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: 15/03/2011 15:45
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COLONIAL POSTCOLONIAL

AND DISCOURSE:

CulturalCritiqueor AcademicColonialism?*

Walter Mignolo D.
Duke University

Commentingon PatriciaSeed's well-informed and useful revievA 1 essay (Seed 1991) withina limitednumberof pages requires selectivity. willfirst offer brief a 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. between, fivebooks are discussed, three In on Latin America and two on the Philippines. Afterdiscussing the five books in terms of currenttrends in history, anthropology, and literary Seed offers overallconclusion: her criticism, Whatall these works tovarying do is of degrees to achieve one ofthefunctions a to criticritique: positan idea aboutthehumanities disciplines-history, literary morethandecorative as cism,cultural anthropology-as knowledge, knowledge critical therelations authority of in of within society. aimofthecritique each a The relations ofthese is cultural disciplines different-economic relations authority, of ofauthority canon), But (the conventional political relations authority. thebasic of in of remains same-the relations authority colonialand the of target critique criticism states-anditis thusan enterprise cultural political and postcolonial of out beingcarried ina resolutely postcolonial (P.200) era. Because thewhole spectrumofcontemporary trendsmentionedby Seed (from to fromsubalternto colopoststructuralism new historicism, nial studies) takes a criticalstance toward knowledge, the reader may wonder about the differences colonial and postcolonial discoursefrom of other of and discourses. forms critical of enterprises authority authoritative Seed's view is that while the "two fields" share an interestin colonial
I to *Forinsightsincorporated revisingmyoriginalversionofthiscomment, am grateful in 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 ultimately is concerned with canonicalliterature, while colonial discoursewriters seek to understandthe dynamicsofthecolonial situation"(p. 199). On thebasis ofthisgeneralsummary, would liketo discuss several I 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 a new perspective(or is 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 colonialism(and its aftercontemporary on math)towardthe language used by the conquerors,imperialadministraand missionaries"(p. 183). tors,travelers, She further specifiesthat"whetherthe focushas been on the colonial or postcolonialsituation, centralconcernofthese studieshas been the 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, even historor ical moments(such as poststructuralism). My interestin delving into these distinctions focuses on a more fundamental question regardingthe politicalimplications the scholarly of decision to engage in researchand teachingon colonial (or postcolonial) discourse.The issue I am trying elucidate is addressed by Seed toward to theend ofheressay in discussingthequestions ofwheretheseauthorsare writing, why,and about what. In doing so, Seed brings in the autobiographicaldimensionofthe scholarvis-'a-vis or her academic pursuit: his and critics of Manyanthropologists, historians, literary writing thosewho are as World for lumpedtogether "Third people" adopta stanceofadvocacy those havebeen studying working and with.Hencethey reluctant criticize are to they forms nationalism.... Theearly of theoreticians thecoloof post-independence nialdiscourse field-Said,Spivak,and Bhabha-arethemselves loambivalently catedbetween so-called the First Third and in Worlds: bornand educated places and likePalestine Bengal, havenonetheless madetheir academic they reputations intheWest. the but of They speakfrom West arenotofit.Yetbyvirtue reputation and lengthy residence theWest,theyare no longerof theEast. Hence their in contributionshaping field arisen to the has within samecontext theinternathe of that tionalization they attempting study. 198) are to (P. 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 theUnited in 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 India, Iran, Africa,or South Americawho are struggling resistmodern 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 in relationto thelocus ofenunciabut tionconstructed the speaker or writer. Once again, the basic question by is who is writing about what where and why? The critiqueof what today is grouped under the label of "colonial in discourse"has a long tradition LatinAmerica,whichcan be tracedback of to the 1950s when the writings German philosopherMartinHeidegger began to catch the attentionof Latin American intellectuals.The most spectacularexample to my mind is thatofMexican historianand philosode (1952) pherEdmundo O'Gorman. His La ideadeldescubrimientoAmerica and La invencion Ame'rica de 1961) representthe (1958, English translation of earlydismantling European colonialdiscourse. O'Gorman wrotemuch 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 honestdesireto tellthetruth, nineteenth-century historiographers tool forconstructing historyand inventing assumed, but an instrumental realities.Using these presuppositions, O'Gorman dismantledfivehundred yearsofWestern and historiography-colonial postcolonialdiscourse, as itwere. Anothertellingexample is Uruguayanliterary critic Angel Rama's La ciudadletrada littlebook offers theoryabout a (1982). This magnificent the control,domination,and power exercised in the name of alphabetic no writing.Poststructuralism doubt reached Rama before he wrote the visibleand explicit. book, and theguidance ofMichel Foucaultis certainly What Rama has analyzed is a complex,changing,and growingdiscursive in formation which power and oppositional discourses fromthe colonial the period to the twentieth centuryconstitute two sides ofthe same coin. The power of the "letteredcity" helps indirectly understandingthe in 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 theletteredcity. by or I mentionthese two examples notto claim nationalistic patriotic of rightof speech but mainlyto underscorethe significance the place of 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 displace fieldand voices: theThirdWorldis notonly an area to be to 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 apportionment scientific scholarly)labor among the threeworlds. (or of Pletsch, however,was mainly concerned with the distribution area the studiesfrom perspectiveof social scientistsand humanistslocated in 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 noble Alva Ixtlilxochitl the early seventeenth century.For example, (1982), releof Tzvetan Todorov,at the beginningof TheConquest America with a shortcommentplacing him among gated O'Gorman to a footnote concernedwithgeographicaspects ofthe discovery. quotthosemerely By intoFrenchin 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 El de was not a de invencion Amne'rica, universalismo la cultura Occidente, but of Examples like celebration a critical dismantling such "universality." and thismakeone suspectthatthereis little difference betweenyesterday's For today'sdiscoursesofcolonialism.2 instance,FrayJuande Torquemada's
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 1959,1973).Candido also recognizedAngel Rama's contribution a LatinAmericandecolonizing voice in Candido (1991). Roberto Schwarz, Candido's disciple, has been exploring in the same kind of problems,most recently his studyof JoaquimMaria Machado de Assis (Schwarz 1990). discouirse (Bhabha for 2. Here I am using Homi Bhabha's expressionas a synonym colonial 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 shelvedin was 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 center, use an expressioncoined by Kenits to yan 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 core ofresistanceto theempire. Decenteringthecenteror multithe plyingitprovidesnew perspectives colonialand postcolonialdiscourse: on thatof the locus of enunciationcreated in the very act of postulatingthe of category colonialdiscourseas well as thelocus ofenunciation createdin the act notof studying analyzingitbut ofresisting or it. Once the issue ofcolonial discourse is relatedto thelocus ofenunciation, my interestlies in the interplayamong the configuration the of the fieldof study, rules of the methodologicalgame, and the feelingsand passions ofthe individualplayingthe game. I will explorethese issues in relationto "colonial discourse" as a fieldofstudy, literary studies as a case and of discourse-centered disciplinesand an example ofinterpreting theand orizingsemioticinteractions, LatinAmericaas a place where an alternative(colonial,postcolonial,or ThirdWorld)locus ofenunciationcan be constructed. of discourse First,the field of study.Introduction the termcolonial into the vocabularyof the humanitiesand the social sciences with a literin ary bent offered, my view, an alternative approach to a fieldof study dominatedby notions such as "colonial literature" "colonial history." or As definedby PeterHulme (one ofthe authorsreviewedby Seed), colonial discourse embracesall kindsofdiscursiveproductionrelatedto and arising out ofcolonial situations,fromthe Capitulations 1492 to WilliamShakeof fromroyalorders 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 discourse."Thus in the conceptofliterature "literary 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 production thecolonies and in thelanguage ofthecolonized culturesis productionof moreoftenthannotperceived as a runner-upto theliterary is the colonizingcultures;second, because "literature" hardlya felicitous (whichare mainly term be applied to Amerindian discursive productions to 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 narrative oral The denial of "literary" qualities to Amerindiandiscursiveproliterature. duction is neithera negative value judgment nor a suggestion of their thatliterature a regional is culturalinferiority. is merelythe recognition It and culture-dependent conceptualizationof a given kind of discursive practice,one that is not universal to all cultures. This perspective also of invitesinquiryintothenatureand function discursivepracticesin their "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 itembodies oral as well as written interacThe idea ofdiscourse,although notbe thebest alternative account also forsemioticinteracto tions,may tions between different writingsystems. The Latin alphabet introduced the picto-ideographic writingsystems of Mesoamerby the Spaniards, the quipusin the Andes each delineate particularsysican cultures,and thattook place duringthe colonial period. Ifwe were temsofinteractions for to limit use ofthetermdiscourse onlyto oral and reservetheidea of text termbeyond we would stillneed to expand thelatter written interactions, documentsin orderto embraceall matetherange ofalphabeticalwritten rialsign inscriptions. doing so, scholarswould honorthe etymological In 125

LatinAmerican Research Review meaningoftext(as "weaving"or "textile") and justify including quipus the 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 (oral) and the textual(materialinscriptions different 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 economy. Furthermore, concept of colonial semiosis includes the locus ofenunciation, dimensionthusfarabsentfrom current a the colonialfields ofstudy. instance,thefieldofcolonial history For presupposes an "objective"understanding subjectand a locus ofenunciation from whicha series of interrelated events could be mapped. Briefly, concept of colonial the 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 theloci ofenunciation. of Viewed in thisperspecof tive, the idea of colonial discourse invitesrethinking the hermeneutic is legacy in the contextof colonial semiosis. If the termhermeneutics definednotonly as a reflection human understanding on but as human unin was derstanding itself, thenthe "tradition" whichhermeneutics founded and developed (Mueller-Vollmer 1985) mustbe recastin termsofthepluand culturalboundaries (Panikkar1988). Thus of rality culturaltraditions colonialsituationsand colonial semiosis presenta hermeneutical dilemma the fortheunderstanding subject. Historically, studyand analysis ofcolonial situationshave been performedfromthe perspectivesprevailingin different domains of the colonizing cultures,even when the interpreter favoredcertainaspects ofthecolonized cultures.The termcolonial semiosis the bringsto theforeground following question: whatis thelocus ofenunciation fromwhich the understandingsubject perceives colonial situatraditions be understood to 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 America the way in diled of attention this issue. As a Mexican historianand philosopherof to 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 understandingsubject assumed by the historiography the discovery and changed the culturalperspectivefromwhich the discoveryhad been construed. WheneverI raise the issue addressed by O'Gorman, I am accused to ofgivingpriority the ethnicand culturalsituationoftheunderstanding subject. Accordingto this argument,a woman or a Mexican is in a better positionto understandwomen's issues or colonial situationsrespectively. I to Yetthisis not thepoint I am trying make. Rather, am concernedwith the tensionbetween the insertionof the epistemologicalsubject withina contextgoverned by norms and condisciplinary(or interdisciplinary) in context which 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 for necessarilyobjective.In myview,theoriesare notinstruments undertheories are standing somethingthat lies outside of the theory: rather, instruments constructing for 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 guaranteesattaining "better"(deeper,more accurate,moretrustworthy, 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 theconstruction theobjector subject to of being studied as the subject or the object being constructed.Thus the locus ofenunciationis as much a partofknowingand understandingas it froma disciplinof is oftheconstruction the image ofthe "real" resulting ary discourse (whether sociological, anthropological,historical, semiological, or some otherkind). Consequently,the "true" account of a sub127

LatinAmerican Research Review in ject matter the formof knowledge or understandingwill be transacted in therespectivecommunities interpretation muchforitscorresponof as dence to what is taken for"real" as forthe authorizing locus of enunciation constructedin the very act of describingan object or a subject. Furthe thermore, locus of enunciationof the discoursebeing read would not be understood in itselfbut in the contextof previous loci of enunciation or thatthe current discourse contests,corrects, expands. In otherwords, it is as much the saying (and the audience involved) as what is said (and the the world referred that preserve or transform image of the real to) constructed previous acts of sayingand previous utterances. by One example can be found in Michael Taussig's remarkablebook on terrorand healing, Shamanism, and Colonialism, theWildMan (1987), which helps clarify tensions between the understandingsubject and the the subject to be understood in colonial semiosis. Constructionof the locus of enunciationin Taussig's study articulates his beautifully opposiin in At tionalpractices relationto the disciplinary tradition anthropology. the same time,he constructsa culturalspace in which Taussig, the Australiananthropologist, attemptsto finda place withina Latin American intellectual tradition his carefulattention essays and novels written via to by Latin Americans condemningcolonialism and oppression (including ArielDorfman,JoseEustasio Rivera,Alejo Carpentier, JacoboTimerman, and Miguel Angel Asturias). This approach indicatesTaussig'sopenness to hearingand rehearsing voices oftheotherin theoraltradition the the of tradition ThirdWorldintellectuals of whose Putumayoand in the written locus ofenunciationTaussigattempts join. to 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 reality, a realitynonetheless,therecohabit two histories, and languages, cosmologies,artistic traditions, politicalsystemswhich are drastically counterposed" (Gomez-Peina1988). The interrelations colonial semiosis as a networkofprocesses to of be understood and the locus of enunciationas the networkof places of hermeunderstandingdemand a pluridimensionalor multidimensional neuticat thesame timethattheyreveal the significance the disciplinary of 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 Latin of 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 the need fora multidimensional hermeneutic accountforit. While understandingand 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 coloFinally, wish to cite a fewexamples ofvoices emergingfrom 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 momentwhen skippinga pebble on the 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 whaite found a voice and a formof knowledge at the intersection the classical models he learned in a colonial school with his lifeexperiencein his theCaribbean and consciousness ofAfrican people's history, poetryis less a discourseofresistancethan a discourse claimingits centrality. Simin of ilarclaims could be foundindirectly the writings Jamaicannovelists of and essayistMichelleCliff, who statesthatone effect British 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 and can never be art.... The yourwriting not literature; is folklore 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 that theUnitedStates are demonstrating eitherthemarginsare also in the centeror (as Thiong'o expresses it) thatknowledge and aestheticnorms are not universallyestablishedby a transcendent subject but are univerin diversecultural establishedby historical centers.Chicano sally subjects writerGloria Anzalduia, for instance, has articulateda powerful alterby nativeaestheticand politicalhermeneutic placing herselfat the crossroad of threetraditions (Spanish-American,Nahuatl, and Anglo-Amerisee structure, Kelwithindisciplinary "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. of towardtheauthoritative configuration thedisciplinary thosewho would gravitate (1992). His generalpositionregardingpoetic practices 5. I am referring here to Bratwhaite (1983, 1984). in in colonial situationshas been articulated Bratwhaite

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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 representedmay no longerbe an issue, and itcould be reframed terms than as an academic loci of dialogues fromdifferent of enunciationrather in monologue performed the act of "studying"colonial discourse and not engaged persons (whetherinside or outside aca"listening"to politically from colonial, postcolonial,or ThirdWorldcountriesprodeme), writers to discourse. Perhaps in the intellectualarena, efforts ducing alternative of afarand long ago disguises new forms colonizainventan "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 the helped in rethinking discursivedimensionofcolonial(and postcolonial 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 and in many and institutions intellectuals Brazilianpostcolonialhistory 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 interested critically examiningthe culturaldependency of postcolonial the of countries (whichSchwartzterms"theperipheries capitalism"), issue in and dependency as well as has to be rethought the contextof mimicry 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 conversation our place of America,Africa,or Asia) and the intellectual residence (the United States or WesternEurope), the question arises of the promoting imporwhether function our 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 How this "thinking from"(which implies a "thinking between") could is be constructed a subject thatcannotbe developed here.7My concernis to underscorethe point that "colonial and postcolonial discourse" is not new richesbut the just a new fieldof studyor a gold mine forextracting of for new loci ofenunciationsas well as condition possibility constructing 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 of labor since World includesintellectuals. theapportionment scientific War II, which has been described well by Carl Pletch (1982), the Third and Worldproduces notonly "cultures"to be studied by anthropologists on but who generatetheoriesand reflect ethnohistorians also intellectuals 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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