Postcolonialism seminar – Question 7

Discuss the concepts of the subaltern and of negritude. Which groups are addressed and included with/in these terms? What does this indicate when it comes to power, postcoliniality and subject positions? Relate to media representations and intersectionality!

The concept of “subaltern” (Spivak)

Subaltern literally translated means a kind of subordinate, serving or just a lower rank / position, inferior or secondary. The subaltern in our context can be seen as ‘the Other’, the oppressed within social structures: (colonized) women, prisoners, children, a cultural minority or those who hold a lower social status. And it is also a question of gender. But in contrast to former discussions they are not only excluded from the access of ‘voice’ or discourse, rather they are used as a tool to maintain the status quo of intellectuals / elite and also to consolidate it. In other words, the superiors rely on the subaltern. Intellectuals are not simply those from the West or another global power that dominates colonies or social classes; it could be also intellectuals / elite of a certain ethnic background. To maintain the status quo the intellectuals / elite do not forbid the subaltern to speak; rather they speak for them and therewith take over their genuine right to speak for themselves. That is a difference, since they pretend to defend the oppressed from the power of imperialism, but in fact they mould their (subaltern) discourse and shape it in order to maintain the hierarchy consolidated for their own benefits. Would the subaltern speak for themselves the power of intellectuals / elite would be at risk, since namely the subaltern are consciously of their desires. The subaltern can briefly defined as a pivotal point (“buffer group”) between dominant social groups and take up an essential role in the balance of power (whereas power could also be understand as rules of repress). In this conjunction Spivak relates here also to Marx and the class struggle. Consideration of social hierarchies in France, England and India.

The concept of “negritude” (Diawara)

The concept of negritude (the term itself is established by Césaire) is founded by the Parisian elite in the 1930s with the intention of a cultural self-assertion of all Africans and their reflection on their civilization. Diawara refers to “bringing back a true meaning of black”. Negritude in terms of Senghor “constituted a black that never existed except as the other in the unconscious of the French”, “because it was only addressed to French people, and because it was removed from Africa” (Diawara 2004: 460). Here we can see a division between the French civilization (”rational Europe“) and primitive Africa (”emotional Africa“). He divides negritude in two levels – objective and subjective. It stands for an inventory of the sum total of black civilizations and on the other hand it describes the way in which people of the African dispersion articulate their blackness in their contact with the material and spiritual worlds. In contrast Mudimbe defines negritude as “a product of a historical moment proper to Europe, more particularly to the French thought which marked it”. Further it is an affirmation of the independence of Black culture and its African heritage and a direct consequence of subalterns who got tired of not having their space in a society.

Conclusion: We might have an interesting intersection between the subaltern and negritude, in some aspects and circumstances

Indications in conjunction with power, postcoliniality and subject positions •

Postcoloniality

Our group believes that the term “Post colonialism” is often misapplied as it implies that the colonialism as a process is over. The prefix “Post” (McClintock 1995) signals an idea of linear, historical progress. A great number of “Postcolonial” studies have placed themselves in a binary relation against the term “Colonialism”. Clearly, this approach can not be acute as it is self-evident that “Colonialism” is not over yet (i.e. the Dutch or the French colonies in South America). Our group believes that a more accurate representation of such process would imply the use of another term that does not connote such implications. We go further and take a rather audacious position relating the increasing interconnectivity among nations, when it happens in an aggressive and hostile manner, as a novel form of “Colonialism”. Contemporary globalization, meaning high level of dependency, of media, culture, peoples and, mainly, economy implicates a subservience of a nation state against a foreign nation. This can be translated in several different contexts such as the current dominance position the U.S. assume nowadays when it is often quotes as an Empire without colonies. That is maybe a better definition of what can be read here as Neo-colonialism. That is, an Empire without colonies.

Looking from this perspective, therefore, one can make a further relation between neocolonialism and cultural imperialism/globalization.

subject positions

The western world has an “interested desire to conserve the subject of the West, or the West as Subject. The pluralized ‘subject-effects’ gives an illusion of undermining subjective sovereignty while often providing a cover for this subject of knowledge” (Spivak 1988: 271).

Discussion

concept of subaltern in the case of Brazil, lack of negritude:- Brazil is the country, outside Africa, with the highest level of black people in the world • Relation between neo-colonialism and media as well as intersectionality and globalization • classmates: Try to find something similar or that fit into this discussion based upon your realities!

How does Spivak use (and change?) Marx’s terms “division of labour” and “class consciousness”?

 

Group 4: Katharina Poblotzki Paola Sartoretto Maria Shusharina Hui Zhao

 

Referring to Marx, Spivak states that ”small peasant cannot represent himself, he must be represented. Their representative must appear simulteneously as their master, as an authority over them…a power that power that protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine” (P. 273).

 

Just like the “small peasant” the Third World is represeented by the First World. “Third Worl can enter the resistence program of an alliance politics directed against a “unified oppression” only  when it is confined to  th third-world groups that are directly accessible to the First World. This benevolent first-world appropriation and reinscription of th Third world as an Other is the founding characteristic of much third-worldism” (P. 289).

 

Spivak takes Marx concept of division of labour to the global context in which there are exploiters and exploited. According to Spivak the global logic of production is responsible for the creation of areas/countries that own the means of production and areas/countries that represent the proletariat and produce goods that are then consumed by those owner countries. Such process creates a global working class that, different than what was predicted by Marx, is not capable of transform its struggle into revolution and subvert the actual context.

 

The contemporary international division of labour is a displacement of the divided field of nineteenth-century territorial imperialism. Put simply, a group of countries, generally third-world provide the field for investment, both through the comprador indigenous capitalists and through their ill-protected and shifting labour force. In the interest of maintaining the circulation and growth of industrial capital (and of the concomitant task of administration within nineteenth century industrial capitalism), transportation, law, and standardized education systems were developed – even as local industries were destroyed, land distribution was rearranged and raw material was transferred to the colonizing country. (p. 287)

 

The physical and territorial dissociation of bourgeoisie and proletariat that is observed by Spivak, took place during the colonialism. Such process of distancing the antagonist classes allied with the mechanisms of exploitation and social apparatus affected the class consciousness in the Third-World. It is not possible anymore to talk about organization of the proletariat and its rising to the power when this class does not have the consciousness of its position in the society. Spivak reminds us of Lenin, who associated consciousness to a “knowledge of the interrelationships between different classes and groups”.

 

If the global working class is destitute of its consciousness, Spivak argues that the female worker is  “doubly in shadow” because “the subject of exploitation cannot know and speak the text of female exploitation”. Even if we recognize the existence of the exploited, or subaltern, their imagery is usually the male figure. By transferring the division of labour to the global level, Spivak acknowledges the dichotomy between us-the other, exploiter-exploited, developed-under developed, First-World-Third-World.

 

The issue of the international division of labour (considering Spivak’s twist to the concept) has been represented in the media through “naming and shaming” degrading practices such as contemporary slavery, exploitation of workers, human traffic and the global producers/consumers dichotomy. Nevertheless, the representation of these practices in the media usually serves to legitimize the superiority of the West. Usually Western media deposits in the Western Society the solution for the problems of the underdeveloped countries.

 

Postcolonialist studies

(Lecture 12/11/07 – Anna Roosval)

Aimé Césaire – Discourse on Colonialism

Césaire- born in Martinique, educated in Paris. His book was written in the post-War era, very influenced by Marx and Communism. The text was criticised for its communist content but it is anyway important as one of the first texts on colonialism. Césaire questions the need for a people to be civilized by a more “developed” culture. He makes an intersectional analysis before the intersectionality context was brought in.

He draws attention to the process in which the colonizer is decivilized and brutalized. Césaire identifies Nazism as a long-standing practice that has been present in colonialism. Nazi practices had been applied long before to non-European peoples. Those who don’t protest against these practices are part of them.

Boomerang effect of colonization = by treating people as an animal you turn yourself into an animal, in treating others as non-civilized, you decivilize yourself. These practices will, in the end, to the destruction of Europe. Cooperation between native lords and the colonizer was needed in the process of colonization.

Imperialism = building an empire, there is a sense of togetherness

Colonialism = is not an empire, does not aspire to be an empire.

Anne McClitock – can we talk about colonialism and different kinds of colonialism?

Intersectionality was present in post-colonial studies before it became cristalized as a concept. In the analysis of an empire, different categories (race, class, gender, sexuality) must be taken into account. She does not see categories as static, but they have come to being in relation to each other and we need to look at these relations/intersections when studying these categories.

Post-colonialism has not benefited women very much, even in post-colonialist theories, women has been put aside.

Problems with the term postcolonial:

- Implies progress and a one way simple development.

- Implies a binary, a phenomenon which is otherwise contested in postcolonial theories

- Implies that colonialism is over.

Commodity fetishism – four soap fetishes:

1. Soap itself
2. White clothing (especially aprons)
3. Mirrors
4. Monkeys

Pears Soap = used a lot of children, white child bathing a black child. At the end the black child turns all black, but for the face. Blackness is related to dirt. The soap ads erase female work, ignoring both the work done by women in the home and the work done by women in the soap factories, where the work was done essentially by women.

Polygamy was outlawed in South-Africa not in consideration of the women but in consideration of white-man who could not compete with African men and their wives working for them.

Five ways in which women have been implicated in nationalism:

1. Biological reproducers of national collectives
2. Reproducers of the boundaries of national groups (through restrictions on sexual or marital relations
3. As active transmitters and producers of national culture.
4. As symbolic signifiers of national difference
5. As active participants in national struggles.