopost-independence nialdiscourse field-Said,Spivak,and Bhabha-arethemselves loambivalently catedbetween theso-called First and Third in places Worlds: bornand educated andBengal, likePalestine havenonetheless madetheir academic they reputations intheWest. theWest butarenotofit.Yetbyvirtue ofreputation They speakfrom and lengthy residence in theWest,theyare no longerof theEast. Hence their contribution toshaping thefield has arisen within thesamecontext oftheinternathat tionalization areattempting tostudy. they (P. 198) 121

LatinAmerican Research Review The issue here is notwhetherone who is born in Holland should be nor whethersomeone a millerand one born in New Yorka stockbroker when itcomes to mills bornin Holland or in New Yorkhas moreauthority or the stock market but ratherwho is talkingabout what where and why. Certainly, most of the work discussed and cited by Seed has been published in theUnited States and addressed to an academic audience. There are at least two issues to be disentangledhere. One is thepoliticalagenda of those of us (an empty categoryto be filled)born in North or South and teachinghere in theUnited America,India, Iran,or Africa but writing States who are concerned with colonial discourse. The otherissue is the in agenda of those (an emptycategoryto be filled)born or writingthere to resistmodern India, Iran, Africa,or South Americawho are struggling here.I am aware thatin the colonization,includingthe academic one from may be viewed global village of a postmodern world, such distinctions with suspicion. I believe nonetheless that they should be drawn not so muchin termsofnationalidentities but in relationto thelocus ofenunciationconstructed Once again, the basic question by the speaker or writer. is who is writing about what where and why? The critiqueof what today is grouped under the label of "colonial in LatinAmerica,whichcan be tracedback discourse"has a long tradition of German philosopherMartinHeidegger to the 1950s when the writings began to catch the attentionof Latin American intellectuals.The most spectacularexample to my mind is thatofMexican historianand philosodeAmerica (1952) pherEdmundo O'Gorman. His La ideadeldescubrimiento and La invencion de Ame'rica 1961) representthe (1958, English translation ofEuropean colonialdiscourse. O'Gorman wrotemuch earlydismantling beforethe poststructuralist wave, althoughhe had a similarfoundation and perspective.His readingofone chapterofHeidegger's Being and Time thatlanguage is not the neutral tool of an (1927) made him realize first had as nineteenth-century honestdesireto tellthetruth, historiographers tool forconstructing historyand inventing assumed, but an instrumental realities.Using these presuppositions, O'Gorman dismantledfivehundred yearsofWestern and postcolonialdiscourse, historiography-colonial as itwere. Anothertellingexample is Uruguayanliterary critic Angel Rama's La ciudadletrada littlebook offers a theoryabout (1982). This magnificent the control,domination,and power exercised in the name of alphabetic no doubt reached Rama before he wrote the writing.Poststructuralism visibleand explicit. book, and theguidance ofMichel Foucaultis certainly What Rama has analyzed is a complex,changing,and growingdiscursive in which power and oppositional discourses fromthe colonial formation the two sides ofthe same coin. period to the twentieth centuryconstitute The power of the "letteredcity" helps indirectly in understandingthe silence inflictedby writtenlanguage. One can even say that as far as 122

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the colonial (and postcolonial) discoursepresupposed alphabeticwriting, corpus analyzed by Rama both as a discourse of power and an opposiand nonalphational discourse obscured and suppressed oral traditions repressed duringthesixteenth beticwriting systems,whichwere forcibly century by theletteredcity. or patriotic I mentionthese two examples notto claim nationalistic of the place of rightof speech but mainlyto underscorethe significance speaking, the locus of enunciation.1O'Gorman's and Rama's concerns with different formsof intellectualcolonialism and culturaldependency in LatinAmericaled themto construct postcolonialloci of enunciationin theveryactofstudying workcomprisedan colonial discourses. Thus their effort to displace fieldand voices: theThirdWorldis notonly an area to be studied but a place (or places) fromwhich to speak. Both these thinkers have aided the growingrealizationthatthe "others" are not people and cultureswith littlecontactwith the FirstWorldbut that "otherness" applies in disguise among equals, in what Carl Pletsch (1981) termed the of scientific apportionment (or scholarly)labor among the threeworlds. of area Pletsch, however,was mainly concerned with the distribution the perspectiveof social scientistsand humanistslocated in studiesfrom and speaking fromthe FirstWorld. O'Gorman and Rama exemplify the perspectiveof social scientistsand humanists located in and speaking fromthe ThirdWorld. They are in one sense contemporary examples of the "intellectual other,"as were Inca noble Guaman Poma and Texcocan in the early seventeenth century.For example, noble Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1982), releofAmerica Tzvetan Todorov,at the beginningof TheConquest with a shortcommentplacing him among gated O'Gorman to a footnote concernedwithgeographicaspects ofthe discovery. thosemerely By quotintoFrenchin 1978), ing Edward Said (whose book Todorovhad translated Todorovsuggested thathis own descriptionof the conquest of America could be read as some kind of "occidentalism,"perhaps complementing Said's "orientalism."But in so doing, Todorov suppressed the factthat what O'Gorman had done in the late 1950s was verysimilarto what Said did two decades later.The subtitleof O'Gorman's Spanish edition of La de Amne'rica, El universalismo de Occidente, was not a de la cultura invencion but a critical of such "universality." Examples like celebration dismantling and thismakeone suspectthatthereis little difference betweenyesterday's Forinstance,FrayJuande Torquemada's today'sdiscoursesofcolonialism.2
Brazil.Antonio Candido led the way in Braexamples from 1. One can also citeillustrious zil and has also provided a guiding example fora decolonizing criticaldiscourse (Candido to a LatinAmericandecolo1959,1973).Candido also recognizedAngel Rama's contribution nizing voice in Candido (1991). Roberto Schwarz, Candido's disciple, has been exploring in his studyof JoaquimMaria Machado de Assis the same kind of problems,most recently (Schwarz 1990). discouirse (Bhabha forcolonial 2. Here I am using Homi Bhabha's expressionas a synonym 1986).

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LatinAmerican Research Review printedversion of the historyof the Aztecs froma Franciscanpoint of view, Monarquiaindiana(1615), was widely read, while the manuscript versionby Texcocanhistorian Fernandode Alva Ixtlilxochitl was shelvedin the archivesand published only in the nineteenthcentury, when his account was approached as a historicaldocumentrather than as a political intervention. Once again, my concernis with the locus of enunciationand with dislodgingor multiplying its center, to use an expressioncoined by Kenyan writerNgugi wa Thiong'o.3 In his comparativeanalysis of Joseph and George Lamming'sIn theCastleofMy Skin, Conrad'sHeartofDarkness Thiong'o concludes that although both writerswere criticalof colonial discourse,one spoke fromthe centerof the empirewhile the otherspoke from thecore ofresistanceto theempire. Decenteringthecenteror multiplyingitprovidesnew perspectives on colonialand postcolonialdiscourse: thatof the locus of enunciationcreated in the very act of postulatingthe ofcolonialdiscourseas well as thelocus ofenunciation category createdin the act notof studying or analyzingitbut ofresisting it. Once the issue ofcolonial discourse is relatedto thelocus ofenunciation, my interestlies in the interplayamong the configuration of the the rules of the methodologicalgame, and the feelingsand fieldof study, passions ofthe individualplayingthe game. I will explorethese issues in relationto "colonial discourse" as a fieldofstudy, literary studies as a case and theof discourse-centered disciplinesand an example ofinterpreting and LatinAmericaas a place where an alterorizingsemioticinteractions, native(colonial,postcolonial,or ThirdWorld)locus ofenunciationcan be constructed. of the termcolonial discourse First,the field of study.Introduction into the vocabularyof the humanitiesand the social sciences with a literin my view, an alternative ary bent offered, approach to a fieldof study dominatedby notions such as "colonial literature" or "colonial history." As definedby PeterHulme (one ofthe authorsreviewedby Seed), colonial discourse embracesall kindsofdiscursiveproductionrelatedto and arising out ofcolonial situations,fromthe Capitulations of1492 to WilliamShakefromroyalorders and edicts to the most carefully speare's The Tempest, written prose (Hulme 1986, 1989). The advantage of the concept of colonial discoursewas thatitunifiedan interdisciplinary rosterof scholarsin and anthropology who foundtheidea of "discourse"moreappealhistory ing than "facts"or "information"-andin literary studies,more appealing thantherestricted or "literary discourse."Thus in the conceptofliterature fieldofliterary studies,thenotionofcolonial discoursealso allowed schol3. This sectionis a summaryofThiong'o (1992). A more generalperspectiveofhis critical positionon "decolonizing positioncan be foundin Thiong'o (1973, 1986). For an alternative Africa,"see Appiah (1992, 47-72).

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ars to treatthe concept of literaturein relative terms, which is highly implies problematic, especiallyin colonialsituations."Colonial literature" established in the metropolia canon thatdepends on discursivecriteria first because the "literary" tan centers, whichmakes itdoublyproblematic: in thecolonies and in thelanguage ofthecolonized culturesis production productionof moreoftenthannotperceived as a runner-upto theliterary is hardlya felicitous the colonizingcultures;second, because "literature" (whichare mainly term discursive productions tobe applied to Amerindian interactions (which are mainlypicto-ideographic). oral) and written Introductionof the alphabet in some sectors of the Amerindian drascentury did notchange thesituation populationduringthe sixteenth tically. Whateverhad been "captured" in alphabetic writing(such as the Manuscript) was executed PopulVuh,the ChilamBalam,and the Huarochiri by members of a population who (toward the middle of the sixteenth habitsor by Spaniards interwere forcedto change theirwriting century) ested in understanding Amerindiancultures(such as the Huehuetlattolli into or theHuarochiri).None ofthesewritings transformed oral narrative The denial of "literary" qualities to Amerindiandiscursiveproliterature. duction is neithera negative value judgment nor a suggestion of their thatliterature is a regional culturalinferiority. It is merelythe recognition and culture-dependent conceptualizationof a given kind of discursive practice,one that is not universal to all cultures. This perspective also ofdiscursivepracticesin their invitesinquiryintothenatureand function "original"environment. When pushed to the limit,however,the concept of "colonial discourse," desirable and welcome as it is, is not the most comprehensive in idea possible forunderstandingthe diversityof semioticinteractions colonialsituationsin the New Worldexperience.Hulme made itclearthat in the area he was studying,the main documentationwas European in centurywas origin.Ifinstead we focus on the entitythatin the sixteenth Europeans) and the"Indias called theNew World(mainlyby non-Castilian Occidentales" or West Indies (mainlyby Spaniards involved in explorationand colonization),we musttakeinto accounta large range ofsemiotic interactions documentsin European languages. beyondalphabeticwritten it interacThe idea ofdiscourse,although embodies oral as well as written interacnot alternative to account also for semiotic be thebest tions,may introduced different The Latin alphabet tions between writingsystems. writingsystems of Mesoamerby the Spaniards, the picto-ideographic the in the Andes each delineate particularsysquipus ican cultures,and thattook place duringthe colonial period. Ifwe were temsofinteractions for to limit use ofthetermdiscourse onlyto oral and reservetheidea of text latter term we still need to the written would expand beyond interactions, documentsin orderto embraceall matetherange ofalphabeticalwritten rialsign inscriptions. In doing so, scholarswould honorthe etymological 125

LatinAmerican Research Review meaningoftext(as "weaving"or "textile") and justify including thequipus or into a systemin which writingwas always understood as scratching paintingon solid surfacesbut not as weaving. Because in thefieldofcolonialliterary studies,scholarsmustaccount embodied in the discursive fora complexsystemof semioticinteractions in different (oral) and the textual(materialinscriptions writingsystems), we need a concept such as colonial semiosis. This termescapes the tyranny of the alphabet-orientednotions of text and discourse, even though it adds to a large and already confusingvocabulary.On the positive side, colonial semiosis definesa field of study in a parallel and complementary fashion to existingtermssuch as colonial history, colonial art,and colonial the concept of colonial semiosis includes the locus economy. Furthermore, ofenunciation, a dimensionthusfarabsentfrom thecurrent colonialfields ofstudy. Forinstance,thefieldofcolonial history presupposes an "objective"understanding subjectand a locus ofenunciation from whicha series of interrelated events could be mapped. Briefly, the concept of colonial semiosis reveals thatlanguage-centeredcolonial studies could move (at least in LatinAmericaand the Caribbean) beyond therealmofthewritten word to incorporateoral and nonalphabetic writingsystems as well as nonverbalgraphicsystems.This concept could also open up new ways of thinkingabout colonial experiences by bringingto the foregroundthe subject. political, ideological,and disciplinary agenda oftheunderstanding The nextissue is thequestion ofmethod,itsphilosophicaljustification,and theconstruction oftheloci ofenunciation. Viewed in thisperspecof the hermeneutic tive, the idea of colonial discourse invitesrethinking is delegacy in the contextof colonial semiosis. If the termhermeneutics finednotonly as a reflection on human understanding but as human unin whichhermeneutics was founded derstanding itself, thenthe "tradition" and developed (Mueller-Vollmer 1985) mustbe recastin termsofthepluand culturalboundaries (Panikkar1988). Thus of culturaltraditions rality colonialsituationsand colonial semiosis presenta hermeneutical dilemma thestudyand analysis ofcolofortheunderstanding subject. Historically, nial situationshave been performedfromthe perspectivesprevailingin different domains of the colonizing cultures,even when the interpreter favoredcertainaspects ofthecolonized cultures.The termcolonial semiosis thefollowing bringsto theforeground question: whatis thelocus ofenunciation fromwhich the understandingsubject perceives colonial situatraditions to be understood tions?In otherwords, in which ofthe cultural does the understandingsubject place himselfor herself?Such questions are relevantnot only when broad culturalissues like colonial situations and colonial semiosis are being considered but also when more specific issues likerace,gender,and class are being takeninto account. Edmundo O'Gorman's The Invention led the way in diofAmerica attention to this issue. As a Mexican historianand philosopherof recting 126

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history, O'Gorman's engagement with colonial situationswent beyond issues. What propelled his researchwas a the usual relevantdisciplinary political and ideological concern relevantin Mexico in the 1950s along goals promptedby his reading with a reassessmentof historiographical of Heidegger.O'Gorman's demolitionof fourhundred years of historiographicalwritingabout the so-called discovery was achieved fromthe point of view of a "creole" and a historian.Althoughhe ignoredthe role of Amerindians in analyzing this process, he relativized the universal of the discovery understandingsubject assumed by the historiography and changed the culturalperspectivefromwhich the discoveryhad been construed. WheneverI raise the issue addressed by O'Gorman, I am accused to the ethnicand culturalsituationoftheunderstanding ofgivingpriority subject. Accordingto this argument,a woman or a Mexican is in a better positionto understandwomen's issues or colonial situationsrespectively. I am concernedwith to make. Rather, Yetthisis not thepoint I am trying the tensionbetween the insertionof the epistemologicalsubject withina contextgoverned by norms and condisciplinary(or interdisciplinary) in which context ventionsas well as withitsbeing placed in a hermeneutic race, gender,and class compete with and shape the goals, norms, and rules of a given disciplinarygame. Disciplinarynorms and conventions needs and desires. are thuspermeatedby hermeneutic The pointis thatscholarsstudyingthecultureto whichtheybelong (whether national,ethnic,or gender cultures)are not necessarilysubjectivejust as scholarsstudyingculturesto which theydo notbelong are not forundernecessarilyobjective.In myview,theoriesare notinstruments theories are standing somethingthat lies outside of the theory: rather, instruments forconstructing knowledge and understanding.Hence my stateuse oftheword subjective applies to examples,notto epistemological ments.Withina constructivist subjectivity implies knowlepistemology, edge and understandingin which the personal and social situationofthe knowingsubject prevailsover disciplinaryrules and procedures. The inrules of disciplinarycognitionwill prevail over verse holds forobjective: neither approach personal desires, biases, and interests. Accordingly, a "better"(deeper,more accurate,moretrustworthy, guaranteesattaining moreinformed) knowledge or understanding.For ifwe approach knowlepisedge and understandingfromthe perspectiveof a constructivistic temologyand hermeneutic,the audience being addressed and the researcher'sagenda are as relevant to theconstruction oftheobjector subject being studied as the subject or the object being constructed.Thus the locus ofenunciationis as much a partofknowingand understandingas it froma disciplinofthe image ofthe "real" resulting is oftheconstruction ary discourse (whether sociological, anthropological,historical, semiological, or some otherkind). Consequently,the "true" account of a sub127

LatinAmerican Research Review in the formof knowledge or understandingwill be transacted ject matter in therespectivecommunities ofinterpretation as muchforitscorrespondence to what is taken for"real" as forthe authorizing locus of enunciation constructedin the very act of describingan object or a subject. Furthe locus of enunciationof the discoursebeing read would not thermore, be understood in itselfbut in the contextof previous loci of enunciation or expands. In otherwords, thatthe current discourse contests,corrects, it is as much the saying (and the audience involved) as what is said (and the image of the real the world referred to) that preserve or transform constructed by previous acts of sayingand previous utterances. One example can be found in Michael Taussig's remarkablebook on terrorand healing, Shamanism, and theWildMan (1987), Colonialism, which helps clarify the tensions between the understandingsubject and the subject to be understood in colonial semiosis. Constructionof the locus of enunciationin Taussig's study articulates his opposibeautifully in relationto the disciplinary in anthropology. At tionalpractices tradition the same time,he constructsa culturalspace in which Taussig, the Australiananthropologist, attemptsto finda place withina Latin American intellectual tradition via his carefulattention to essays and novels written by Latin Americans condemningcolonialism and oppression (including ArielDorfman,JoseEustasio Rivera,Alejo Carpentier, JacoboTimerman, and Miguel Angel Asturias). This approach indicatesTaussig'sopenness to hearingand rehearsing thevoices oftheotherin theoraltradition ofthe tradition ofThirdWorldintellectuals whose Putumayoand in the written locus ofenunciationTaussigattempts to join. A second example can be found in a statement made by MexicanAmericanartistGuillermoGomez-Peina, severalyears ago in L.A. Weekly: "I live smack in the fissurebetween two worlds, in the infectedwound: halfa block fromthe end of WesternCivilizationand fourmiles fromthe startof the Mexican-American border,the northernmost point of Latin America. In my fractured but a realitynonetheless,therecohabit reality, two histories, and politicalsyslanguages, cosmologies,artistic traditions, temswhich are drastically counterposed" (Gomez-Peina1988). The interrelations ofcolonial semiosis as a networkofprocesses to be understood and the locus of enunciationas the networkof places of hermeunderstandingdemand a pluridimensionalor multidimensional neuticat thesame timethattheyreveal the significance ofthe disciplinary as well as cultural(gender,race, class) inscriptionof the subject in the process ofunderstanding.Anthropologist Taussig-born and educated in Australia,trainedin London, and teaching in the United States-places himself between a disciplinary tradition (anthropology)and in a personal and social situationoutside the discipline (certainconstructions of Latin Americanhistoryand culture,indicated by the names he cites and seconds or critiques). Meanwhile Gomez-Peina,a Mexican-Americanartist 128

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livingin San Diego, illustrates both the survivalof colonial semiosis and to accountforit. While unthe need fora multidimensional hermeneutic derstandingand constructing "our own tradition"implies a unidimenand constructing colonialsemiosis(the sional hermeneutic, understanding dialecticbetween official stories and suppressed voices, between signs fromdifferent culturaltraditions)implies a pluralityof conflictiveand hermeneutic.4 coexisting worlds and requiresa multidimensional I wish to cite a fewexamples ofvoices emergingfrom coloFinally, alternative (postcolonial) loci of enunnial semiosis thatare constructing ciation. When Barbadian poet Edward Kamau Bratwhaiterecounts the thatwould matchhis livingexperiencein storyofhis searchfora rhythm the Caribbean, he highlights the momentwhen skippinga pebble on the ocean gave him a rhythm thathe could not findby reading JohnMilton. Bratwhaitealso highlightsa second and subsequent momentwhen he perceived the parallelsbetween the skipping of the pebble and Calypso thathe could notfindin listeningto Beethoven.5IfBratmusic, a rhythm of the whaite found a voice and a formof knowledge at the intersection classical models he learned in a colonial school with his lifeexperiencein his poetryis theCaribbean and consciousness ofAfrican people's history, less a discourseofresistancethan a discourse claimingits centrality. Simin the writings ofJamaicannovelists ilarclaims could be foundindirectly ofBritish and essayistMichelleCliff, who statesthatone effect WestIndian colonial discourse is "thatyou believe absolutelyin the hegemonyof the King's English and the formin which it is meant to be expressed. Or else it is folklore is not literature; and can never be art.... The yourwriting Keats-was held beforeus with an anglican ideal-Milton, Wordsworth, assurance thatwe were unable, and would neverbe enabled, to compose a work of similarcorrectness.... No reggae spoken here" (Cliff1985). and construct simultaneously While Thoing'o, Lamming,and Bratwhaite centersof enunciationin what have been contheorizeabout alternative sidered the marginsof colonial empires,Latinos and Black Americansin thateitherthemarginsare also in the theUnitedStates are demonstrating centeror (as Thiong'o expresses it) thatknowledge and aestheticnorms are not universallyestablishedby a transcendent subject but are univerin established historical cultural centers.Chicano sally by subjects diverse writerGloria Anzalduia, for instance, has articulateda powerful alterby placing herselfat the crossnativeaestheticand politicalhermeneutic road of threetraditions (Spanish-American,Nahuatl, and Anglo-Amerisee Kelstructure, withindisciplinary "infiltration" 4. Foran example ofthehermeneutic on thatthe social sciences and thehumanitieshave been constructed ler(1985). To theextent theytend to restrain the basis of the combinationof certainhermeneuticalconfigurations, structure. ofthedisciplinary towardtheauthoritative configuration thosewho would gravitate (1992). His generalpositionregardingpoetic practices 5. I am referring here to Bratwhaite (1983, 1984). in Bratwhaite in colonial situationshas been articulated

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Research Review LatinAmerican ways ofknowcan) and by creatinga locus ofenunciationwhere different ing and individualand collectiveexpressionsmingle(Anzalduia 1987). question asked severalyears ago by GayatriSpivak The influential speak?" (Spivak 1985; O'Hanlon 1988).This query was "Can thesubaltern could be answered by saying thatthe subalternhave always spoken, although scholars and social scientistswere not always willing to listen (Coronil 1993; Wald 1992). The question of whetherthe colonized can be in terms representedmay no longerbe an issue, and itcould be reframed than as an academic loci of enunciationrather of dialogues fromdifferent in the act of "studying"colonial discourse and not monologue performed engaged persons (whetherinside or outside aca"listening"to politically from colonial, postcolonial,or ThirdWorldcountriesprodeme), writers to discourse. Perhaps in the intellectualarena, efforts ducing alternative ofcolonizaafarand long ago disguises new forms inventan "other"from cultureshave been tion. JeanPaul Sartrepointed out thatall non-Western reduced to thestatusofobjectsby being observed and studiedby Western scholarsaccordingto Westernconcepts and categories.Thus althoughthe concept of colonial discourse has opened up new areas of inquiry and thediscursivedimensionofcolonial(and postcolonial helped in rethinking misguide social scientistsand humanists experience),it may unwittingly colonization. intoa new formofintellectual and postcoloniality, I wish to close by citingan exampleofmimicry, academic colonialism. On reading an essay like Roberto Schwarz's "Braone realizes thatthe queszilian Culture: Nationalismby Elimination,"6 tion of "postcolonial discourse" seems farfromthe centerof his intellectual and politicalagenda. One could argue thatin Brazil, the new trend has not yet arrivedbecause it takes time fornew theoriesto make their regions. But thatis preciselywhat Schwarz's essay critiway to peripheral cizes-the culturalinternalcolonialism and the mimeticactions takenby in Brazilianpostcolonialhistory and in many and intellectuals institutions othercountries.For those in postcolonial or Third World countrieswho believe thata sign ofprogressis to consume exportedtheories,the question of colonial and postcolonial discourse has not yet arrived.For those in critically interested examiningthe culturaldependency of postcolonial theissue ofcapitalism"), countries (whichSchwartzterms"theperipheries in the contextof mimicry and dependency as well as has to be rethought in termsof intellectualinterventions and researchprogramsfeedingthe and needs of the country. For those of us in exile, when negotraditions productionin our places of origins(whetherLatin tiatingthe intellectual in our place of conversation America,Africa,or Asia) and the intellectual residence (the United States or WesternEurope), the question arises of theimporpromoting whether our function should be thatofgo-betweens,
6. See Schwarz (1989), 29-48.

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tationof "new theories" into our "backward" countries,or whetherwe should "thinkfrom"the postcolonial experiences in which we grew up. in between") could How this "thinking from"(which implies a "thinking is a subject thatcannotbe developed here.7My concernis be constructed to underscorethe point that "colonial and postcolonial discourse" is not new richesbut the just a new fieldof studyor a gold mine forextracting ofpossibility forconstructing new loci ofenunciationsas well as condition forreflecting that academic "knowledge and understanding"should be with "learningfrom" those who are livingin and thinking complemented RigobertaMenchuito Angel from colonial and postcoloniallegacies, from exportation of Rama. Otherwise,we run the riskof promotingmimicry, theories,and internal(cultural) colonialism ratherthan promotingnew formsofculturalcritiqueand intellectualand politicalemancipations-of makingcolonial and postcolonialstudies a fieldof studyinstead of a liminal and criticallocus of enunciation. The "native point of view" also In theapportionment ofscientific labor since World includesintellectuals. War II, which has been described well by Carl Pletch (1982), the Third and Worldproduces notonly "cultures"to be studied by anthropologists on but also intellectuals who generatetheoriesand reflect ethnohistorians their own cultureand history.

along thisline are Anzaldia (1990),Mora (1993),Coro7. Some oftherecentcontributions nil (1992),Minh-Ha (1989), Appiah (1992), and Bhabha (1992).

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