..

(
. :
, . ,
ELEPHANTS IN .THE. AMERICAS?
.. ATIN AMERICAN POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

,
G
iven the c . _uriously. rapid rise w
postcolonial studies as an academ.lc .field m
Western metropolitan centers since the late ;r9$osi it
to be expected that its further would
volv:e efforts, like this one, to take stock of itS regional
expressions. Yet, while the rubric "La.tin American
postcolonial studies" suggests the existence of a re-
gional body of knowledge under that name, in reality it
points to a problem: there is no corpus of work on Latin
America commonly recognized as "po.stcolonial." This
problem is magnified by the multiple and 9ften diverg-
ing meanings attributed to the signifier postcolonial, by
. me of nations. and peoples encompassed
by,the term Larin America, by the thought-
,.1 .. . .
ful critiques that have questioned the relevance of post-
colonial studies for Latin America, and by the diversity
and of on Latin America's coloniaJ
and postcolonial hfatory, many of which, like most na-
ELEl' h ANTS IN..THE AMERI CAS?
397
tlo?s ih long. field of studies as ;t
was developed in the r98os. How, then, to identify and examine a body of
\fOrk that in reaJity does not appear to exist? How to define it without
arbittarily inventing or confo1ing'it? How to treat it as with
framing it in terms of the existingpos tcolonial ca.non and thus inevitably
coldilizing it? . .
Tliese challenging questions do not yield easy answers, Yet they call atten-
to the character of postcolonial studies as one among a diverse set .or
regional reflections on the fotms and legacies of colonialism or rather
CQfoniaJiSJ'!IS. fn. Jig9t Of the worldwide diversity of critical Oil
niallsrn and its ongoing aftermath, the absence of a corpus ofLadn Ameri-
can postcolonial srudies is a problem not of studies on Latin America, but
between postcoloni;il and.Latin American studies. I thus approach this disc"us-
sioii of Latin American postcolonial studies-or, as I prefer see jt,
postcolonial studies in the Americas-by reflecting on the relationsh)p J?e
7
.:
tween these two bodies ofknowledge. . . _;1 ,>.>
While its indisputable achievements bave turned postcolonial into
an "indispensable point of reference in discussions about old and new colo- .
nialisms, this field can be seen as a general standard or canon only if . '
forgets that it is a regional corpus of knowledge whose global
cannot be separated from its grounding in powerful metropolitan univer-
sities; difference, not defer.ence, onentS this discussion. Rather than sub
ordinating Latin American studies to postcolonial studies and selecting textS .
and authors that may meet its standards and qualify as postcolonial, I seel( to
establish a dialogue between them on the basis of their shared concerns and
dfsunctive contributions. This dialogue, as ....1th :i11y genuine exchange even
among unequal partners, should setve not just to add participantS to the
postcolonial discussion but also to clarify its assumptions and transform
its tenns.
. "My discus.sion is divided into four sections: the formation of the field of
iiostciJlonia:J studie; ; the place of'iatiil America in postcoloni.aJ studies
responses to postcolonial studies from Latin Americanists; and open-ended
suggestions for the between postcoloniaJ and Latin
American studies . .liy'(ocusing on exchanges between these fields, I have
traded t:lfo close readings of selected texts and problems
foi''t:l.if optibri' 8ferigagfiig te.hs that have addressed the postcolonial debate
ln terniS. bf. how they 'shape or define the fields of postcolonial and La.tin
American studies.
f''.'
... . :;-
.. ,.:
.... .. ' : .... , .... ; .. .
. P c;z5iqus cm !lJOd .. . .
st and ca tonization ofili ottcoloniat-
. a,s a term and. as a '?b,out .
. de1=otqnization of Aftican and cqlonies aftet.'Wotl4f W4r n.. Atlhat .
time'; useQ. mostly as av adjectiye by.so . '
' (ii. the. s:tate's: ari:d' l ifotmei:
... ; that ea at that time.
-, :' , . ; .N <, ,J. >
o.cus. was al(e<!-dy pre11ent in the French' sociologist George
o{"the as . in later
the anp state". {Afavi 1972; Chandra
; mode of production" (Alavi 1972), qrtlie:"artkitlation of
rodes of production" (Wolpe 198(); ' 99i). Althou.gh.
Am.erica Wa.$ i,ise .
; : .': '''- ,,,, .. ""' _, , "' .: ,_ : .' - :.;_',,
.... n.ations of .
. ' v ?:' . .
out deco1Qhiiatio,p' tbat ly independent nations of
;lirt
a lab.eJ.fc;ir "old.'! ,P . on1
nationa.l development for a long tin}e, the l<ey word in Latin American social .
thought during wr.s. not colonialism. or postcolonialism, but ,,
dency. This term .ideritlfred:, a :body of by leftist t
scholars ,in the .designed w Latin
toricai p-ajeqocy an.d to counter mbeicmization theocy. Ridiif.g atop the wave ..
, . ; ,, . . ,
m as an alternative t.0 socjalism and con the achieve-
ment ,of' co overcoming obstacles
an<;! subjective motivations ?f the e so-
the Third WorJd,, Yf:.w. Th( Stanen:if ilcononiic Growth
. 96oi, revealingly subtitled "A was a particu-
" .
Iarly clear example of modernizatioi1 theory's uniline:ir historicism, ideo-
logical investment in capitalism, and teleological view of progress.
In sharp contrast, dependency theorists argued that development ancj
underdevelopmenr are tlie ' muru.allr. outcomes of capitalist as- '
cumulation on a world scale, fu theit view, underdevelopment ls tl;e ,,.
product of development, the periphery cannot be modernized by unregu-
lated capitalism but through an alteratiqn of its polarizing dynamics (see, Qll. ;, .
this Grosfoguelin this.volUefThls basic insight about the mutual
constitution ofcenters and pepphedes was rooted in the Argentinian econo-
economy an.9. to OUt of!,;i,t.in J\m
. .. , , , . , '1;ha;,_ .. re' ..
" .. prique '
Marini;
.. m ependency" theoriStSj as Car oso l977J their
was "consumed" in the United States .as theory" assciciatei:I
. with the work of Andre Gunder Frank, . . . . . :
The worldwide influence of dependencyaecli11ed after the :Oe.
pei1dency. theOi:y was criticized stn.itt\Jra)jsfu':aj:if{.
f',4i. ;;' 7 -, >1; . . . . M M : , ; ' :
l:(ced by the postmodern e . tual, fragmentary; '
J " . . ,r--- , .. .,,,, . -<' .. .:
minate; its EurocentriC foe centered develcipment an
td ofracfal Latin Ainerican nations his been 'a
cus of a recent critique (GrosfogueI 2000). Despite its shortcomings, in
my view the dependency sch.Qol one of Latin
significant contributions. to postcotonfal thought
ing the postcolonial critique ofhistoricism and providing coriceptilal tools
for a much-needed postcoio11ial critique of As a
fundanientaJ qjtlque conceptions
. updennined of the
"traditi'tlh,iii, , a'1<l.
1
'modem, ",making ,it examine
postco ,in through
.. . pecific situations bf <
n tlrreedecades after World War II, i:he second usage of the
term postcolonial developed in the AngJQpfiqne wotlcl in connection. wfth. .
critic;a1 studies of colonialism and colonial literature under the i.nflueuce
of postmodern perspectives. This chaQ.ge toqk place during a historical
juncture formed by four intertwined worldwide processes: the increasingly
evident ofThird World national-aevelopment i:he;'
breakdown of socialjsm; the ascendance of po
des in Britain arid the O.nlted States fReagartism); :irid
capitalism as the only visibie, or at .
horizon. During this period, postcolonial
'studies acquired a distinctive ideatity as an academic field, marked. by the
unusual in:drdiige' bei:Weii' metropolitan location of its praductfon and
the antl-impedat ' s'tai:icb of its authors, many of whom were linked to the
Third World by personal ties and political choice.
In this second phase, while historical work has center.ed on British cola
:(
400 CORONll
. . . .
nialism, literary crith:ism bas on.Anglophone ce.'lts,mcludmg those
from Australia and the Bnglisb...speat<lng Caribbean. Tbe use of postmodern
. poststructurlilist works became so. in'timately asso-
. .. <:: ; <:<:: ' ' l .
dai:ed with po,sccoloniall's . . .'the post of postcolonial1sm has become
:. "', ,., ' , . . .
Identified wjth the 'post cif postID.odemrsm and poststruct\lralism. For m-.
. :a reader aigues that "postcolonial studies is a
decidedly new field scholarship arising in Western uruversities . as the
application of pb'st-modern thought to the long history of colonising prac-
tices" (Henry Schwarz 2000, 6) .
. In my view, equally central to postcoJonialism has been the critical
plfoation of Marxism ro a broad speci:n:im of practices of social and
-- domination not reducible to the category of "class." While .marked by idio-
': ,;"

tpces, its signarure has the

.
currents-Maoost and postmodernlpoststt ::.
i:h;it address the complicity . ' .
. as integration of Gtamscian anci .Poucaul\:lian Ji1
'tireak!ng critique of0riental1sni (194a .[1978)) has been widely as
'\ f'Oundational for the field. A similar te'nsion between .Marxism and post-
- - structuralism animates the evolving work of the South Asia.n group of his to
rians associated with subaltern srudies, the strongest historiographical cur-
rent of postco!onia.l sruclies.
Postcolonial critique now encompasses problems as diff:erent' as the for-
mation of minorities in the United States or African philosophy. But while it
has expanded to new from analyiing theh: relations
within .a of pa(ts has taken precedence
the bfwii.Sleims critique of the grand narratives of
lrib.<lel:oify tea tb toward any grand narrative, not always
. between .EuroceutrJc claims to universality and the necessary
". ilruversaiism arising from struggles against worldwide capitalist domina
tion (Amin 1989; Lazarus 1999).
As the offspring of a tense marriage between critique and
metropolitan privilege, postcolonial studies is permeated by tensions that
also affect its reception, provoking sharply different evaluations of its signif.
icance and political implicatibns: While some analysts seci)t as an academic
commodity that serves the interests of gl6bal capital .ah4 its privi-
leged practitioners othefs 'regard it as a inteliec
rual shift that redefines the relaticin$hip bet'Ween .and emancipa
tory politics (Robert Young 2001). This debate helps identifywhat in my view
is the central intellecrual challenge postcolonial studies has raised: to de-
(
,, '_: 1N Tt<E liMEll!C,\S! .
_ ... ,_ .
e, 611 the one band, to view colo-
rmation of the modern world
all-eocomp,asslrtg
it$'
Ji\ ',, ' _, .,1
&oin'
1
'll- .
epistemological sign to evoke the problem of producing knowledge of his-
tory and society in the context of imperial relations.
. POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES AND LATIN. AMERICAN STUDIES
Given this genealogy, jt is remarkable but understandable that debates artd .
texts on or from Latin America do significantly in the fid,Cl
postcolonial studies as it has been defied s!nce the 1980s. As H.i1ln\e.
(1996) has noted, Said's canonical and Imperialism (1993) is
atic of this tendency: it centers on .British an.d;frencb im(le.rialism !tom the
Iate_.nm_eteeoth century to the presept; geographical focus is limited roan
area qom Algeria rgle, of the United States is
this nation's origin
. Spa.II!, and Prance, the processes of
-internal colonialism through. which Native Americans were subjected within
its territory, and its imperial designs in the Americas and elsewhere from the
nineteenth century to the present
The major readers and discussions on postcolonial studies barely take
Latin America into account. One of the earliest attempts to discuss post-
colonial literatures as a comprehensive field, The Empirt Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 1989), ac
knowledges a focus on Anglophone literatures . .Even so, its extensive sixteen-
page bibliography, including "all the works cited in the text, ;md some
additional useful publications'.' (224), fails to mention even a single text
on ,Latin America or by a. Latin American author. The book treats
Anglophone including those produced in the .Caribbean, as if
tl1ese lirerarures were not cross-fertilized by tl1e travel of ideas and authors
across regions and cultures-or at least as ifthe literatures resulting from the
Iberian colonization of the Americas had not participated in this exchange.
,,
1-!:- (,
. ,, ... '
. !' .
.:.;,.,:{;
'
.,
402 FERl,IAND,I> .
; Thfs exclusion of Latin America was clearly refiected in the fi rst
of postcolonial texts, cO!onial Discourse attd
: 1994), Whose thiny-one articles ' .
"1J:>er()'-f\mcifca. Published two years later, Tht Post'(;oloni1il ,
. croft, ' 'orlffiths, and Tiffin' 1995) rcpro<lti<:es-:the perspective
characterizes their earlier Tht' Empire Writf,S .. bu this time without
the justification of a topical focus on reader fea-
rures eighty-six texts divided into fou.rteen .theniaric including
topics-such as nationalism and hybridity, whkh have long concerned Latin
some aumors are repeated under <liffereni
' C.Bh:i;Bh\i the only author associated wiul
-'. whose contribution is a ctiti<a1 readhig of
.Mercator's Atlr:is, a topic relevant but not specific to Latin .America.
..... The marginalization of Latin America is reproduced in most works on
postcolonialism published slnce then. Eor example, Leela Gandhi's Post-
. colonilil Theoni: A Critica[ Jntroductio,n Crn9$) does not discuss Latin. Ameri-. : .
can critical refleccion.s t{S-i'ngi&reference to Latin American; ' '
thinkers in its WnileR.'llocatiniJ (Gold- ,
berg and Quaysoh 2002) the postcolonia! iodusion
of such as the cultural politics of the French radfca.I d'g.ht"'ahd the
construction of Korean-Americ:m identities, it maintains the exCtusion of
America by having no articles or auchors associated with this area. This
:taken-for-granted exclusion appears as well in a dialogue between John
Comaroff and Homi Bhabha that introduces the book. Following Coma-
sugg'estloii; they provide a historical frame for . .ln.
termS. of two pe'riods: 'the decoloni:zation of the Third World marked by
i947; and the hegemony of .
':Signmled bf the end of the Cold War in 1989 (ibid. I 15)'
:" Iri contrast, two recent works on postcoloni alism include ilttin America
#\vitlun the postcolouial field., yet their sharply different criteria highlight the
problem of discerning the boundaries ofthis field. In an article for a book on
tbe postcolonial debate in Ll!\fu America; 3ill:Ashcroft (whose coedited book
basically excludes Latin America) presents Latin America as "modernity' s
first born" and thus as' a reglon that has participated since its inception in
the production of postcolonial discourses (1999). He postcqlonial
discourse comprehensively as "the. discourse produced in
contexts; as such, it does not have to be "a:nti-co1uial" (ibid., 14-
15). He presents Menchu's I, Ri9oberta Menchtl :andfuan R_u!fo's Pedro Paramo
as examples that reveal chat "the transf"ormative strategies of postcolon.ial
;,. ..
., ... .
'.. ! (
.,,,. Ti-if AMF.RICASI +J
. .,,,..
dl$course, wb.ich engage the of modernity, are
not limitecl coiomml" (ibid., 28). Whil.e bis .c;ompfehensive
definitJ,on discourses fr9in tfre conquest'
onward;Iuselbiinph!s narrower field defined by iri,o!:"t disctiiliinat-
1 , , . . . . .
text is Robert Young' s : 4J1 Historical Introduction
Young (like Ashcroft) ,4J.iwos$ed Latin America in a
pi;e:vipus work (Whitt Mythologies [1990)); in hls rtew book he gives such
tbunaa"tional importance to Latin Ax'netica the Th4'd World that be .
prefers to after the con-
ference held In Hatanidn i96fb.ooi:, 57). Young recognizes iliitposi'.colo ..
nialism l\as h:n1g an4 yai;ied genealogies, but he. finds)t, necessary to rest,rict
it to 'developed after_ form;tl
been achieved: "Many of the .can be resolved if the posb;glo:.. ,,:
nial is defined as corning after o!ogJalism and imperialism, in their .
. ". cYf'\t,..f.\';' -" : .. '. ... ,
meaning of direct:!'.Ule Yet Young distinguishes further
between the and, 1nore theoretical
thought fa.lined at the heart of empires "wben tlie>political and culrural
gf r,he )Dargina!ized periphery more general
that. could be set political, intellectual .
aua academic hegemony and its protocols'' df'oojective knowledge" (ibid., ..
65). Thus, even ,anticolonia! movements "did not fully
the equal value of the cultur.es,of the decolonised nations;" "To do 'tfuit,'
1
. . :-.t .
Young argues, "it-_was to,take the struggle into the heartlands of ,:
the former (j9.id.J.,
Young's discussion of Lati n American post.colonial thought
leaves which its. a.nticolop.ialism is also "critical" in the
sense he ascribes to metropolitan .. discusses Latin Ameri-
can postcolonial thought in two first, "Latin America I:
Mariategui, Transculruration and Dependency," is divided into four
I ..:.t ... '
sections: "Marxism in Latin Ameritia,' ' ab account of the development of
communist parties and Marxist thinkers in the twentieth ce11rury, leading to
the Cuban R.evofution; "Mexico 1910," a of the tefexic;_an revolu-
tion as prec\irsor of tri.continenta! insurrecrion,s agains t colonial or neo-
"Mariaregui," a discussion ofMariategui's role as one
of Latin America's most origi nal thinkers, highlighting his innovative _inter-
of.Peruvian reality; and "CuJrura.l Dependency, " an overview of the
ideas of some cultural critics which, for brevity's sake, I will reduce to a few
names and to the key concepts associated with their work: t,he Braziiian
.. )
! .
. ;:, .
(
. ' ... .. J. . If'. . . ' ' '
404 FERNAND.0
"anthropophagy" (the fopnation of Latin
idenurY;through the " "digestioii" of worldwide culmral formations}{ the : .
Cuoatf:fernari_do Ortiz's. ffttansihlfucation" (the transformative creai:irin of
culrures out of colonial confrontations); the Brazilian Roberto Schwacz's
ideas" in the Americas ofideas from different
, times and societies);";m." Argentinian Nestor Garda Canclini's "hybrid
'' ' ,... , .<(
cultures" (the negotfatlCl the traditional and the IJ!Odei:n in Latin Ameri-
. .
can cultural .,
Young's second chapter; "Latin Arrierica 2: Cuba: Castro, and
tlle Tricontinental,
0
orgafuzed,aroui1d the centraJjff in the devel-
opment of postcolonial thought, is divided into three sections: "Compa-
i)ierb: Che Guevara''"focuses on Guevara's antiracism and r;ii,dical humanism;
... .
Man" relates Guevara's concept of "the new man" to Mani's
of cultural and political independence for and to.
Roberto Fernandez Retarnar's .Calibanesque- vision of and "The .
Tricontinentii pr;sents the Tricontinental Conference of Solidarity of the <.
Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America" held in Havana in 1966 as the
founding nioment of posrcoioniaJ thought-in Youpg's words, "Postcolo-
nialism:was born with theTricontinmtal" (2001, 113).
While Young's selection. is co(nprehensive and reasonable, its organizing
criteria.'"ace not sufficiently d eati1-0'ne. Cal:l easily imagine a different sc;lecpon
involving other thinkers'"'<incf struggles in Latin America. And
despice the significioce'?fi'e attaches to theoretical reflections from metro-
politan centers, Young makes no mention of the many Latin Americanists
who, working from those .centers oc,from between them
and Latin America, have produced monumental critiques of colonialism
c:Iuring the same period as Said, Bhabha, and Spivak-tor ex:.imple, Enrique
Dussel, Anibal Quijano, and Walter Mignolo, among
The_ contrasting positions of Ashcroft and Young reveal t11e difficulty of
_... . defining postcolonial studies in Latin America. At one extre!')le, we encoun-
ter a comprehensive discursive .field whose virtue is also irs fatting, for it
.. '" must -be subdivided tO be useful. A.t the other extreme; ...,we encounter a
. j '.:' ..
:restricted domain that includes an appreciative and impressive.Si:lection of
aut11ots, but rhat needs to be organized through less-discretionacy criteria.
But whether one adopts an open or a restricted definitionofiatii_i American
postcdlOniaJ studies, what is fundamental is to treat alike; 'Wlt:p. , tJ1e sa..me
i.iitellecrual earnestness, all the &Jnkers and discourses in the gen-
.era! ficld"ofpostcolonial studies, whether they are the
politatr centres or in the various peripheries, writing or speaking in English
or in other imperial and subaltern languages. Otherwise; the evaluation of
(
iit.EPHANTS IN THE 405
. risks reprodu,c!ng within midst the subalternization
of ll{ld cultures it claims w. oppose.
LATIN AMERICAN STUD IES. AND PO ST COLON IAL STUDIES
. . , ; . . '
Given this genealogy, ifls understaiidable that the reception of postcolonial
' . "' ""' ,_'.,l,} . '
stti!.lfos among lsts,:has been mixed. Many thinkers have
.doubted the . 'postcolonial studies to-Latin America, claim-
. " ;.... . ... J} t;t'l ' . . .
' ing:that postcoJonial to concerns of metro-
politan

Asia and Africa, or ro the

position of acadettlic{\vltti"wrlte a.bout, not from, Latin Atneric:f and dis-
regard its 1998; Colas 1995.,lGoi;de
1995; Morafia 1998a; ig9g; aii'a Yudite 19g6). Kiot d'{A1va pas pre-
sented the ctjtique, that co]oniaijsm
ism are "(Latin) American mirages,,; for these terms, ias they:are us&! in the
relevant literature> or "as commonly underst6od ilieta.y," properly apply
only ro populations ofindigenes, tb the non-Indian core
that has formed the largely European and C:hris.tiad sodecies of the Ameri-
can since tl1e sixteenth century. For hun, its of independence
were not anticolonial wars, elite struggles inspired in European .. ,.. .
1
,.thatmaintained colonial inequalities.
This arg"ument, in 01y has_-seve_ral problems: it takes as gkven the
. standard set the Asian and African colonial and postcolo-
nial experiences; it assliine sharp a separation between indigenous and
.. .. it adopts a restrkted conception of
coibi).ialisri:t derived from a homogenized conception of Northern Eutbpean .
.. and .an idealized. of the effectiveness of its rule; it dis-
;i-1()! . ,.. . ' r;. "'
rega.c:ds the importance of the coloriial control of territories in Iberian colo-
nialism; it pays to the colonial control of populations in
lhehigl1-density indige'nous societies of Mexico, Peru, and Centrai America
. ,,: . .
anq ln plantations run by impo.r;ted slave Jabor in the Caribbean and Brazil;
and it fails to see the similari.o/ ber:\veen die of indepenqence and the
decolonizing processes cir A.Sfa 'an
1
cf Afi:ica, which also involved the preserya-
ti,on .,of elite privilege and reproduction of internal inequalities (what
Gonz:ilez Casanova '.Rodolfo Stavenhagen (i965] have
. for Latin America.as colonialism"). Rather than pre-
senting one set of colonial as' its exclusive standard, a more pro
ductjve option would be to pluraJi{f colonialism-to recognize its multiple
forms as the product ofa 'b_isrori6tl process of Western expansion.
An infl uential debate Oil colonial and postcolonial studies in a major
, .
,.
'.
. );i" .. ; '.!';,
406 ':'.'1;
: :. .
. .,.. . . ;
! journal of Latin American studies wis $eed, a historian of
coldtiial'Latin presebted the methods and soncepts of colonial
and as a breaktlirough in social analysis.
According to Seed (199i); c.ritique of conceptions of the
s4bject as ,unitary and sovereign? and of mean1ng as expressed
through lan guage, discussions of colonial domination that are sim-
plistically polarized' by autonOmOUS
subjects. TWo years later in three:literacy critics questioned
hei: argument from .different angles. _Hernan Vfdii.l misgivings
about "the. ;a new analytic and ap-
' , proach.is being efforts in the past is
left sl.lp;!rseded:and whitfi'he literacy criti-
<:" cism" ix7)') Rplena (1993bl, echoH.lgKJor de Alva's argument,
argued for

td: distinl;tiveness ofLatin America's
. . . "' '. and p' . olonial .
,uoie o th: expert o. . . . an4;t fnca.
Walter Migqolli""(I :> ed f:l':!:l;/ the need to disangu1sh amoi;ig
of internal
(it( Asian aii'c! African]1odality};'!:rild (its Latin
manifes.t.ftion) YeHar froi regarding alism as ii;rele-
,vant for C.atin .M1grl.fuq that we treat it as liminal space
for developing knowledg/frdrn oui'\l&ious loci of enunciation. He has
develo,Ped his of (building on its original concep-
tion by Fernandez R.eram:ir [1976) and on my own critique ofOccideotalism
[Coronil r996Jt in. his Histories/Global Desiyns (1oood),
a discussion of the produEtion of nonimperfal 1q1ow1edge that draws on
wide-ranging C.atin American in particular Quijano's notion of
the "colonialir:y 'of powet " (1oooa) Dussel's critique of Eurocentrism
(1995c). . . . . . ;'! . .
Subaltern srudies has bien wideYY' i:ecogniZed as a major current in the
pQStqQlonial field. historians developed subalterp studies in Soud1
literari ('.heorists bave play.ed a major role in the foanation of subaltern.
studies ori Latin Ai]ierica. Ai'eurid tht! of the Seed debate, the Latin
l\merican Subaltern Studies Group wa$Jounded a.:. a meedng of the Larln
Studies Association in r991: Unlike frs South 6$,lan counterpart,
wl1Jch it was naincd, .it was lnitja!ly composed ofliterary critics, with
the ofSeed and\ \.'$0 anthrbp6togist:S;who soon. d1ereafter. left the '
. group. Its "Pounding Statemenc" offered 3 idweeJ?ihgfoverview of majo-r
stagt!S rof Latin American studies, rejecting the.ii: commo'ii 'modernist foun-
'
., '! ..... '
; . .
w
,,:;t . 1M me
the. South Asian critlque of
the But the South.Asian group, formed by a sma1l group of
. historiai;iioiganizaj_ around historiographkal and e\fitotiaJ proj:- .
.on rewriting the_ hist0ry ofindia, this group, mostly ";.' .
qitics, chaxac.terized b'. its diverse and shifting -:::'. -
and,tli:i::heter9g<:muty ofJ;heJI djsciplmary concerns and research agendas.
While the of its meml?e.cs have not fit within traditionalJil$ci-
pHnary boundaries, i:hey have privileged the interpretation of textS tlie
analy_sis of historical transformations. The group's attempt to represennlie
subaltern has; typjcally taken the fqrm of readings of produced by
""authors considered s.ubiltern or with i:be issue of sl.ibalternit:Y.
:: life (I myself participated in second half of it), the &roup,
to the intellectual poliricale1igagementS.that
had tne. field ofJ:.atin Am'erican '
While oh .literary $Ubaltern has .
->J.;'eied ,a maiAF source of postcciJonial in Latin
, . 'a titled ''.The Dilemma ofSqb;tltern
ies: Latiq; American History," pt.ib'lished id-a forum, on
studies '.in a majbi jpurnal, historian FJpje'hcia
(1994) examfues the .consumption and prod1tqtion of subaltern sntdies' in
Latin America and evaluates the tensions and. prospects. of this field . . Her
account focuses on historical works, making explicit referefice to the d.lntri
butions of scholars based on the United States who have made
use of the categories or methods associated with sabaltern studies. She
highlights Gil Joseph's pioneering use ofGuha's work' on 1ndia's peasantty
.... in !tis examination.ofbandin:y in Lati.n America, noting that irmoved discus-
simplistic oppositions that reduced bandits to either resisters or
il_.f.\given social orders.
:
.
In her revJew Ma.IJ9n does not address subaltern studies on literary and
culrural criticism (perhaps because she does not find th'i.s work properly
historical), but she does offer a critique of the Latin American Subaltern
Studies "Founding Statement," noting its ungrounded dismissal of ..
histodographicah\(ork on subaltern sectors in Lat;in America. She makes a
similar critique of the article by Seed, the one historian of
rhe Objecting to Seed's of members of the "subaltern
studie's move1ne11t" as leaders of the "posrcolonial discqurse movement,"
Mallon offers ample. teforences to recent historical work on politics, eth-
nicity, and the state from the eatly colonial period to the twentieth century
rhat '
1
' had begun to show that all subaltern communities were . internally
:. '"
- (
4oS
d, that forged politica(uillcy or
. ,', . .... . . . ;>,.,, . '
conserts\ismpainfully contingeritwar.s" (1994, 1,500). . ... .
:..;?,;c , . , '"
Mallo11's the scope of subaltern studies, but it
does not sufficiently clarify:\Yli}'. certain historical works should be con-
. .
. sidered part of the subaltern qr., p9stcolonial movement. Since studies on
. the social cultUral se.ctors ("histoiy from beiow")
and share as a subject matter
and employ similar theories aud methods, rhe lines sep:irating chem are
sometimes difficult to define. Yet South Asian subaltern historiography has
sought to distlnguish itself frqin. social and hisrocy by .attaching
... s ingular, significance to the of historicist and
' tibns, problematizing .the role or power in fieldwork and in the construction
of archives! and inte_rrogating such central historiographlc categories as the
"nation," the ''state," and "social actors." The histocio-
graphjcal s tern project has been marked by the tension its
' { tft' . . '::-<
m,, which necessarily involves the use of represef\'ltatjbniJ.\
r1., . . . . w
strategies 1 ...,}11i!ike those of social and cultural history, and decbnstruc
tivist strategy, which entails questioning the central categories of historical
research and interrupting the powerful narratives of the powerful with those
expressed by subaltern actors.
Mallon casts the "djlemma". ofLatin American subaltern studies in terms
' . : : . { ,f V( . j ,+ .
of the between (Grairisc,1.in) Marxist and postmodern perspectives (a
tension frequently noted about South Asian subaltern .stud-

ies). She proposes to solve tills'dilenuna by placing the Foucauldian and
.
Derridean currents of J?OSl:IJlodern criticism ''.at the. s.ervlce of a Gramsciau
project" {1994, 1,515). of deconstruction, so cen-
. tral to subaltern history, to thedramscian project, so fundamental to social
and cultural history, helps account for her insufficient attention to the differ-
ence between these fields.
.This difference is central for John Beverley, one of the founders of Latin
American Subaltern Studies Group, who in his writings argues for the
riority of suo.tltern perspectives over studies of the sub-
altem (1993, i999, iooo). Deploying criteria rhat for him define a
teroist perspective, he criticizes Mallon's Ptosont and Notion: Tht Makins of
Postcolonial Mexico and Pern (1995), arguing that despite her intentions, she
appears as an omniscient narrator engaged in a positivist representational
project d1at uses subaltern accounts .to consolidate rather than inte.rrupt rhe
biographies of the nation, reinscribing rather than deconstructing the offi-
cial biographies ofthesc nations.
ELEPH.ANH IN TllE ... MEl\ lC ...sr 409.
discussion qf subaltei;n studies and Latin American .
Ecuadorian historian quillei:mo Bustos (2002) uses Mallon and
Bevei'Iey-as a: focal point to assess the relation between these two bodies of
kn !?e. While to Mallon's discussion of this topic in "The
a1).,d ofSubalteni Bustos notes the Anglocentric
, , dpoHtau suggests the inclusion ofa .
ai9re representative ot'work Rroduced in Latin America; Mallon's
only is to the-Alldeanist historian Flores Galindo, which Bustos
by mentioning tllree rel' An.deanists: Assadourian, Col-
mepares, and .Rivera Cu.sicanquL Llk ley, Bustos recognizes the need
to ber,ween social )iistp; perspectives. Butwliil.e
Beverldy uses this distinction to e aUon's work in terms of
subaltern studies, it to caution assuming
the superiority ofa subaltern Vidal's critique of"tech-
nocratic literary criticism. "
pt oposal is to rum claf::. . T
superiority of any perspective into concrete
analysis. He exemplifies this option throitgh a subtle reading of
Ptasant and Nation that demonstrates the C01I1plexity of her narrative, incl'lik
iog her .attempt to engage in dialogical relation with .her inforll)anti' :id
fellow historians. White distruLcing .himself from Beverleyis B
,endorses Tulia Halperin Donghi's obselY'ation that Mallon's
other perspectives does not stop her from the common practice of assuming
the superiority of her professional account His point is thus neither, to
criticize nor to defend Mallon's work, but to refine the dialogue between
' , ,'subaltern au'dtatiri American historiography. He develops his
ment by discussing .other texts, including related attempts to break away
accounts organiied as "the biography of the nation state" based on the
critical use of multiple voices and sources (Coronil 1997; Thurner 1997). In
agreement with the l talian historian Carlo Ginzburg, Bustos proposes that
we meet the postmodern challenge not by ..maldng "eVidence" impossibly
s uspect, ,but by following,. as Paul Ricoeur suggests, the "traces tltat left
from the past, take its place and represent it" (Bustos 2002, r5). Needless to
say, the challenge rem_ains how tO retrieve and interpret these traces.
Postcolonial historical studies also received .In Latin America in
a book publishi;.d ll1 .. Bolivia, Debates postcoloniales: Utia introducci6n a los es-
tudios de la subaltemldad (Postcolonial debates: An introduction to studies of
subaltemiry) (1997), edited by the historians Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and
Barragan and composed of translations of a selection of nine essays
:.<:.
. .,,..
,
..
. .. .
,;, NAr.itx6 ' C.O!lO Nf.l
,
by South Asian authors. In their introduction Rive Barra-
. gan make only tangential refe'rence to thel2tin Ain SJJpaftei;n Studies
Group, and none to the work ofits mem.bers:,'.r;hey,
for the contributions of ciurb Asian group to
. "' . , a.I); of ethnographic cases that "exemplify from the South the
'. . i. t; .. ''' '4. '
the _broad conceptual guidelines Jlroduced in 'the North''. (ibid.,
->t.l!:i.l q)'. "And they criticize Mallon's article on 'both for its
' ''
. ;
ti on to a long Latin Arnerkan cradition of critical work on colonialism
. ostcoioiiialism iind for reducing South Asian sqbaltern.studles "to a
Gramscian project on behalf of which'. shoufd. pl.ace the
"""' .
whole postmodern and poststructuralist debate" (ibiCJi:Y. , > ..
' vTheir oWn interpretative effort is centereddn the significance
of South Asian subaltern srudies for Latin..., Ameriealhistoriography, em-
.,. phasi.zing th!! innovative Unportance of the postsQ:UCtUralist perspectives
' i.ttforming the South' ASian scholarship. <their of Latin
Am"erican w_ork highlights three critical cw1-ents: the Argentineanschool of
\;. ih, :opm11ic history represented by Enrique Carlos Sempat Assa-
douri:i.n, and Juan Carlos Garavaglia, and by its
tion of Marxist and Gramscian categories.diiough a:_ifamonta.tion with the
specificities of Indian labour in the Potosf ;rea;.the of peasant insur-
gency and oligarchic rule carried out by -i::!ie Taller Oral Andin'a
(Andean workshop oforal.histozy) :and oy--s.uch influential scholars as AI-
bei't:O-Flores and :R.eoe Zavalet1>,;1m4the studies of"internal colonial-
ism" initiated.by the Mexican sodolpgisi: Pablo Gonzalez Casanova i11 the
1960s (and, I should add, Rodolfo Stavenhagen). Their call for a Soutb-Soqth
dialogue at the same time a of the warning
the danger p.fesent in':r'Ee.rtam>icaoemic Lahn American circles" to ad6pt'
new aiid djs'c;a ".our own intellectual traditions-;J,pd Ma.cxis111 is
and fragments the l\m.erican de-
bate! and 1997, 19). Their horizontal dialogue
establishes a 'common ground between postcolonial and Latin Amer-
ican on colonialism and postcolonialism, yet presents sub-
altern srudies as the product of an "epistemological and methodological
rupture" (ibid., 17). If subaltern srudies is pusccolonia1, its post is the post of
postmodernism and poststrucruialism.
A yariant of this view is presented by the philosophers Eduardo Mendieta
and Santiago Castro-Gomez in their thoughtful Jnu-.oouction to an impor-
'tarit 0ook of essays by Latin Amerlcahlsts in Mexico under
the title Tulrfos sin disriplina: latinoamtricanismo, postwlonialidad !I globalizacion
. .. -
H ff .. .._NTS U\l'fH( 1<11ERICASI

:, ..

,i : . , ' ' , , J .,.;} t> '":" , . . :
en de&(lte (Theotres' without disciP.liile: La1:1'1&i.men'tatillim,' pdstcolonialicy,
:i ._ and .globalization in debate) (1998}. Focusing on the ber:ween
ifi.. ; crltial thought and the histodcal context of its production, Castro-Gomez
and M.ehdieta seek to determine the specific character of postcolonial stud
ies. Thw draw a distinction between "anti-col nial discourse," as produced
:,;, by Las c,fe Fra,ncisco
.. ' :,' cu.10 Tffs'eEnriqueRod6, and ipostcolon13.1 , 'de," as' atriculated by Said/
t Spival<,:and .Bhablia. For them, ucse is produced in
:;''.2tip.:; .. aces of iat is, ';i ' !J.ere subjects formed ... ' ., , ;
/ idem es in predominantly local c et subjected to intensive pci>?:
cesses of rationalization" (as descril;>ed by Weber or Habermas); they argue
f;th f theorid', in in
contexts of action," that is, "in where social subjects configure'
their identities interacting with processes of global rationality and where,
for this reason, cultural borders b,edome p9rous" (CastroGomez<tpd Mew
dieta 1998, r6- r7). For them, iliii"aistinction has poiltical
. while anticolonialist discourse cla.ifus to for others and t.o dis-:
ihaiitle toloniaLiin , postcolon.iaJ dfseorse ,f .
bistorfcizes its own position, not to discover a truth outside interpretation,
but to produce truth effec.{S that unsettle the field of political action. It
follows that radical lies anticolonial work that defines strug-
gles wid1 the categories at hand, thus confirming the established order, but
in intellectual work that deco11structs them in order to oroaden. the. scope of
politics. Prom iliis,perspeedve, tbe post of postcolonialism to be an
anti at the setvice of decolonization.
positrq.i.f ;p.;,LS t,he merit of offering a clear defulition of postcolo-
,,, .., : l . . :
nialism. In my view, it raises several questions. Its distinction between
anticolonial and postcolonial discourse repcoducing the rradition-
modernity dichotomy of modernization checuy, turning the convulsed and
rapidly changing social worlds of Las Guaman Poma, or Bilbao into.
stable "traditional" societies oflimited rationality, in contrast co the globally
worlds that engender posccolo11ial theorists and their superior dis .
By treating deconstruction

theoretical breakthrough that super-

sedes previous critic:il efforts-no\V relegated to less-rational traditional
.contexts-this position also risks becoming an expression ofVidal' s "tech-
nocratic:al literary criticism." Spivak's dictum that "Latin America has not
participated in decolonization" (Vidal 1993, 57) is perhaps an e.meme ex-
pression of tl1is risk. While. they acknowledge the "irrita.tion" of those who.
recognize that Latin American thinkers have "long shown interest on the
'



(
of they seem to aacept this risk ;is an inevitable
consequence of the radical theoretical and novelty of post-
.. c:olonfal studies (Gomez and ' . .
" By contrast, the Cuban public intellectu31. Roberto Fem:indez Retamar' s
discussion of Latin American decolonizing stiugglcs, originally offered as a
for a course on Latin American: th6i.igl1t iu can ;;een in
'v.'J;'part as a response to Spivak's dictum, according to
t. prize for epitomizing the problem ofLa.tin AJllerica's exclusion frovi post-
:;,:'colonial snidies (Fernandez Retamar i996). 'W'.is impossil;>le to summarize
r hlteiliitight synthesis, organized' arourld rhlrteert :41terrelated themes ,
identified4'y key phrases or ideas that emboay political and intellectual
such as "Independence or death." Suffice to indicate that
his struggles and reflection$
as pan oF' i single/ process of decolonization. Thus h
0
e'j 6ins the Hairi:t?.
Revol,utioi.t; the war59f independence, the Mexican the Cuban
R.evolutiodt'and i:li.e"fuovements of the Zapatistas and the Madres de la Plaza
. . . t,,;;. ',f '.<'":'.) . ' , .,,
de Mayo With sucli.'i1iverse intellectual struggles as literacy modernism, the-
ology and phi losQphy of liberation, dependency theory, pedagogy of the
oppreSsedflatin historiography, and ttStimonio. His wide selection
of tdts aelebrates and heterogeneous sources
informing self-critical tibm the Americas. His examples are too
nutnerous:"to mention here, but they include Venezuelans Sim6n Rodrfguez
and And.ies' Mexkims Leopoldo Zea,,and Octavio Paz, Brazilians Os-
wald de Aiidt.tde a.Il.d Darcy Ribeiro, and CUbans Jose Marti and Fernando
Ortiz. He highlights the contemporary importance ofRlgoberta Menchu and
Subcoman\fanteMalicos as articulating in new ways the decolonizing proj
ects of irtdigenous' ana national sectors in Guatemala and Mexico. Fer-
nandez Retamar'is not concerned with defining or erasing the boundaries
between Latin American and postcolonial critical thought, but with appre-
decolonization.
The dllfefence b'et\veen Mendieta/Castro-Gomez and Fernandez Reta-
mar, like that Ashcroft and Young, reveals die difficulty of defining
the relati tu\ and Latin American .on colo-
nialism ana frs :lftfu:math. As in Bustos's discussion ofi:he
exchange, a dialogue between.these intellectual traditions requires D..ot only
clearer classificatory efforts but also closerreading of texts, in order to refine
the criteria that de.ilil:e: these fields. A treannent of authors who are not
considered part of the postcolonial canon as postcolonial thinkers may help
us appreciate different modalities of critical reflexivity, as Sandra Castto-
IGaren has db'he through her subtle reading ofGuaman Poma and of the Inca
(
1N Tt.\f AM:n.l<;ASI
.
413.
Garcilaso de la Vega (1999; 4001). Or as Hulme suggests, "the
advantage of considering distant figures.like Ralph wa1do Emerson or An"
< 'f . : . '.
dres Bello as postcolonial. writers this 1.eads us to read them if
were new" (r996, 6). A particularlyprod1Jctive option is to engage the ''
Ionia! debate through studies of specific postcolonfal encounters, as in die.
pioneering integration of tf1eoretiq1J reflection and detailed historical . . .
studies ofU.S.-Latin Ame&;m relations in the collection edited by
.Michael Joseph, Catherine LeGrand, and Ricardo Donato Salvatore .. _
ELEPHANTS IN T HE AMERICAS?
. .,,
This discussion has made evident how difficult it is to define "Latin Ameri-
can po'stcolonial studies." As in the well-known parable of the elephant and
the wjse blind scholars (each of whom visualizes the elephant as a different
creature by the part he or she feels) , this field, like the wider field of post-
colo.nial studies itself, can be represented .in as a manner as there are
cjitforent perspectives from which it cari be "seen." If this parable shows that
. knowledge of reality is always partial and inconclusive, its use to reflect on
Latin_Americao postcolonial studies raises two more fundamental points.
First; .the peculiar.object of pr;>stci>lol!ial studies ls not a natural entity, like ,
an elephant, or even a regded as sharing the cultural world
. of the observer, but one formed as a colonized object, an inferior and alien
'. ..':'0?1e.r" to be studied.by 11. "Self." Since the "elephant"
)cari speak, the problem is not just to represent it but to create conditions that
would it to represent;.J..tself. From the perspective of postcolonial
. studies . analysis should involve not just self-reflection (an inherent dimen-
. any, serious intellectual. or granting subjectivity to the
so'ctai.Subject studied (as anthropologists and historians have typi-
cally sought to do), but d1e integration of these two analytical endeavours
'i lhto unified intellectual pi;oj,ect direc;ted at countering this unequal,
colonizing relationship. Its epistemology is not just representational but
transfom1ative; it uses representational strategies to counter the hierarchies
'assumptions that turn some subjects .into of knowledge of al-
iegedly superior subjects.
Second, insofar as postcolonial studies appears as the most evolved cri-
ti9ue of colonialism, it tends to invalidate or diminish the significance of
.. reflections on colonialism developed from other locations and perspectives.
scholars were to act wisely, they would not privilege their respec-
tive.views of the elephant or isolate it from other creatures. As a reflection on
i;he . .relationship between postcolonial and Latin American studies, the para-

44 . ONIL :
.... :) , '} t .. * ,. - . _.;.,::;,::,. .: ><" . . '
.-:, -::,/ . .
ble apP'ei1$ lfs'a)lte , the absence of Indigenous elephants in the
Americas the. identification of postcolonia.1 studies with sch?lar-
ship on Africa 3.na Asia. . . '"' ":. ..
If we take the parable literally, since the only elephants that m 'tbe
Americas are imported ones, artificiallyconfined in zoos or
thet11 from an.mhospita.!Jle terraiii, we may have the desire to sei6nly
. to mimic their Asian or African
.. ,.,. . "" .- . .. . . .
Latin American "elephants.'" Rt:fusal is another opoon.
Follt;>.w(ng thinkers who justitlably object to the ease with which metro-
polimn ideas become dominant in Latin America, or who unjustifiably see'
Latin America as a self-fashioned and boundecl and. arg:dn defense
ones adff5c'itilioHriuS-ltltellectiia't prochictions.
ropolitan Jm1guages and.with arguments supported br.. wbichwere
<'..>, ... orie could reJecf th'e attei1lpt 'tiWdefine Latin
American postcolonial studies, restricting postcolonial studies to other con-
tinents and regarding it as an imperial "import" that Latin
Americ3n knowledge. ' .
. . In my opinion, the yi:w. that. festri.css ,to certain
currents of Western intellec'tual 'thebtY;"a/i
11
we1f'iis
1
ilie"."pbsjtion that treats
sdidies as a,nother foreigi\fad tfiat urtde-rmines"l oa1.I knowl-
reiilforces both tqe a.ml. provincialism
its de facto exclusiOn of America, These two.sides of a protected
coin from the gioba.I circulation of
postcoloriial studies as a potent lntellecrual currency for the exchange and
development ofperllpectives o'n and its legacies from different
regions and intellectual traditions.
The not'stitiplyi some Latin American of_ po$tcolq-
tliaetatin Arnerkanists be drawliig on
f\1sch ,Borges as rriuch as on Said or Derrida, blrt that knowl-
edge. shciuicf and 'acknowledge the worldwide f:i:fni#lios of Its
p.roduct;ion. Jusr Kusch drew on Heidegger, and Derrida ,,; s inspired by
h': . ':'n Borgds, Said and Ortiz developed independently of each other,
fifiy years apart, a contrapuntal view of the historical formation of cuJrures
a1id identities that disrupts the West-rest dichotomy (Coron'il1995 l. Critical
responses to colonialism from different locations take different but comple-
mentary forms. While from an Asian perspective it has become necessary to
"provincialize" European thought (Chakrabarty 2000), from a Latin Ameri-
can perspective it has become indispensable to globalize the periphery: to
recognize the worldwide fonriacion of what appears to be self-generated
modem mecropolita!l centers and backward peripheries.
' . . ' '> .,\fi
IN ' ,''."'
j ..,, ;_: ...
As it has been defined so far, :t4(! field: of postcolonial studi.es: , 1
neglect the study of political (co-
nomic manyas one of the 6eldl.s.;fou
11
ders,
Edward Said dJstanced him.selffrom it, saying that he does not
to that" ;mq arg\{l!ig. t'tl:lr;;iP.o,stcolpnialism is really a that does
not suffidendy reC:ognize the persistence of imperialism,
and "structures of dependency" .(2002, 2 ). Said's concerns, so central to
Lati_n Amepcan thought;. ,)Hghlighi: the importanc;e of expinding postcolo-
niaJ criticai:;aditions, . ':
colonialism prob-
leJll,for bo$ and Latin American s.tudies 'the fundamental
confiib.11tiaP.ofLli.tin .is to this p;oblem by setting it
in a,wider historical conrext. The of Larin America in the field of
postC::olonfa.l sntdies expands 1ts geograph'ical scope and also its temporal
dept11. A wider focus, spanning from to the Americas, yields .
( ;: :J revealing tlie links of modem coli:> . -
: rihilism bft'1orthern European ahd:lis foupdadon in the
oftlie Americas by Spain and Pomrga). frame modifies prevailing
uudetstanclings of modern history. Capitalism and modernity, so as-
sumed both in mainstream and in_ postcolonial studies to.be a European
process marl<ed by 9awnln_g ofindusa:ialization,
tbe forging of nations in the eighteenth century, can be seen instead as a
global process involving the expansion of Christendom, the fonnarion, of a .
global market, and the crf<!don of emplres since.the
teenth century. A American. and postcolonfoJ. studies.
ought _not tQ, be p.oI@.fizlng;;and' mfght range ovec Jocal ahd global
designs, andJ;heir .material contexts, and subjective formations and
strilftti.res
This dialogue should bring to the forefront two interrelated areas of sig-
nificaotpolitical relevance today: the study ofpostcolonialism itself, strictly
understood as historical transformations after political independence, and
the analysis of contemporary I.ronkally, these two areas, .
central to Latin American thought. have: neglected by postcoloniil
Studies. At the juncture ofi::olon_iallsm'.s,historical dusk and the dawn of
new forms of imperial dominati.og, the field tends ro recollect
ism rather than its eventualities . on a Jong tradition of work
post-independence L:.itin America, ,!have argued for the need tp
"global" from "national" and. "ct>lc?.ilial" imperialism as a phase
ized by the growirig abstraction and generalization of imperial nJcides of
political and economic control (CoroniJ 2003). And drawing on postcolonial
(
(
I have proposed to understand wbat I c;a!LOccidei,talist representa-
.. tions .of culrural difference g'iob?t mip;tia,lism involving a shift
frow "Eurocentrism" to as entruling
operations that: dissolve the .'!.West" into the market and
crystallize it in less-visible ttansnationat nodules 'of concentrated financial
and political power; lessen culrural antagonisms-through the integxation of
distant cultures into a Go[bmon. global emphasize subalternity
than fn the . . . , an increas-
mgJy globa!Lzed world, U.S. and Jilleop.e:i.n, p . . 1s a1.1:hieved through
the occlusion rather than the affirmation differences between the
West and its others (Coronil 2oooc, 354).
,, This dialogue should also redefine the terms of postcolonial _studies .
. Postcolonialism is a fluid and polysem.ic category; whose power derives in
part from its ability to multlpte and refer to different
locations. Rather than fix its. definitions, I have
argued that it is more productive eo through rese<irch
and analysis on the histo,cjcal of sq5=ieties and populations sub-
jected to diverse modalities of imperial power (i992, IOI). In the spirit of a
long tradition of La.tin American transcultural responses to colonialism filld
"digestive" appropriation of imperial cultures, I thus opt for what I call
"tactical .POStcolonialism." While Spivak's notion of "&trategic essential-
ism" seJves to fix socially constructed .identities ir\ or.det to advance politi-
cal ends, tactical postcolonialism serves to open .Lip estabfished academic
knowledge toward open-ended liberatory possibilities. It conceives post-
co.lonialism not as a fenced territory but as an expanding field for struggles
against colonial and other forms of subjection. We may then work not so
much within this field, as with it, treating it with Ortiz as a "transcultural"
zone of creative engagements, "digesting. it" ;as Andrade may playfully do,
approaching it as a lirninal locus of erturii:fation .as Mignolo sL\ggests, ih
order to decolonize lmowledge and build. a genuinely democratic world, "a
world which would include many worlds," as Subcomandante Marcos and
the Zapatistas propose.
N OTE
This rext re.6.ects the lively of a postgr.iduate scnl.inar on postcolo
nialism and Latiil American thought that I taught during the summer of 2002 at
the Uuivcrsidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador. lvly gratitude to all. Thanks
also to Gencse Sodikoff and Julie Skurski for help with editing it.
Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations are my own.