5.

What contribution, if any, has the postcolonial critique made to social theory?

This essay will explore the contribution the postcolonial critique has made to wider social
theory, with specific emphasis on the influence of postcolonial scholarship on the
treatment of modernity. I will examine work by postcolonial scholars alongside writing
on modernity by western social theorists who variously embrace and reject a Eurocentric
view of modernity. Consequently, I will demonstrate how ideas developed by the
postcolonial critique have enabled and encouraged greater transparency and awareness
within social theory. I will argue that through its emphasis on openness, fluidity and its
supposedly rebellious position with the academy, the postcolonial critique has contributed
to social theory by enabling and encouraging a broader and more nuanced understanding
of the social theoretical concept of modernity, and of social theory more widely.
Firstly, I will offer a brief overview of ideas of modernity in the work of social theorists
such as Wagner (1994) and Giddens (1990), with specific emphasis on the Eurocentric
and linear nature of their conceptions of modernity. In doing so, I will provide context for
the postcolonial attack on Eurocentrism, and the consequent effect of postcolonial
scholarship on understandings of modernity. Subsequently, I will examine how the radical
and sometimes contentious nature of postcolonial scholarship has explicitly challenged
customary and predominantly Western social theory through an examination of works by
postcolonial scholars such as Fanon (1963), Spivak (1999) and Bhabba (1989). I will then
argue that the poststructuralist techniques employed by these critics present new
discursive spaces, in which concepts such as modernity can be critically examined and
developed.
1

However, I will also argue that while the poststructuralist approach of much postcolonial
scholarship allows for and enables alternative and often illuminating conceptions of
social theory, its limitations must also be noted. In light of what critics such as Dirlik
(1994) Ahmad (1995) and Friedman (1999) argue to be the shortcomings of
poststructuralist postcolonial theory, such as relativism, elitism, abstractness and, to some
extent, a depoliticisation of social theory, I will argue that postcolonial theory should not
usurp more traditional social theory entirely. Rather, through an examination of the use of
postcolonial theory in work on multiple modernities by Kamali (2012) and Bhambra
(2007), I will argue that the postcolonial critique should be used in conjunction with
traditional social theory, to supplement and critique existing practice, rather than replace
it entirely. I will argue that when understood concomitantly, postcolonial theory and
social theory can produce a nuanced, multifaceted understanding of ideas such as
modernity. I will argue that when postcolonial scholarship is fused with the social
theoretical concept of modernity in writings on multiple modernities, the postcolonial
critique is not destructive or antithetical to the traditional social theory which is often
seeks to usurp, but is instead productive of a new understanding of social theoretical
discourse.
Social theory and modernity
Social theory is often perceived to be the intellectual child (Rundell 2001: 13) of
modernity. As a result, the emergent writings of classical theorists such as Weber (Weber
1958) and Durkheim (Durkheim 1964) and Marx (Marx 1967) are often viewed as a
response to nineteenth century industrialization and democratization. However, critics
such as Wagner (1994) and Rundell (2011) argue that modernity has earlier origins.
2

Specifically, they reason that the individual freedoms and institutions which typify
modernity can be traced to the European Enlightenment, as well revolutions in America
and France (Wagner 1994: 7). Yet while modern critics may debate the temporal location
of modernity, and thus the time origins of social theory more broadly, they are frequently
explicit as to its Western beginnings (Giddens 2013: 4). The birth of modernity and the
resulting conditions which enabled social theory therefore appear inextricably bound with
European thought, culture and institutions.
From this European beginning, it is argued that the project of modernity subsequently
spread linearly and homogeneously. For Giddens, European social movements of the
eighteenth and nineteenth century were not only solely responsible for creating
modernity, but also for advancing the project (Giddens 2013: 3). Following its advent
during the European Enlightenment, modernity then spread downwards and outwards
(Wagner 1994: 41) from the European middle classes to regions such as Asia, which, as a
result of decolonization and globalization, had gradually developed the same fertile
conditions for the growth of modernity. Included in these conditions is what Wagner
outlines as the moral culture (Wagner 1994: 72) of modernity, predicated on the
subjects rational autonomy and an ability to self-define. In The Sociology of Modernity
(1994), Wagner goes on to explore resistance to this liberal self-conception, and the
institutions which were developed to re-establish control over social practices as a result
(Wagner 1994: 90). While Wagner may seek to critique and examine the value of these
institutions, he does not unsettle their European origins, or inextricable bind with
European and western values.

Furthermore, the spread of rational autonomy of the self and the institutions which
underpin modernity in these accounts is argued to continue in the present-day. For as
Giddens maintains, the declining power of the West in recent years should not be read as
a consequence of the diminishing impact of European-born, European-led modern
institutions, but rather as proof of the pervasiveness of these institutions globally
(Giddens 1990: 54). While Wagner disputes the primacy of a Fukuyaman end of history
(Fukuyama 1992), he concedes that there is credence in the suggestion that the
intellectual and social energies that were put into the modern project are exhausted
(Wagner 1994: 192) since many of the institutions and philosophies which characterize
modernity have now been realized across the world. In this view, modernity is therefore a
Western-born project, which has, since its inception, been predestined to progress in a
linear, teleological way throughout the world. Fundamentally, this teleological process is
based in institutions and ideas of selfhood which are derived from a Eurocentric, liberal
conception of society and modernity.
The postcolonial revolt
As I have argued, a teleological, Eurocentrism permeates writing on modernity in certain
areas of social theoretical discourse. The postcolonial critique presents an explicit
opposition to these ideas, and thus to these understandings of social theory more broadly.
Emphasizing both the deeply-rooted nature of Eurocentric social theory, and the
postcolonial revolt against it, Gandhi (1998) asserts that postcolonial critics strive to
confront an entrenched humanist curriculum (Gahndi 1998: 42). While debate exists as
to the whether this confrontation is revolutionary or revisionist in their outcomes

(Huggan 2013: 3), postcolonialism criticism is acknowledged to be dissident, antiauthoritarian, canon-deforming and remaking (Boehmer 2013: 310) in its nature. As a
result of these supposedly rebellious traits, postcolonial critics are arguably wellpositioned to critique and reexamine customary social theory.
This antagonistic character can be seen in the work of Frantz Fanon, and perhaps most
explicitly in his essay Concerning Violence from The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon
1963). Fanon theorises decolonization, and its effect on the colonized individual, as an
violent and polarizing process. According to Fanon, colonized people must wreck the
colonial world (Fanon 1963: 40) during the process of decolonization, if they are to
construct their own self-image disparate from the dehumanized image imposed upon
them by the colonizer through language and direct violence. As he asserts, colonized
natives are constructed as the enemy of values (Fanon 1963: 41) by their colonial
masters. In this sense, Fanon is attacking the European moral value which Wagner argues
to be inextricably bound with modernity, and emphasizing the polarizing nature of this
scholarship. Postcolonial criticism is thus an attack on both the colonizers liberal,
Western construction of the self, and the imposition of this construction on the colonial
native.
While some Western scholars label Fanons work as nonproductive for its angry mode
of expression (Wallerstein 1970: 222), other postcolonial and subaltern academics such as
Spivak (2014) and Said (1989) disagree with claims that the violence in Fanons work is
explicitly damaging. Fanons work should instead be read between the lines (Spivak
2014), not only as an attack on the legitimised violence of the European imperialist, but

as an attempt to construct alternative narratives and identities for the colonial native.
Fanon outlines this contention explicitly in the last lines of The Wretched of the Earth:
We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not
obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe. (Fanon 1963: 312). Fanon therefore
demonstrates both the anti-Eurocentric sentiment and an emphasis on untold histories
which characterize much postcolonial scholarship, albeit through explicitly violent
means. Furthermore, according to Said the emphasis on violence and breaking from
tradition in Fanons work helps to force the European metropolis to think its history
together with the history of the colonies awakening from the cruel stupor and abused
immobility of imperial domination. (Said 1989: 223). Therefore the disassembly of
European cultural structures in postcolonial texts is not only a destructive effort. Rather,
in dismantling accepted ideas of history and identity in the colonies, namely the
Eurocentric conceptions offered by theorists such as Wagner and Giddens, postcolonial
critics seek to produce new identities for the colonialized native. Postcolonial scholarship
is thus searching to conceptualize the possibilityof an individual subjects selfrealization (Wagner 1994: 9), yet with an alternative history at odds with the Western
normative historicity. Social theory and the postcolonial critique therefore approach the
same issue, yet the postcolonial critique which appears to attack, dismantle and
subsequently reconstruct customary conceptions, and specifically those associated with
modernity.
In addition to constructions of the identity which are imposed by western colonizers in
the colonial setting, postcolonialism also seeks to address a perceived imbalance within
the academic and cultural institutions based in the West. Postcolonial intellectuals directly
6

critique the Western academic institutions which they are part of, confronting with the
very language and academic medium with which they must make their case against it
(Said 1978; Fanon 1952). Both Fanons Black Skin, White Masks (1952), and Saids
Orientalism (1978) can be read as polemics against the language of the civilizing nation
(Fanon 2008: 9), and its role in perpetuating structural violence against the colonized
people. Central to Saids work is the concept of Orientalism, which provides an account
of how Western academic and cultural institutions have created a distinction between
Orient and Occident (Said 2001: 1991). This distinction is perpetuated through fictitious,
binary representations of the East, which allow those in the West, not matter their
intentions, to build an inverse conception of themselves in these images. Western
academia is complicit in in the conquest and continuing subjugation of the East (Leitch
2001: 1988), as a result of an often unquestioning acceptance of this dualism. For
postcolonial critics the colonial world is a Manichean world (Fanon 1978: 40), and the
role of postcolonial theory is to dismantle the dichotomies built therein, along with the
accepted ideas, such as modernity, which underpin them. As Said maintains:
We simply forget that such notions as modernity, enlightenment, and democracy
are by no means simple and agreed-upon concepts that one either does or does not
find like Easter eggs in the living-room (Said 2003: xiv).
Postcolonial theorists such as Said and Fanon therefore critique the corporeal violence of
imperalists who directly impose language, culture and values upon colonial natives, as
well as the structural violence which is perpetuated by cultural institutions in the West.

Both evaluations encourage readers to be aware of the hegemonic context (Said 2001:
1999) of ideas which permeate social theory.
New post-structural spaces
The notion that Western intellectuals perpetuate structural violence against a colonized
other is further explored by Gayarti Chakravotry Spivak. In her essay Can the Subaltern
Speak? from A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), Spivak proposes, as Said before
her, to confront the possibility that the intellectual is complicit in the persistent
constitution of the Other as the Selfs shadow. (Spivak 2001: 2199). Moreover, her work
draws on the poststructuralist theory of Derrida (1967), and as such what can be read as a
deconstructionist interpretation of Saids discourse of Orientalism (Said 2001: 2009). In
response to the epistemic violence (Spivak 2011: 2197) against the postcolonial other,
and in particular the doubly-silenced female postcolonial other, she suggests that
language and thus western intellectuals are unable to truly represent the subaltern. She
suggests that as a result of the representational nature of language and theory, they are
tools for colonial production (Spivak 2001: 2199) which continually silence and other
the subaltern subject.

Spivaks solution to the silencing of the subaltern is a defetishization of the concrete

(Spivak 2001: 2204). She suggests that by adopting a form of self-reflexivity and
acknowledging their complicity in the silencing of the subaltern, intellectuals may be
more effective (Spivak 2001: 2007) in their aims. In other words, the critic must remain
attentive to the fluidity of possible relations and actions (Leitch 2011: 2207), maintaining
a constant awareness of their own elite status as an academic trading in Western discourse
8

at all times. Spivaks work therefore questions the power structures inherent to discourse,
and as a result unsettles fundamental accepted notions, such as modernity, language and
theory.

Yet while Spivaks work strives to bring to the fore a radical textual practice of
differences (Spivak 2001: 2201), this practice has been criticized for its abstract and
depoliticizing tendencies (Eagleton 1999). Beyond deconstructing the representational
nature of language, her work does little to provide a space in which to address the issue.
Instead she is accused of a culturally relativist interpretation, which leaves readers with
no place to stand (Leitch 2001: 2196). In his essay A Commitment to Theory (1989),
Homi K. Bhabba attempts to theorize a locale in which radical textual practice may be
enacted, through a deconstructionist approach akin to Spivaks. Echoing the recurring
postcolonial attack on dichotomous, Manichean (Fanon 1963: 30) distinctions between
oppressor and oppressed, centre and periphery, negative image and positive image
(Bhabba 2001: 2379), Bhabba argues that we must embrace alternative and crucially
indeterminate conceptions of identity. To this end, he proposes the concepts hybridity
and the Third Space (Bhabba 2001: 2397). These notions suggest transgression and
offer a space in which identity and politics are new, neither one nor the other (Bhabba
2001: 2381).These terms of understanding call into question the supposedly binary
language which is used in existing western social theory, and instead offers a
transgressive linguistic space in which the subaltern or colonial subject should exist.
Furthermore, as he writes, the Third Space and hybridity function to

call into being a process of political negotiationwhich goes beyond the

unsettling of essentialism or logocentrism of a received political tradition, in the
name of abstract free play of the signifier. (Bhabba 2001: 2385).

In other words, Bhabba attempts to use deconstructionist theory to reconceptualise both

identity and the language and politics which structure identity. Therefore within the
poststructuralist postcolonial theory typified by Spivak and Bhabba, the Eurocentrism
and linearity of Giddens and Wagner should be replaced by a dialectic without the
emergence of a teleological or transcendent History (Bhabba 2001: 2385). Through this
replacement, and in stark contrast to the fixed autonomous individual constructed in
relation to modern institutions in the work of Wagner, the identity of the subject is fluid.
For postcolonial theorists, both the individual and the discourse which shape society
should always be acknowledged as fluctuating constructions, in constant negotiation
(Bhabba 2001: 2385), and in opposition to teleological and homogenous concepts.

Against the postcolonial

While the work of postcolonial theorists offers an effective and often illuminating
critique of modern societal power structures, criticisms abound against the
poststructuralist nature of postcolonial theory, particularly from late Marxist critics.
These criticisms attack the often obscure nature of postcolonial writing, and an elitist
commitment to process over action, which disregards issues of class in an increasingly
globalized world (Ahmad 1995). Dirlik (1994) notably challenges to the value of

10

poststructuralist attempts to dismantle dichotomies within theory, and to significance of

the hybrid spaces proffered as an alternative. As he asserts, hybridity and openendedness of poststructuralism are not very revealing concepts (Dirlk 1994: 331)
suggest are bound with detachment from any material third-world class struggle. Rather
the opaqueness of postcolonial theory leads to a radical depoliticisation which
consolidates and subverts possibilities of resistance.(Dirlik 1994: 35). While
postcolonialism derives some value from its repudiation of master narratives (Dirlik
1994: 334), its disregard of global capitalism results in an ahistoricism which does not
benefit the colonial, or third world, subject.

Furthermore, in its preoccupation with unsettling and making the concrete abstract,
postcolonialism is criticized for its often opaque writing (Eagleton 1999). This is
attributed to the standing of critics who offer postcolonial theory, who occupy an elite
position with cultural and social structures. Postcolonial theorists are therefore accused of
perpetuating the hegemony and essentialism which they purport to oppose. As Friedman
argues, postcolonialism is imprisoned by the same racial language it seeks to criticize
instead of combatting essentialism, it merely hybridizes it (Friedman 1999: 235-6).
Theories of hybridity can be applied to all identites, and therefore negate any trace of
class struggle, and have little political impact on the colonial subject. To avoid the
essentializing and ahistoricizing qualities of postcolonialism, Marxist critics assert that
we must acknowledge the ordering role of global capitalism in radically altering and
subjugating the individual. In this sense, they argue for to once again make concrete that
which postcolonial theorists have dismantled.

11

Multiple modernities: unify of the postcolonial critique and social theory

In response to the unsettling of accepted ideas and practices we have seen in postcolonial
theory, as well as the criticisms levelled against postcolonialism by Marxist theorists, I
present the question of whether postcolonial theory can be reconciled with social theory,
and in which ways it can contribute to social theory to provide an account of human
autonomy and society. I would argue that if we return to the notion of modernity, then we
will see that despite the criticisms charged against the postcolonial critique and their
outright denial of the canon, their legacy within social theory is notable.
This convergence of the postcolonial critique and social theory is evident in the concept
of multiple modernities. Theorists of multiple modernities argue that the linear,
teleological view of a single moder of modernity is a fallacy. Instead, critics such as
Eisenstadt (2000; 2002) and Sachsenmaier (2002) acknowledge the ongoing
reconstructions (Eisenstadt 2000: 2) that affect modernity, through differing temporal
and geographical conditions. As such these theorists dispute the view that one, single
modernity may be authentic. In contrast to the teleological and homogenous spread of a
predestined model or process (Kamali 2012: 52) which cultural, social and political
institutions must adhere in order to be considered a modern society, multiple modernities
acknowledges the continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural
programs (Eisenstadt 2000: 7). Furthermore, these scholars acknowledge that the
modernity is often a destructive, and contentious process, demonstrated through the
competing modern institutions across and within countries. As such, theorists of multiple
modernities contend that social theory must acknowledge the changing contours of social
12

and cultural institutions. In order to fully comprehend the processes of modern, social
discourse must analyse the multiplictious differences between different modernities,
which occur as a result of internal and external conflicts, shifting hegemony, and preexisting social structures (Eisenstadt 2002: 35).
Yet while these theorists may espouse multiple modernities as a challenge to a
homogenous western understanding of modernity, they do little to challenge its
Eurocentric beginnings. Rather, Eisenstadt maintains that despite the multiplicitous
progress of modernity throughout the world, the civilization of modernity developed first
in the West (Eisenstadt 2000: 5). Instead, I would argue, it is only through the
acknowledgement of the deconstructionist work of postcolonial theory in the work on
multiple modernities that the Eurocentric history of modernity, and thus of social theory
more broadly, may be challenged. Masoud Kamalis Multiple Modernities in Iran
(2012), is one such example of this. In his study of the multiplicitous spread of modernity
in Iran, Kamali echoes postcolonial poststructuralist theory by confronting the grand
narratives (Kamali 2012: 243) which delineate an us and them within traditional
writings on modernity. Instead, Kamali suggests, we must acknowledge that modernity
and Westernization are not identical (Kamali 2012: 263). Scholars must address and
concede the colonial past of modernity and social theory, in order to understand the
hegemonic nature of previous scholarship on the project, and henceforth offer something
more inclusive.
Bhambra (2007) extends Kamalis work, by its suggesting that as a result of the
pervasiveness of arguments concerning its Eurocentric beginnings, we should consider
the very concept of modernity as problematic (Bhambra 2007: 57). Bhambra instead
13

asserts that we should challenge this history and this concept, for history is a record of
what we believe happened the way we understand the past has implications for the
social theories we develop to deal with the situations we live in today. (Bhambra 2007:
92). In this sense, he is echoing the postcolonial call to dismantle accepted conventions
and practices, including historicity itself.
However, Bhambras argument does not imitate the postcolonial deconstruction of Spivak
and Bhabba. For while Bhambra acknowledges the need to deconstruct accepted
sociological discourse which privileges a part of the world without any recognition of
the livesof those that have contributed (Bhambra 2008: 146), he also acknowledges
the necessity of providing a more tangible historical account than the abstract logic of
postcolonial theory. This is seen most clearly demonstrated in his assertion that following
its deconstruction, discourse must then be reconstructed (Bhambra 2007: 146). In this
way, Bhambras theory of multiple modernities seeks to extend the deconstruction of
postcolonial theory to its reconstruction through the theory of multiple modernities.

Scholars such as Kamali and Bhambra therefore attempt to fuse postcolonial theoretical
ideas of deconstruction, with the social theoretical concept of modernity. In striving to
reconcile the postcolonial with the social theoretical concepts which it seeks to unsettle
and displace, these scholars are productive of a new understanding of social theory. While
their work is still vulnerable to accusation of relativism and an emphasis on theory of
action, it goes some way to work typify Scotts writing on the positive and productive
nature of social theory in the present day. According to Scott, the strength and enduring
14

legacy of social theory lies in its ability to develop inherited ideas whether or not they
are recognized as such. These ideas are deepened, elaborated, and enlarged (Scott 2005:
5) to create an ever-evolving and relevant legacy of social theory. I would therefore argue
that the postcolonial critiques has contributed to social theory by encouraging open
debate in new spaces, and the enabling scholars of social theory to reexamine and
consequently expand existing concepts such as modernity, towards a broader and more
inclusive understanding of how society functions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the contribution of the postcolonial critique is appropriately demonstrated
in the developing treatment of the concept of modernity in social theory. As I have
argued, amongst prominent social theorists such as Wagner and Giddens, there exists an
emphasis on modernity as a linear, homogenous project, progressing globally to a
teleological end point from its European Enlightenment origins. Furthermore, within this
school of thought, it is considered that this linear and homogenous project is grounded in
predestined cultural, social and political institutions, as well as a liberal conception of the
self. Postcolonial theory, through both its expicit declarations of rebelliousness against
the existing curriculum and its reliance on poststructuralist theory to constantly shift and
unsettle customary meaning and identity, seeks to radically revise the fixed notions of
social theory, as well as its Eurocentric and western tendencies and origins.
However, as I have summarized, postcolonial theory has been variously accused
abstractness, depoliticisation and an ironically elitist emphasis on theory over practice.
However, as I have argued, these criticisms against the postcolonial theory should not
15

discount its value. Rather, as I have illustrated in the use of an understanding of the
unsettling, ever-questioning nature of postcolonial theory in the theories of multiple
modernities, postcolonial theory should be taken as a point of departure, rather than an
end in itself. In reconstructing new theories of multiple modernities following their
postcolonial-style deconstruction, critics such as Bhambra and Kamali are able to once
again make concrete that which the postcolonial has deconstructed. Moreover, in
reconstructing ideas these ideas with the awareness of colonial history which the
postcolonial critique argued in favour of, this new developed social theory is more open
and inclusive. I would suggest that this approach could be applied to other facets of social
theory, in order to create a more open and inclusive social theory generally.

16

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