Identity Politics and the Third World

Identity Politics and the Third World ii Identity Politics and the Third World Identity Politics and the Third World Neha Soi ACADEMICA PRESS LONDON-WASHINGTON iv Identity Politics and the Third World Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Soi, Neha, author. Title: Identity politics and the Third World / Neha Soi. Description: Washington, DC: Academica Press [2018] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2018040748 | ISBN 9781680534764 Subjects: LCSH: Political culture--Developing countries. | Identity politics--Developing countries. | Postcolonialism Developing countries. | Cosmopolitanism. | Capitalism--Political aspects. Classification: LCC JF60 .S64 2018 | DDC 306.209172/4-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040748 Copyright 2018 by Neha Soi All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Academica Press 1727 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 507 Washington, DC 20036 [email protected] For orders call (978) 829-2577 The essentially performative character of naming is the precondition for all hegemony and politics. -Laclau, 1989: xiv vi Identity Politics and the Third World Contents Page No. Preface viii Acknowledgements x Introduction 01 1 The Construction of the Orient 43 2 Beyond Orientalism 107 3 Locating Hybridization 167 4 Globalization and Identity 233 5 Whose Line is it Anyway? 283 Bibliography 305 Index 315 List of Illustrations/ Pictures Page No. Graphical mapping of identity on the planes of space, time and experiential subjectivity 226 An advertisement of the Royal Trust (Royal Bank Group) mapping the world 256 United Colors of Benetton posters depicting unity in diversity 269 Osama bin Laden on Al Jazeera Channel after 9/11 293 ‘Angel and Devil’- United Colors of Benetton 303 Preface “Third-world identity” is a term that has occupied a pivotal spot in the area of cultural studies for almost the entire last century and has commanded many research projects over the said time. While the term was largely discarded post the Second World War, it was more of a theoretical affectation to believe that the term had become non signifying because of the dissolution of what was erstwhile identified as the second world. The term not only remained a nomenclature for the imperially and/ or economically colonized spaces, but continued to demand research and probe. Edward Said and Homi Bhabha, stalwart theorists in the area, became cornerstones for any study on postcolonial subjects, and their works became gospel for those undertaking any inquiry concerned with these spaces. While these landmark political theorists and thinkers occupy an undeniable and Identity Politics and the Third World ix irrefutable position in the area, their theses cannot be blindly accepted and the politics of identity, in the context of the third world, deserves due interrogation vis-à-vis its assumed foundation in the theories offered by them. This work was inspired by the need to interrogate thirdworld identity and its definition as offered by Said and Bhabha. In that this is a work that deals with third-world identity and the theories of these stalwart theorists, it may seem to echo the concerns of some earlier critics and cultural theorists, but there is a marked difference in the approach here. This is perhaps the first work that brings together Said and Bhabha, almost in a dialogue over third-world identity and the question of representation. Further, this work offers a singular characteristic of applying and testing the theories of Said and Bhabha to the representation of third-world identity in the neocolonial era. In this exercise, it becomes pertinent not only to expound upon the theories offered by these landmark theorists, but also to critically analyze their application in the contemporary scenario, which this book offers as a prime question of concern. Divided over a span of five chapters, preceded by an Introduction, this book offers a detailed overview of the prominent theories of Said and Bhabha and interrogates their application on the understanding and representation of thirdworld identity. Acknowledgements This book is a result of consistent research in the area of thirdworld identity and its representation, with close reference to the works of Edward Said and Homi Bhabha that I have been closely associated with since 2005, when I began my doctoral research. I wish to extend my heartiest gratitude to the very erudite and inspiring, Prof. Rumina Sethi. Without her constant guidance and valuable criticism, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this research. I also wish to thank Dr. Sumeet Gill for being available for the many discussions and textual criticisms that this work is based on. He was also abundantly available for proof reading and page setting of this book. Identity Politics and the Third World xi I also wish to thank the team at Academica Press for their promptness and ready support for the publication of this work. Introduction Throughout the history of mankind, identity has been one of the most pertinent issues of debate and deliberation. Starting with the colonial encounter up until the culture of global capitalism, identity has been constructed multifariously so that it has come to occupy a significant place in academic and social circles. But unlike other issues which are primarily academic, this debate takes center-stage not only in theoretical terms but also in performance. The construction of identities in postcolonial terms refers to the creation of systems of identification. This construction is undertaken at two levels: by the colonizer in the form of myths about the subject races and a simultaneous belief in the notion that the subject cannot represent him/herself; and subsequently, by the colonized in an attempt to resist 2 Identity Politics and the Third World colonization and establish a sense of solidarity against the rulers. Likewise in the global context, the third world becomes a market place where identities are framed by the laws of consumerist dynamics. Identities are again constructed here on two levels: by multinational economics, in the form of globally hybridized, homogenously differentiated communities; and, in counterpoint, by the myths of unique national cultures. The current study is an attempt to examine the politics of representation of identities in postcolonial theory by focusing on selected works of Edward Said and Homi Bhabha. An interrogation of the theories of identification in these areas would obviously challenge the existing methods of ascertaining third-world identities on the grounds of objectivity and universality which they ostensibly claim to have achieved. But the intention here is not to give any substitute formulae for identity determination, for the fear of closing the process which finds its definition in a continuum. What is intended here is an exercise in deconstructionist criticism of the theories regarding third-world identity. Critically analyzing Said’s system of binary oppositions, which necessitates the fabrication of an ‘other’ to define the ‘self’, and Homi Bhabha’s concept of postcolonial ambivalence, which forms the basis for a hybrid identity, the discourses of identity can be analyzed and their authenticity and applicability in postcolonial contexts can be questioned. Introduction 3 Taking a cue from postmodernist philosophy, this research focuses on the demystification of those theories which privilege certain kinds of identity constructs. This work is designed to revisit the definitions about third-world identity and interrogate the premise upon which they have been modelled. The argument is grounded in the belief that identity formation is an endless process and that any theory that creates constructs about the experience of third-world identity is an unreal stagnation of that process. Identity can be defined only in a state of flux and continuity. Through this research the theories of Said and Bhabha are critically analyzed and the strategic stagnation of third-world identity in time and space, isolated from real experience, is demonstrated. But before conducting an analysis such as this, it is of utmost significance to elaborate how the key terms in this context are perceived and intended and how they are theoretically and practically related with each other. Identity is the term used to denote who or what we are collectively as well as individually. The concept of identity serves the dual purpose of establishing affiliation and belongingness on the one hand and distinction and uniqueness on the other. The politics of identity lies between the construction and reception of identity in these two aspects. Where the collective idea of identity is a macroscopic grouping together of people in a category based on one or more common 4 Identity Politics and the Third World factors such as origin, nationality, time, place, education, economic status, ideology, gender, class, caste, religion, sexual preference, and the purposeful ignoring of other differences, the iteration of individuality through identity entails a microscopic underlining of these (and/or other) differences. Identity as category creates a sense of homogeneity and sameness, while as an individuating factor it rests upon the assertion of heterogeneity and difference. Barring exceptions, the homogenizing aspects of identity create discourses about communities and people belonging to them, while the aspects that demonstrate heterogeneity dismantle these and are often regarded as postmodern reactions or counter-narratives. The politics of identity is designed through the conflict that erupts between identity established on sameness and that on difference. The discursive construction of identity gives preference to those narratives of identity fixation that are based on homogeneity, timelessness and popular belief. A perception of discursive identity is created out of traditional and inherited definitions and is often depictive of a sense of doubtless permanency and lack of transmutability. It is such definitions of identity that support global discourses about Americans and progress, Islam and terrorism, women and oppression, thirdworld cultures and backwardness, and so on. It must be noted however that identity in terms of discourse theory is not ‘essentialist’ without purpose and is more ‘strategic and Introduction positional’ (Hall, Introduction 3). 5 To counter such universalizing discourses and their politics, the counternarrative of individuality is developed and often the two stands on collectivity and individuality are situated differently vis-àvis temporality. While theories of collective identity tend towards past traditions, collective experience of generations and historical cultural values, blurring the differences of lived experience and a strategic will to maintain certain definitions, individual identity is skeptical of inherited ideologies. It is rather contemporary in its constitution and mutates with time. The desire to identify one’s ‘self’ is one of the most primitive impulses of human beings. Identity refers to the establishment of affiliation as well as individuality. It is an effort to assert a sense of belongingness with a group and establish a singular recognition for the ‘self’ in counterpoint. [I]dentity of things, people, places, groups, nations and cultures is constituted by the logics of both sameness and difference. (Curie, 2004: 3) Similarly Jeffrey Weeks observes: 6 Identity Politics and the Third World Identity is about belonging, about what you have in common with some people and what differentiates you from others. (1990: 88) Identity is never undifferentiated. It is always fragmentary. The uniqueness of identity then lies in a unique conflict and negotiation of differences and fragments each time. Identities are not neutral. Behind the quest for identity are different and often conflicting values. By saying who we are, we are also striving to express what we are, what we believe and what we desire. The problem is that these beliefs, needs and desires are often patently in conflict, not only between different communities but within individuals themselves. (Weeks 89) Identity is then a ‘patchwork [that] lives no less from its seams and ruptures than from individual patches of social affiliation of which it is made up’ (Meyer, 2001: 16). Identity is not only an attempt to negotiate conflicts without, but also to negotiate the conflicts that exist and erupt within. Further identity includes not only what one projects the ‘self’ as, but also what the ‘other’ perceives this ‘self’ to be. It is an ‘open process of negotiation between the self-image that the individual conjures up of himself and the image that his partners in social interaction form of him in changing contexts’ (15). Introduction 7 But this idea of fragmentation shouldn’t be led to a total denigration of any sort of collectivism. A collective identity denotes ‘those feelings and values in respect of a sense of continuity, shared memories and a sense of common destiny of a given unit of population which has had common experiences and cultural attributes’ (Smith, 1994: 179). Whereas such ideas of common identity are often thought of as unrealistic and discursive in nature and abandoned in the theoretical process of debunking meta-narratives, such collective identities are of utmost significance for communities that have faced ‘brutal ruptures’ in the form of colonial encounters, and their resistance movements (Shohat, 1995: 175). This is to suggest that collective or fragmentary, identity in all discursive and counter-discursive forms underlines a politics of representation. The attempt towards identification comes as a natural instinct and is informed with the desire to fight isolation and alienation. It is an effort to fit in the matrix of human relations and exercise one’s power from that location. The attempt towards establishing identity is an attempt to assert power. Identity provides a voice that allows one (at the level of a community or an individual) to emphasize a stand point or a discourse. It is through identity that the politics of power can be executed or countered. 8 Identity Politics and the Third World [A]n ethics of the name allows for the possibility of politics. The questioning of the singularity of the name enables us to rethink and displace its discursive grip, thus opening the way for other names, other political possibilities. [my emphasis] (Li, 2000: 8) The history of the world is the story of representations and discourses based chiefly on the attempt towards attaining and executing power. The politics of identity and representation is informed by three distinct modes; the Gramscian instinct of ‘know[ing] thyself’ (Forgacs, 1988: 326); the inherent narcissistic impulse to superiority; and the Nietzschean ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche, 1967). The history of imperialism (colonial or economic), is driven by the reins of discursive practice and hegemonic control. Be it the imputed Darwinism of ‘survival of the fittest’ (Spencer, 2002: 444), the so-called civilizing mission that forms the ‘white man’s burden’ (Kipling, 1954: 280), or the current popular/mass culture of cosmopolitanism, representation is never a ‘non- power laden discourse’ (Kahn, 1995: 7). The broad understanding of identity refers to the location of one’s ‘self’ in order to describe who and what one is. But this act of locating one’s ‘self’ is not simple. It is underlined with an all-pervading sense of paradox and politics. Introduction 9 The construction of a sense of identity involves the creation of systems of identification which are wrought with complex and often contradictory strains. To begin with, any idea of an identity includes both positive and negative aspects. Identity is an attempt of subscribing one’s ‘self’ to a framework of affiliated structures. This location is done in terms of originbound and received or inherited revelations and provides with a sense of positivity in terms of who/what we are. Along with the received perceptions, this form of establishing a sense of sameness with allied constructs includes the lived experience of the ‘self’ within the surrounding environment. To use Derrida’s terminology, identity, at any moment, carries within itself the ‘traces’ of all experience and influence (1982: 12). All these aspects grant a sense of tangibility to the ‘self’ and constitute what can be called a positive conception of it. Along with structures of affiliation, identity is also defined by aspects that are opposite to or different from the perception of the ‘self’. These aspects are used to constitute an opposing or differing entity which is construed as the ‘other’. Identity is defined by not only what it is, but also by what it is not. This default mechanism of defining the ‘self’ by defining the ‘other’ in opposition or a state of difference is the negative definition of identity that tells what or who we are not. Identity as defined by signifiers or names simultaneously reflects what it is and what it is not. Any 10 Identity Politics and the Third World attempt to identification is evocative of terms of affiliation and terms of difference or even opposition. As Derrida observes: [W]hen a name comes, it immediately says more than the name: the other of the name and quite simply the other whose irruption the name announces. (1985: 89) The simultaneous reference in a name or an identity to what it is and what it is not is reflective of the presence in ‘every proper designation [of] its different and thus disruptive double’ (Li 6). This dichotomy of ‘self’ and ‘other’ forms a primary basis in the attempt to ascertain identity. It is this idea of dichotomy that Said’s theory of orientalism is founded upon. Further it is this dichotomy that allows for the creation of counter-narratives. If identity as discourse is created by the process of screening out the ‘other’ that is already informed in its name, and politically manipulating the signifier to exercise power, then the counter-narrative or the counter-discourse can be orchestrated by exercise of articulation by the ‘other’ that has been hitherto silent. The name is an expression of power that shapes and directs our perceptions and understandings, thus helping to constitute the reality we know. But the name’s performativity, its power to classify and construct our reality is also its limitation, because its act of screening out or Introduction 11 excluding other realities returns to challenge its putative singularity. (Li 7) The dichotomy of identity informs both discursive and counterdiscursive exercises. Not only is identity relevant in the construction of power, it is also enormously significant in the disruption of power. But the conception of ‘self’ and ‘other’ changes temporally and spatially and this makes identity a constantly transforming concept. Identity is conceptualized as a referent for an ‘enlightenment subject’, that highlights the evolutionary and reactionary individualism of every subject, a ‘sociological subject’, that necessitates social interaction and influence, and a ‘postmodern subject’ with multiple and overlapping or conflicting affiliations and a plurality of being (Hall, Held and McGrew, 1992: 275-77). This conceptual framework renders identity and its foundational premise of defining ‘self’ by defining the ‘other’ and vice-versa, as a transforming and mutating concept. Identity is not a ‘possession but a social process’ (Meyer 15). In such a case, identification (as a process) rather than identity (as a final definition), is more suited to the current context. With reference to this mutability and essential dynamism, identification as a process informs the politics of identity and its representation. At this point one must note that identity and representation are not reflective of the same process. Identity 12 Identity Politics and the Third World defines what one is. Elusive as the concept may seem, it is inclusive of the originary influences, the shared or individual experiences, the evolution at the level of the community at large and/or the individual and those ‘traces and left overs’ that are constantly differing and deferring (Sethi, 2005: 141). Identity then, is only a suggestion of paradoxical aspects: simultaneously static and changing, referring to individual and social, pointing out sameness and difference. This suggests that identity is a state of being which is beyond the scope of definition. This does not mean that it does not exist, but rather that it can be realized only in the absence of a final definition. This is to say that every act of representation can be politically orchestrated or be received as a misrepresentation, but that does not mean that there is no reality whatsoever. Any attempt to define or temporally and spatially locate identity is called representation which is depictive of a politics of identity that functions through the semantic play of signification that representation allows. The act of representation stands for the dual action of ‘re-presenting’ or presenting again, and representing or politically standing for. The act of politically “speaking for” as well as that of ‘re-presentation as in art or philosophy’ includes a certain politics and arbitrariness and in both these aspects the act of representation becomes a function of power (Spivak, 1995: 28). Introduction 13 The politics of identity is a hermeneutic process that entails ‘the expropriation of meanings rather than materials’ (Rutherford, 1990a: 11) which suggests that the object being represented is used to signify strategic meanings within the political framework of identification and its allied discourses, the unity of the object withheld nevertheless. The name would only be a ‘title’, and the title is not the thing which it names. (Derrida, 1992: 427-28) This aspect of identity that it is defined by signifiers which only hint at the signified and do not represent them in totality allows for the play in signification that Derrida calls ‘differànce’ (1982). The process of signification of representation defines the politics of power. This politics is a crucial factor then not in defining “who we are” or “where we came from”, so much as what we might become, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent ourselves. (Hall, 1996: 4) Identity is not so much about revival of roots but more about ‘coming-to-terms-with our “routes”’ (Hall, 1986: 4). The process of representation guides the politics of identity and this act of representing by constructing methods of identification is founded upon the dictum of ‘will to power’ (Nietzsche). Meyer 14 Identity Politics and the Third World observes with reference to the politics of difference that ‘cultural self-awareness comes as a lever of political enmity in the pursuit of power’ (8). Representation and within its context, identification as sameness or difference, does not remain ‘an ontological act of reference but a thoroughly political intervention’ (Li 8). Identity then acquires immense significance in the study of relations of power and control. The colonial process has always been acknowledged as an important factor in shaping the identity of the colonized. The influence of colonialism on identity first became apparent in the form of the discourse created about the orient by the west. The essentialist orient created by the west not only supplied as a suitable justification for the colonial advance as a mission in philanthropy, it also served as a means of categorizing the subject races in absolute opposition to the western ‘self’. This entailed a process of identification by default for the west as well. The colonial process then becomes not just a political or economic pursuit for the west, but also a sort of self-revelation and affirmation. The fact that the ‘self’ is pitted against an ‘other’ which is dominantly a western invention makes it a narcissistic venture. In the study of third-world identity with reference to the discourse of polarity between the colonizer and the colonized and its application in the process of creating systems of identification that support the exercise of colonial expansion, Introduction 15 Edward Said occupies a significant place. In his seminal work, Orientalism [1978], Said provides an elaborate analysis explaining how the creation and promotion of the discourse about an essentialist orient perpetuated the imperial exercise. The discourse mechanism supporting imperialism comprises of the process by which a stagnant and universal belief is created about an orient in keeping with the interests of the imperial powers. Orientalism, as a discourse, is the representation of the colonized as a homogenously regressive group, as opposed to the dynamic and progressive west. The colonial perception of the world situates the west in a discursive space of progress and development. The perception that the west signifies advancement and is considered to be the trendsetter for the rest of the world to follow, carries on even in the current jargon of globalization which is seemingly suggestive of neutralization of hierarchy. In the dichotomy of west and the rest, the former occupies a space of development in temporal terms as well. At any given time, the west represents a sense of being ahead in time and the rest of the world is seen to be trudging along the standards set by it and trying to catch up desperately. In this sense then, the imperial context places the west as the first world and the developing world as the third world. The term ‘third-world’, though vastly criticized and almost rejected by academic circles for its political overtones, 16 Identity Politics and the Third World is used here for three specific reasons. First, in geographic and political terms, ‘third-world’ groups together all those countries which have been colonized or have faced colonial rule. The use of the term ‘third-world’ then is to clearly and plainly denote the communities that were included therein. Secondly, even in the current context, the neo-colonial activities and invasions conceive of the euphemistically termed developing world as the world that follows as an inferior entity to be controlled by the superior west. In this context then the term ‘third-world’ may be rejected for its semantic obsoleteness in the absence of a second world, but it is still quite alive in terms of grouping together subservient nations and communities with reference to American capitalism. The term ‘third-world’ in this sense, has come to symbolize a sense of marginality and minority. It is not only inclusive of imperial colonies but also developing nations in the era of globalization. The rejection of the term ‘third-world’ may be euphemistically liberating but in the current scenario too, the hierarchies, imperialisms and the self/other dichotomies exist and govern the politics of identity. The term ‘third-world’ then occupies a significant space in the context of identity politics as it is evocative of subservient and regressive communities. It brings memories of the myths of oriental inferiority and the colonial ‘mission civilisatrice’ (Said, 1994a: 33) to the continuing western claim to supremacy. Thirdly, and on a slightly different plane, in the Introduction 17 multicultural context, the prefix ‘third-’ offers the occasion of being used to denote the literal ‘third space’ of subalternity (Grossberg, 1996: 91) along with the historical significations of the term. In the context of colonization as well as globalization, the third world inhabits a metaphoric ‘third space’ of ambivalence and negotiation and the prefix ‘third-’ there acquires greater complexity of symbolizing the third entity: the ambivalent ‘self/other’ for the canonical ‘self’ and the canonical ‘other’. Identity is constituted by various important factors and it is imperative to explain the important terms that surround its construction. In the context of identity in social and historical terms, the first important factor is nationality. The idea of belonging to a certain nation with a history, marked political geography and a collective system of traditions and culture is exceedingly significant when determining the location of identity. The nation-state, nationalism and national identity are not “naturally” occurring phenomena but contingent historical-cultural formations. . . . National identity is a form of imaginative identification with the symbols and discourses of the nation-state. (Barker, 2000: 252) Nation provides the ‘self’ as opposed to the ‘other’ which collectively embodies all that is excluded from the idea of that 18 Identity Politics and the Third World nation. It is the sum total of the imagination of its people, which makes it a celebratory vision of greatness and embarks upon it a sense of uniqueness and invincibility. With its symbols, a nation is developed from a bound geographical location to an organic whole, providing its people with a selfappropriated and cleansed history and a belief in the authenticity and credibility of its narcissism. It is this fabrication of a nation that has been defined as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 2003). The imagination of a national identity that is at once unified and charismatic and manages to draw its citizens to a sense of common identity irrespective of differences constitutes the discourse of nationalism. As Hall, Held and McGrew suggest: Instead of thinking of national cultures as unified, we should think of them as a discursive device which represents difference as unity or identity. They are cross-cut by deep internal divisions and differences and “unified” only through the exercise of different forms of cultural power. (297) The common cultural and historical experience of the peoples of a nation is discursively employed by the means of ‘stories, literature, popular culture and media’ and together creates a shared imagination which manifests itself in the form of national identity (Barker 253). Introduction 19 Ordinarily it is presumed that the idea of a nation is just as old as the nation itself. But as McGuigan notes with regard to identity politics in America, the significance of defining the ‘self’ is not felt till there is an ‘other’ to mark difference from (1999: 81). Kobena Mercer also observes on similar lines: [I]dentity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty. (1990: 43) The idea of a nation is also created when it is seen as a part of the world, where there are other nations too. The idea of a nation, then, or nationalism as an individuating feature develops as a response to the ‘international process’ (Greenfeld, 1992: 14; Robertson, 1995: 30), the ‘other.’ This marks the second important factor of defining identity: the ‘other.’ Throughout their careers, identities can function as points of identification and attachment only because of their capacity to exclude, to leave outside . . . [T]he ‘unities’ which identities proclaim are, in fact, constructed within the play of power and exclusion. (Hall, 1996: 5) Similarly nationality develops not from within a nation but from outside. Identity is constantly driven by the impulse to mark sameness as well as difference. But the aspects of 20 Identity Politics and the Third World sameness and difference derive significance only when there is something to mark difference from and establish sameness against. In fact identity is constructed ‘through, not outside, difference’ (Hall, 1996: 4). Identity continues to be of central importance because of the never-ending eruption of difference that challenges the unconscious traditional beliefs and urges the discourse of identity to be renovated. National identity and culture are defined by categorizing the popular and common beliefs of people within a geopolitical space in response to extra-national influence or interaction. It must be noted that this response may not necessarily be adversarial in nature but it is nevertheless to establish a sense of individuating and common ‘self’ for those belonging to a nation-state: individuating as against other nations and their national identity, and common amongst the members of one nation. The establishment of national identity is then an attempt to delineate a sense of a common ‘self’ that can sustain the challenges of that which is outside the national boundary, and maintain a sense of immortality and superiority against it. The ‘other’ that national identity is determined against is the extranational and the international. It is ironic though that the extranational and the international both include the national to some extent or the other: the former in the sense of a default opposite, and the latter as a constitutive element. Whereas the creation of an extra-national identity is analogical with the Introduction 21 creation of an ‘other’ to underline the ‘self’, the international identity is essentially an elusive term. The term international marks a sense of interaction and inclusion but does not specify the scope or extent of its coverage. The international no doubt alludes to various nationalities and their ‘imaginations’ (Anderson), but it does not denote which and how many nationalities are interacting, how much is included and in what capacity. The response to each constituent characteristic is also not stipulated here. This marks the play and variability of the concept of the international or the multicultural identity. Identity in a state of multiculturalism has no specific geopolitics to subscribe to and no outside to determine boundary against. In a twisted system of marking boundary, internationality marks its boundary against systems that privilege the purity of national or communal identity. The boundary here wards of not outside influences but rather the attempts towards blocking them. But this aspect of multicultural affiliation or international identity must not be construed as a celebratory and all inclusive system of identification. Far from the euphoria of equality and perfect mélange, multicultural or international behavior also has its politics that privileges certain constituents more than the others. On an ideological plane, the memory and experience of the past and inherited culture makes a deep impression upon the subject claiming international affiliations. 22 Identity Politics and the Third World All diasporic communities settled outside their natal (or imagined natal) territories, acknowledge that "the old country" − a notion often buried deep in language, religion, custom or folklore − always has some claim on their loyalty and emotion. (Cohen, 1997: ix) However, in the current context of globalization through capitalist means, ‘international’ signifies a sense of being affiliated to various countries and privileges those constituents of identity that establish belongingness with the tastes of the popular/mass culture. Like nationality, internationality also has its metaphors and its systems of identification. Those who perceive a sense of affiliation with internationality cast identity in terms of international symbolism, which manifests itself in a multilayered ‘selfhood’ and observes difference and at times opposition from the ‘otherness’ of nationality or a different kind of internationalism. The internationality of identity generally connotes a sense of multicultural existence and is metaphoric of multiple affiliations. While moving from the metaphor of the national to the extra-national, or the international, identity undergoes a change of scope and constitution. With colonial advancement identity and culture come to a space of interaction. The hegemonic discourse of identifying the west as a superior ‘self’ and the Introduction 23 rest as its default opposite and inferior ‘other’ lays the foundation of the politics of imperial rule. The development of this binary identity gives a strong and almost unbeatable impetus to the exercise of colonial advancement. In reaction (or resistance) to the colonial discourse of binary oppositions the homogenized identity of the colonized from the colonial discourse is used to develop a unified national identity. This unified identity is ironically depictive of a sort of ‘orientalismin-reverse’ (Jalal al-’Azm, 1981: 18) but the repetition is fashioned in a way to assert a sense of strength with what was earlier presented as a cause for inferiority. This attempt towards subverting the perception as offered by the colonizers is designed to question its ostensible claim to absolute credibility and irrefutability. So the ‘Negritude Movement’ in Africa underlines the blackness of its people, hitherto symbolic of evil, as beautiful, and the ‘Non Co-operation Movement’ in India challenges the European discourse of oriental passivity with a changed perception of patience and non-violence. Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism includes an analysis of identity as a means of resisting colonialism. Through a study of the colonial narratives in the genre of the ‘novel’, Said analyzes the factors that create the cultures of imperialism, nationalism and revolt. He scrutinizes the rhetoric of power in the presumed authority and hegemony of the 24 Identity Politics and the Third World culture of imperialism, and the mythology of nativism in the xenophobic revolt against it. He also states that the binary codification that is rendered through the mechanics of empire allows the two communities to interact and subsequently be ‘hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic’ (xxix). Said critically evaluates the dynamics of revolt and resistance but nevertheless defines ‘resistance’ as the effort of the native against the colonial power. While reaffirming the polarity between the colonizer and the colonized Said lays the foundation of resistance as a means of subverting canonical perceptions and creating new methods of understanding culture and identity. The fact remains however, that a universal appeal and acceptance of these discourses (as aids to imperialism and/or resistance or anti-colonialism) is central to the credibility and efficacy of discursive formations (Said, 2001b: 7). The discourse of orientalism and that of ‘orientalism-in-reverse’ (Jalal al-’Azm 18) as resistance reflects the possibility of discernible opposing or at least differing perceptions of the same identity. These perceptions may be arbitrary and politically manipulated but their bases were nevertheless apparent in the subject being identified (Said, 2001b: 6). However the possibility of manipulating these bases makes Introduction 25 identity elusive and any attempt towards defining it would also be arbitrary and not absolute or final. With colonialism came varied reactions, ranging from adoration and idolization to rejection and repudiation. But simple as they sound, these reactions were complex in their results. While adoration and idolization often took the form of mimicry, rejection and repudiation resulted in denial and disavowal. Interstitial as these positions are, they cause the creation of ambivalent identities oscillating between the binaries of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and attempting a negotiation of affiliations. Homi Bhabha observes this ambivalence in his work The Location of Culture (1994). The colonizer and the colonized develop an association of simultaneous attraction and repulsion as a result of colonial interaction. This ambivalence defines the hybridity in third-world identity. Bhabha’s theory of hybridized identity locates it in a space of constant conflict and negotiation. Further the global identity defined in the interstices is characterized by constant pulsation between the polar ends which makes any final signification impossible. Theoretically then, third-world identity in the hybridized state becomes an amoebic category. The state of ambivalence develops out of a process of transgression beyond the boundaries of native and original affiliations into a space of in-betweenness that is marked with 26 Identity Politics and the Third World influences evocative of the native as well as the foreign culture. In this space of duality identity can be defined by ‘neither’ one ‘nor’ the other (Bhabha, 1994: 182) and marks belongingness with the local as well the extra-local. The process of negotiating identity in a space of ambivalence is not a finally approachable end and identity in this third space of being is constantly differing and deferring, to use Derrida’s terminology of ‘differànce’ (1982). Like the dynamics of polarity, ambivalence is also politicized. In the absence of a final signified there are greater means of manipulation which make identity infinitely complex and elusive. This hybridized identity with its lack of final signification works as a flexible entity in the era of global capitalism. In the name of cultural internationalism and global existence, capitalist entrepreneurs create a mixed identity for their target consumers by forging a discourse of globally hybridized peoples desiring the same kind of hybridized products. This application of Bhabha’s theory of hybridity in the global scenario to create a neo-imperial capitalist empire forms the focal point of the politics of globalization. The politics of capitalism and globalization requires the construction of identity in a state of flexibility and flux. The nation-state which was designed to promote imperialism in the initial stages of colonial history and became a vital tool in the Introduction 27 process of resistance later, is a stumbling block in the postWorld War II era of ‘supranational ideologies’: In the postwar world, a world of power blocs and ideological camps, humanity was redivided, but in such a way as to give rise to the hope of transcending the greatest obstacle to a truly global politics and culture: the nation-state. (Smith 172) The promotion of the politics and culture of supra-nationalism serves as a means to promote American capitalism and its global expansion programme: a neo-imperialism, which demands the fundamental base of a culture that is defined in a constantly mutating and flexible code. The advancement in the area of networking and global telecommunication systems further provides a space for global interaction which defines identity in terms of universally locatable identity codes: IP addresses, email ids and the timeless and space-less virtual identities of homogenized citizens of the Internet, or “netizens”. The World Wide Web brings with it a parallel and seemingly liberating identity of a recognizable yet anonymous subject that occupies a space of power owing to its inaccessibility outside the virtual world. Bauman writes of the ‘stranger’ as a possessor of power in the capacity of being beyond the binary codes of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and inhabiting a space of uncertain identity in the polar set. 28 Identity Politics and the Third World Referring to strangeness as a ‘hermeneutic problem’, Bauman states that the strangers question oppositions as such, the very principle of opposition, the plausibility of dichotomy it suggests. They unmask the brittle artificiality of division. (1990: 148) In so questioning the basis of social hierarchy, the virtual world of the World Wide Web occupies a space of power and ostensibly defeats the system of ‘either-or’ distinctions that support all prior politics. This virtual example of identities that are at once homogenized, hybridized, changeable and mutating, irrespective of time and space, in a constant state of travel and migration and simultaneously liberating and powerful, explains the sudden rise and adoption of systems of globalization, multiculturalism and hybridity in physical, economic and ideological worlds. This explains why the culture of hybridity and supra-nationalism appeals on a global level. But outside the virtual world, the hierarchies and politics of internationalism once again define the dynamics of the power systems. Euphoric in its imagination of replaceable and equal identities, the culture of globalization has perpetrators globalizing the colonized world to perpetuate their power and control. No way different from the earlier theories of colonization, the late capitalist theory is based on cultural imperialism in the prime. Introduction 29 Whether the imperialisms are ideological or political or economic, their cultural base is always technical and elitist. They are . . . cultures of state or states, promoted “from above”, with little or no popular base and with little or no reference to the cultural traditions of the peoples incorporated in their domain. (Smith 176) The creation of such cultural domains that are propagated strategically to win power and sustain it is brought about through the generation of mass support and following. In a socalled consumerist atmosphere, myths of customer control are created on the traditional economic patterns and the politics of globalization works on the subversion of the demand-supply equation. Global mass culture depends upon the creation and mass production of goods that will attract universal folk attention. The manufacturing of such ‘eclectic’ (Smith 176) products that Baudrillard calls ‘kitsch’ (1998: 12) is done in a manner that they depict various cultures and tastes in a most celebratory manner of unity in diversity: the popular culture of the ‘United Colours of Benetton’. Their supply is enhanced to levels that it begins to control demand and establish popular culture. On the lines of Baudrillard’s theory of simulacrum (1994), a globalized consumer identity is manufactured through the promotion of products that are strategically produced and advertised in the jargon of inclusivity and consumer choice. 30 Identity Politics and the Third World The methodology of capitalist imperialism is to create a target consumer by generating myths of agency and choice, while controlling supply to drive demand. This facet is achieved through the exercise of ‘micromarketing’ which implies: the tailoring and advertising of goods and services on a global or near-global basis to increasingly differentiated local and particular markets. . . . [But it also] involves the construction of increasingly differentiated consumers, the ‘invention’ of ‘consumer traditions’. . . . From the consumer’s point of view it can be a significant basis of cultural capital formation. (Robertson 28-9) It is through this process of controlling supply and then demand to constitute a sense of popular culture, that identity of the multicultural and multinational is created and utilized for the perpetuation of international power systems. Once again however, it is relevant to note that the culture of globalization can gain such currency only on the basis of popular acceptance and celebration. The fact that globalization and the culture of mélange can acquire a position of power reaffirms the theory of multicultural identities. The politics and culture of globalization could not have succeeded without a popular clientele, which puts the anti-globalization movements and attempts towards nationalist or cultural Introduction 31 revivals in a space of criticism on the grounds of fundamentalism and anti-establishment terrorism. This book is divided into five chapters which include a description and critical analysis of the structuring of identity and culture and the politics that informs it. Centering on the concepts of ‘polarity’ and ‘in-betweenness’, the idea of cosmopolitan or global identity will be deconstructed in the wake of capitalist consumerism and multinational politics. The first chapter is focused on Said’s study of polarity created as a discourse to support the process of imperial annexation, and his attempt towards analyzing it. In Orientalism, Said establishes the significance of projected identities and the power function associated with these representations. Said observes that the idea of an oriental identity is created by the west based on inherited perceptions about it. Profusely referring to Foucault and Gramsci, Said explains that the construct of oriental identity is re-iterated to create a discourse of oriental inferiority upon which the project of colonial annexation can be designed. Said explains the stereotyping of oriental identity and suggests that no one can give an authentic account of culture and identity. Raising issues of ‘reality’ and their philosophical inaccessibility, Said refuses to offer a ‘real’ orient (21) to refute the colonial discourse of it. 32 Identity Politics and the Third World Following the Nietzschean principle of truth being an illusion of which one has forgotten that it is an illusion (2000: 359), Said questions if there is any true representation of the orient which is possible. [T]he real issue is whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all representations, because they are representations, are embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer. (Said, 2001b: 272) Said observes orientalism as a discourse about third-world identity created in an environment of colonial prejudices and exaggerations. Founding his argument in the rhetoric of postmodernist scepticism, Said questions the authenticity of the so-called oriental identity. Critics accuse Said of resolving the conflict between the colonizer and the colonized, and bringing the process of the structuring of identity to a closure (Bhabha, 1983: 200; Young, 1990: 167). Young suggests that Said only points at the politicization of knowledge but does not offer any solutions for it (167). This further raises the idea of what Jalal al’-Azm calls ‘orientalism-in-reverse’, that is, the acceptance of the oriental definition as construed by the colonizer and the subsequent use Introduction 33 of the same to counter colonial rule (6). Said is criticized for not countering the polarity between the colonizer and the colonized. However, in his Afterword to Orientalism, he suggests that his analysis was intended as a means of bringing the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ to a point of negotiation (352). The second chapter is designed with Edward Said’s theory of culture, imperialism and resistance in central focus. In his work, Culture and Imperialism, Said attempts to provide a holistic analysis of identity politics within the context of resistance narratives. This work comes partly in response to the criticism levelled against Said for ignoring the resistance offered by the colonized and situating the orient in a state of passivity (Ahmad, 2005b: 172; Ashcroft, 2001: 40; MooreGilbert, 1997: 51). This chapter is designed to deconstruct Said’s theory of culture in order to trace the development of third-world identity with reference to imperialism and resistance. Through a critical analysis of Said’s thesis of culture and its literary affiliations, this chapter is designed to dismantle those constructs of third-world identity which situate it in polar opposition to the western self-image. While exploring the impact of colonial interaction on third- world identity, the struggle of identity to break through the shackles of discursive definitions is revealed. 34 Identity Politics and the Third World The third chapter focuses primarily on Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity and ambivalence as explained in The Location of Culture [1994]. The colonial experience is observed by Bhabha as an opportunity for identity to mutate and develop ambivalent attitudes. With colonial interaction, the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ shed their polar opposition and come to a middle space of multiple affiliations. This chapter analyzes the ambivalence of the space of ‘negotiated’ identities as explored by Bhabha (1994: 2). Within the colonial experience, the polarity between the colonizer and the colonized evolves into a hybrid state where identity is defined in terms of the space between. Bhabha’s early essays, ‘Of Mimicry and Man’ and ‘Sly Civility’, in which identity is placed in a sort of magnetic field phenomena, reveal that there is constant attraction and repulsion at work which leads to an in- betweenness, which cannot be finally signified. In Derrida’s account of signification, explicated in his 1968 essay ‘Differànce’, difference is opposed to presence. On the syntagmatic chain of identification, Bhabha locates the postcolonial identity in the ‘interstitial space’ (the term is used by Levinas, 1987), where a final signification is not possible and identification is constantly deferred. Bhabha further explains that within the third space of ambivalence, there is a simultaneous attraction and repulsion at work which finally Introduction 35 creates the ‘neither-nor’ identities. He employs Lacan’s idea of ‘mimicry as camouflage’ (qtd. in 1994: 85) and the Freudian theory of ‘fetishization’ to understand the ambivalence of colonial experience. He elaborates on the creation of an ‘other’ which is simultaneously the object of ‘desire and derision’ (1994: 67). Resistance also works in a Freudian method here. Samuel Weber elaborates that in an ambivalent state one must set oneself against what he/she is not, but simultaneously be haunted by what is being excluded (1982: 33). With close reference to Bhabha’s theory of ambivalence and identity defined in the interstitial space between the colonizer and the colonized, this chapter aims to elaborate the concept of identity with respect to the question of hybridization. Bhabha’s treatment of identity and its attributes and his theory about hybridization are closely observed in the colonial context and the key terms of hybridization are critically analyzed through a postmodern methodology. Referring closely to Bhabha’s theory of hybridization, the fourth chapter of the book aims to deconstruct the politics of capitalist imperialism which works through the creation of a consumer identity that is hybridized in a standard format globally. Global hybridization is achieved through the dynamics of international capitalistic trade and thrives on the creation of a standard hybridized consumer. The standard 36 Identity Politics and the Third World hybridized identity of the potential consumer is further popularized through advertising strategies to perpetuate the hierarchies of capitalist multi-nationalism. Capitalism has created the idea of a world culture which rests upon the myth of universal demand and supply. The theory of hybridity is considered a universally negotiated fact and identity is marketed to the third world in the form of a standardized mixture. Under the new colonialism of economic forces, the third world is again being subjected to a discourse: that of homogenous hybridization. There is a simultaneous effort towards resisting this discourse, which is reminiscent of the resistance offered to colonial rule. Under these circumstances, the power function of representation and the discourse mechanism again comes to the fore. The concluding chapter concerns itself with the contemporary context of globalization, wherein culture is driven by the reins of capitalism and discourses about identity have become more economic in nature. All social, political, cultural and environmental issues are governed by market dynamics and capitalization indices. In such a scenario identity in its hybridized form of being ‘neither here nor there’ (Bhabha, 1994: 182) is abused by capitalist entrepreneurs to create a loyal clientele for their products. The identity of the consumer is designed to suit the discursive category of the cosmopolitan citizen. In the imaginaries of global identity, the hyperreal manifestations of consumption based systems are Introduction 37 emphasized to fabricate a fluid identity homogenized in its interstitial existence. Further, with the advent of information technology and the development of the World Wide Web, identity has come to occupy a space of virtual existence. With globalization, the concepts of space, time, self and other have also undergone a change and with this transformation, the understanding of identity and its parameters has also altered. While there is a constant effort to locate a sense of identity, multiculturalism and hybridization on a global scale make it ever more obscure. Through the interrogation of identity in selected works of Said and Bhabha, the book is directed towards the collective study of identity and its development through various stages of colonialism and capitalist imperialism. Said and Bhabha are often construed as contradictory to each other and as chronological stages in the development of the theories relating to third-world identity. Indeed there are a few marked differences between them with regard to their approach towards the issue of identity. Where Said engages in challenging the western construct of the orient, Bhabha is not associated with the issue of the authentic orient or a truer representation of it. Rather, as Stuart Hall seems to echo the concern of deconstructive approach of bringing the ‘key concepts “under erasure”’, instead of attempting to ‘supplant inadequate concepts with “truer ones” . . . which aspire to the 38 Identity Politics and the Third World production of positive knowledge’ (1996: 1), Bhabha is associated with the idea of identity within the matrix of colonial relations and it’s dynamic. He claims to separate his analysis from the task of defining identity. Further, while Said restricts his study to the colonized (especially the Arab world) alone, Bhabha conducts his analysis of identity centering on both the subject positions of the colonizer and the colonized. Finally, where Said resolves the polarity between the colonizer and the colonized within the discourse theory, Bhabha splits the categories individually, and in relation to each other thereby intensifying the conflict in ascertaining an identity. Upon closer analysis however, a strong and undeniable likeness is observed in Said and Bhabha. Not only is their approach towards third-world identity and representation politics similar, their resolution of the conflict in identity is also based on analogous foundations. From the theoretical premise of defining identity as an articulation of power to the ostensible claim towards debunking the canonical understanding of identity; from defining the role of the critic in detachment and distance, to underlining the evolutionary nature of identity and culture, Said and Bhabha run on parallel lines in the attempt to theorize identity. The overlap between their theories goes on to the extent of pointing at a sense of hybridization in Said’s work. He seems to move away from binaries when he gives immense importance to the dismantling Introduction 39 of the structures of power so as to find a synthesis of opposing identities. In ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, Said demands a much greater and stronger ‘crossing of boundaries, for greater interventionism in cross-disciplinary activity.’ Said suggests that it is only through a thorough deconstruction of the existing dominative structures that the identities of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ can be reconstituted (2001a: 215). Bhabha also seems to invoke the theory of polarity in the development of the state of ambivalence in a Saidean manner. While describing the interstices, Bhabha situates the hybridized identity in the space of ‘transit’, beyond the border-lines. It is the flux that informs the space between polarities (1994: 1). Bhabha suggests that singular identities collaborate in the spaces between to lead to hybrid identities (2). His concept of ‘beyond’ or ‘transit’ leads to the inevitable question: Beyond what? Or, transition from what? This implies the acceptance of the border lines as the definite point of break between essentially different (if not oppositional) identities. Here Bhabha seems to believe that on both sides of the border an un-adulterated pure culture exists, a concept which is problematic in that it points at there being a pure and authentic original identity. Further, if Said’s attempts to question the polarity between the crystallized categories of self/other, white/black, occident/orient, west/east, and his repetitive efforts towards breaking the dichotomy (2001b: 350-2) fail in the absence of 40 Identity Politics and the Third World an alternative theory, Bhabha creates a new polarity between presence and difference to replace the Saidean binary. Bhabha privileges difference as a factor in identification, as a mark of hybridized interstitial existence. But the idea of presence necessitates some state of stability from which difference can be marked which is reminiscent of the static identity of self/other cast in timelessness and homogeneity. Despite inhabiting contrasting realms of theory and offering starkly incongruent theses regarding third-world identity and its representation, Said and Bhabha exhibit a marked similarity. This is not to suggest that theories regarding identification as given by these stalwarts of postcolonial theory are repetitively erroneous and need not be offered the academic obeisance they command. The errors that are commonly shared by identity theories offered by Said and Bhabha will be constantly and inevitably present in every theory that attempts to define identity. Identity and its representational politics, when studied through the matrix of human interaction, exhibit a constant deferral of location. Any attempt to define identity fixes it in a category and closes the process which is at best defined as a state of continuum. Identity, and with it culture, can only be perceived as ‘knots’ in the global flows, ‘a constellation of temporary coherence’ (Barker 42). Representation is only a temporary closing of the act of identifying. Any theory about Introduction 41 identity tends to create discourses which are reflective of the modes of power and imperialism. If in the colonial context, polar identity serves as a discourse to help colonization forward, in the capitalist era, the globalized/hybridized identity is the necessary hegemonic tool required to establish a worldwide rule of capitalist imperialism. Identity should then be observed not by politics or power motives, but rather as an individual experience and enunciation, changing with space and time and never coming to a final signification. To use Derrida’s terminology, it carries within it the ‘traces’ of all experience (1982: 12). Identity derives not only from the mutating ‘self’ and ‘other’ but also from the individuating experience. It is this experiential tangent that informs the unending play of signification vis-à-vis identity As we venture into the politics of globalization and multiculturalism, the question of locating identity becomes all the more important. It becomes highly imperative then to understand the politics surrounding representation and its discourses. 42 Identity Politics and the Third World Chapter 1 The Construction of the Orient Prior to Said, the term “orientalism” was used to denote a style or manner characteristic of the orient, or the study of the language or culture of the orient. The term however, has come to imbibe complex politics with the publication of his work. With Orientalism, the term which previously belonged to the seemingly innocuous phraseology of cultural location derived hegemonic political overtones and came to signify a measure employed by the west to extend its authority over the east. Within the dominative structures of colonialism, oriental identity came to be typecast as opposite to the western, and the unquestioned polarity between them became a means of perpetuating colonial rule. With Orientalism, Said uncovers a universally discernible antagonism between the identities of the east and the west and offers his argument about the identity 44 Identity Politics and the Third World of the third world as represented by the west. But his analyses and assertions go only as far as the observation of the creation of hierarchical patterns of colonial identity by the west. This chapter is designed to critically analyze the polarized views about third-world identity as explored in Orientalism and their application in the context of identity politics. In line with postmodernist thought, this chapter centres on a demystification of those constructs which privilege certain definitions of identity. Beginning with the evolution of orientalism from a way of identifying what is eastern or coming to terms with it, to its political and hegemonic overtones, the focus of the chapter shifts to Said and his place in the debate. With a brief description and critical analysis of Said’s arguments about the representation of third-world identity, this chapter is designed to deconstruct the discourse of orientalism and the homogenous, timeless and inferior constructs that third-world identity is isolated in. In its commonly understood form, orientalism denotes a universal and homogenized western perception of the orient created on the basis of a religious and cultural difference between the east and the west. However, this difference soon gives way to discursive construction and then to stark opposition between them. The history of orientalism can be traced back to the 8th century BC when some of the first references to the east were made in recorded literature. In the The Construction of the Orient 45 works of Greek masters like Homer, the east is full of ‘barbarians’ [root: barbaros (Gr.) meaning ‘different’]. One can simplistically associate this reference to barbarity with inferiority; but in the current sense of the word, it is believed to indicate distinction without reference to the east as ‘uncouth or uncultured’ (Irwin, 2006: 10). Nevertheless, the reference to east as something different from west begins with classical Greek literary references. Robert Irwin attempts to uncover an innocent academic intention in the work of orientalists in For Lust of Knowing and tries to absolve them of the blame of discursive practice or politicization of identity. But it cannot be denied that a foundational distinction between the east and the west was created through the works of Aeschylus, Herodotus, Aristotle and Euripides. The GrecoRoman references to the orient may not have created a discourse about oriental inferiority, although there are references to oriental despotism and ‘slavish’ attitudes (Irwin 17) which reflect the western sense of superiority against the east. This notion, when exhumed, supported the Christian/western denigration of Islam/the east after the death of Muhammad in 632 AD when the spread of Islam became intimidating to Christianity. Whether as an act of defense or political disparagement, the west, with its Christian affiliations, scorned the Islamic east and created a discourse about oriental inferiority. Based on a religious divide, the west associated 46 Identity Politics and the Third World itself with Christianity and the east with Islam defining the east or orient as opposite to the west. Žiauddin Sardar gives a brief summary of the development of the discourse of orientalism. Through the works of orientalist scholars like Dante, Averros, Avicenna, Bedwell, John Wycliff and many others, the political and religious hostility between Christianity and Islam translates into an immortal discourse of orientalism. The orient is perceived as a place of exotica where the repressed desires and fantasies of the European can be executed. Quoting from the accounts of western travellers and artists, Sardar observes a common attempt in them to locate all perverseness of body and mind onto the orient. Sardar suggests that orientalism finds a focus with the western perception of Islam and its association of the orient with Islam. He emphasizes: The West lived with the Orient of Islam and its own Orientalist ideas for 800 years before it had significant encounters with any other Orients. . . . The major fluorescence of Orientalism occurred in the sustained period of 400 years that separate the preaching of the First Crusade and Vasco da Gama’s landfall at Calicut in India. (2002: 54) Orientalist ideas were already deep set in the western psyche. With the colonial encounters and the subsequent reiteration of inherited prejudices to promote imperial rule, and a strong The Construction of the Orient 47 effort to ignore anything antithetical to the age-old beliefs (Sardar 4), the static notions about the orient gained currency and translated into a universal and homogenous discourse of orientalism. The development of orientalism based on religious opposition was nevertheless political, but the discourse of orientalism was largely unchallenged. Even 20th century accounts of oriental history, like the one offered by Denis Sinor, present the orient as a place of inferiority vis-à-vis the west, without offering any apologies for such denigration (1954: 3, 23, 35). Sinor simplistically divides his entire study of the orient into five isolated chapters covering the near East, Islam, India, China and Central Eurasia, and claims to offer historical insight into the orient (vii). Western prejudices about oriental inferiority, lack of academic inclination, patchiness and barbarity glare through the works of western historians and orientalists directly or indirectly. But these stereotypical notions about the orient were not refuted till quite recently. Said’s work, as we can see, is definitely not the first in the line of academic attempts to highlight the politics inherent in western ideas of the orient. Even so, it occupies a landmark position in the postmodern world of challenging canonical ideas with counteractive readings. Since 1978, when Orientalism was published, Said has established immense credibility in the area of postcolonial studies. Said initiates 48 Identity Politics and the Third World what can be called an exercise in debunking the domination of western ideology. In his Introduction to Orientalism, Said states clearly his intention of deconstructing Eurocentric ideas of the binaries of east and west. Quoting Raymond Williams, he says that his is an attempt at ‘unlearning the inherent dominative mode’ (28). However, despite its landmark status, Orientalism suffers from a foundational lack of force in dismantling the western perception of the orient. Although Orientalism deals with the concept of third-world identity in great detail, Said’s approach towards it is that of elimination and not assertion. Through a large number and variety of references and their analyses, Said tells us what the orient is not, and thereby offers only a conjectural idea of what it might be. Moreover, Said only seems to present an elaborate picture of the polarity between the east and the west, without making much attempt to challenge it. But before setting off to counter Said’s thesis or his approach, it is imperative to touch briefly upon his main ideas in Orientalism. With Said, a new probe into the politics of orientalism is initiated which centers on European colonization and the power principle of the discourse mechanism. Said observes orientalism from the epistemological point of view. Orientalism is defined as a discourse created by the west about the non-west, so as to define itself in contrast to it. It can be The Construction of the Orient 49 understood as the creation of an idea about the orient as a homogenously regressive group as opposed to the progressive and dynamic west. Said defines orientalism as: [A] distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts . . . an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction . . . but also of a whole series of “interests” . . . it is rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate what is manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power. (2001b: 12) He similarly observes in an Interview that: As a systematic discourse Orientalism is written knowledge, but because it is in the world and directly about the world, it is more than knowledge: it is power since, so far as the Oriental is concerned, Orientalism is the operative and effective knowledge by which he was delivered textually to the West, occupied by the West, milked by the West for his resources, humanly quashed by the West. (qtd. in Viswanathan, 2001: 26) 50 Identity Politics and the Third World Restricting his study to the Arab world, Said observes in Orientalism that the idea of the orient is constructed by the west on the basis of certain prejudices which are inherited by the latter through history and literature. Through a detailed analysis of texts from the genres of history, literature, travelogues and music, Said suggests that a set of beliefs about the orient has been circulated over time in western society. These beliefs, coupled with a ‘positional superiority’ (7) over the orient, create a homogenous perspective of oriental inferiority. The authority of the west gives currency to this view, thereby creating a discourse of orientalism. Said identifies three approaches towards the understanding of orientalism: academic, whereby, orientalism becomes a part of area studies, and a student of the discipline becomes an orientalist ─ a specialist in the study of the orient and the oriental; ontological, whereby, orientalism is observed as the political opposite of occidentalism and a stark opposition is construed between the east and the west; and historical, whereby orientalism becomes the hegemonic discourse that provided as a basis for European control over the orient: a medium to establish a ‘Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’ (3). To Said, orientalism is an attempt of the west towards self-definition. The orient is a place of interest for the westerner not for itself, but for the experience of it as The Construction of the Orient 51 something that stands in contrast to the observer and offers a determining opposition for the colonizing ‘self’. Žiauddin Sardar echoes Said’s views about orientalism as a means to create western self-identity. He says that: Orientalism is a creation of the Western psyche that unleashes power but at the end of the day its most important impact is not in the relations of power and dominance in the real world of politics, economic and military relations. Its greatest potency is within the psyche of the West itself. (11) On similar lines Ashcroft and Ahluwalia suggest: Orientalism demonstrates how power operates in knowledge: the processes by which the West ‘knows’ the Orient have been a way of exerting power over it. (2004: 8) Said explains that ‘the main thing for the European visitor was a European representation of the Orient and its contemporary fate’ [my emphasis] (1). With Said, the practice of orientalism becomes a psychological venture of narrating an eastern ‘other’ which can help construct a western ‘self’ in contrast. Quoting extensively from the likes of Arthur James Balfour and Evelyn Baring, also known as Lord Cromer, Said marks the connection between knowledge and power that formed the basis for colonial rule. With Foucault, Said establishes a relationship between knowledge and power and suggests that the creation 52 Identity Politics and the Third World of a homogenized knowledge about the orient provided the necessary ideological basis for the development and propagation of imperial power and rule. Said is of the opinion that a homogenized knowledge about the orient is created as a result of the systematic collection of ideas about the orient that have been brought to the European from times immemorial. These ideas come as a result of the colonial encounter and the production of literary texts that puts the European in an unchallengeable position of superiority vis-à-vis the orient. [W]hat gave the Oriental’s world its intelligibility and identity was not the result of his own efforts but rather the whole complex series of knowledgeable manipulations by which the Orient was identified by the West. (2001b: 40) This allows the colonizer to rule, judge, study, discipline and illustrate the orient as required. Thus the orient is ‘contained and represented by dominating frameworks’ (40). These dominating frameworks lead to the creation of systems of knowledge that are solidified in time and every attempt at articulating these is an attempt to strengthen the power relation between the colonizer and the colonized. Further, Said establishes that the European representation of the orient ‘is an integral part of European The Construction of the Orient material civilization and culture’ (2). 53 The cultural superstructure of Europe is characterized as one defined by the economic relation it has with its colonies. This economic base situates the orient in a subordinate position vis-à-vis the occident. Said explains that the belief in the superiority of the European civilization and the conviction in the civilizing mission are inherent in the European culture and not based upon personal experience. The prejudice against Eastern inferiority and the myth of the white man’s burden were rampant way before the term orientalism entered the vocabulary of colonial politics. Said visualizes orientalism as a product of the scholarship produced about the east. This scholarship is produced in different fields by people who agree upon a certain idea of an orient which they collectively reiterate in their writings and thereby preserve. But Said argues that orientalism is not just a collection of lies and myths about the orient as created by the westerner. The idea, rather, is that the blanks left in the knowledge about the orient inherited by the scholars, are filled with certain collectively accepted myths about the orient, which make the oriental account and the discourse of thirdworld identity inauthentic and imaginary. Extending what Claude Levi-Strauss calls ‘a science of the concrete’ (1967) to the symbolism of a community whereby everything in it acquires a place and a meaning which 54 Identity Politics and the Third World is concrete and logical, Said suggests that it is this symbolism which creates the idea of that which is ‘ours’ and that which is ‘theirs’ (2001b: 53-54). This differentiation between what can be included in one’s bounds and what lies beyond, is necessary for the creation of borderlines and geographic boundaries. Said suggests that the historical or geographical knowledge about a particular place includes its poetics. The emotional or even rational pull of a space influences the way it is received by those who experience it, further giving meaning to even the empty or distant reaches of that space. The oriental identity is drawn through a process of filling these empty spaces in the partial experience of the orient with the traditionally accepted and inherited homogenous perceptions of it. He claims that any belief that has had such a long life in areas of politics, academics, economics and history, cannot be just a fantasy and must have some grounding in experience. Thus the scholarship regarding the orient contains neither all reality nor all myth. The orient also allows the occident control and a rather powerful position vis-à-vis itself. With reference to Gramsci’s distinction of civil and political society, Said explains that civil society is the one governed by families, schools, unions etc. and the political society consists of institutions. Though culture is a clear part of the civil society, it is nevertheless implicitly influenced by the political society through prevalent ideas and beliefs, and their currency. However, the working of these The Construction of the Orient 55 ideas in any non-totalitarian state is not a function of domination but one of consent. This cultural rule of the institutions is what Gramsci calls ‘hegemony’ (2001b: 7). Said understands that it is this hegemony of European institutions which influenced the civil society of the world, thereby giving the discourse of orientalism the life that it has. The hegemony of European rule depended upon a presumption or discourse of European superiority. This discourse permeated through the institutionalized European power into the civil society of the orient as well and has been in currency ever since. Said mentions that the European had an invincible ‘positional superiority’ (7) over the orient in every relationship that he had with the latter. This positional superiority is not even challenged by the orient, which is why the European got ample chance to observe, think about, write about, and create images of the orient to his own taste and benefit. The orient is hence dressed to be displayed as the European wanted it to be. And this act is possible because of a passive acceptance on the part of the colonized. This, in turn, allows for the creation of a system of knowledge about the orient which can cyclically work at strengthening and immortalizing the hegemony of the colonizer and his ‘positional superiority’ over the colonized. In terms of creating an identity of inferiority for the orient, which is my concern here, the inherent narcissism of the 56 Identity Politics and the Third World colonizer while defining a default opposite in the orient and the Nietzschean ‘will to power’ are at play. European texts – anthropologies, histories, fiction – captured the non-European subject within European frameworks which read his or her alterity as terror or lack. . . . Concomitantly representations of Europe and Europeans within this textual archive were situated as normative . . . [T]he representations of Europe to itself, and the representation of others to Europe – were not accounts or illustrations of different peoples and societies, but a projection of European fears and desires masquerading as scientific/ ‘objective’ knowledges. (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 1989: 93) Within the forces of political manipulation and lack of resistance to the discourse, an imagined oriental identity is created which constantly oscillates between experience and imagination. The orient inspires unfamiliarity in the western perception and causes a tension or an anxiety which contains the attraction towards that which is new and at the same time, a repulsion or fear of the same as it challenges the historical image. Said further explains that there is an unreachable and ‘untouchable’ reality or ‘positivity’ about the orient which is ‘latent’ and another set of definitions, beliefs and stereotypical images which are ‘manifest’ in the texts of the orientalists (2001b: 206). The manifest orient is made available to the The Construction of the Orient 57 orientalist and comfortably placed in his psyche, but latent orientalism is the one which constantly moves away from the orientalist, creating an area of attraction as well as fear for him. The Orient at large, therefore, vacillates between the West’s contempt for what is familiar and its shivers of delight in ─ or fear of ─ novelty. (59) To reduce the fear excited by the unfamiliar orient in the western mind, oriental culture, religion and society are observed from a western point of view, in western terminology. This ‘domestication of the exotic’ (60) includes a distortion of fact, or at least an aberration of it. The orient is now experienced as some kind of distorted imitation or pseudo incarnation of the great original, that is, canonical truth represented by the occident. The scholarship of an orientalist brings no new knowledge to light but rather restates the western views regarding the orient. Said notes that there is nothing entirely wrong with such a domestication of alien cultures to make them accessible to the foreign reader, but such domestication entails a process of falsification, exaggeration, and in some cases absolute exclusion of fact (2001b: 60). According to Said the orient created for western consumption is exotic and mysterious, quintessentially opposite to the west in characteristics, homogenously decadent and superstitious, 58 Identity Politics and the Third World stagnant in its being, incapable of evolution, and redeemable only through western control. This exotic orient slipping into an abysmal degeneration is presented to the philanthropic west with the power to define (even create) perceptions about it. In the hands of the modern orientalist, orientalism is a strategic device to mummify the orient in a stereotypical mould with the intention of advancing colonial rule. Said alleges that the western observation of the orient is not only a prejudiced one, but also seldom based on observations in the east. [W]hat the Orientalist does is to confirm the Orient in his readers’ eyes; he neither tries nor wants to unsettle already firm convictions. (65) This totalitarian method of making a discipline out of the accepted definitions about the orient ends up creating the practice of orientalism as an ‘insensitive schematization of the entire Orient’ (68). Said elaborates how orientalism is an idea available to the westerner and not a first-hand experience. It is inherited as a belief and reproduced and marketed in an environment which is open to accepting the same belief as truth. The Orient, in short, existed as a set of values attached, not to its modern realities, but to a series of valorized contacts it had had with a The Construction of the Orient 59 distant European past. This is a pure example of the textual, schematic attitude. (85) This ‘textual schematic attitude’ that Said argues about is the conscious reiteration of the past experiences as if they were an unchanging phenomena. Further a conscious recourse to these values strengthens and perpetuates the popular view about the orient. This textual image of the orient, devoid of its modern evolution, is schematically a part of the hegemonic process of domesticating the orient. Further, the orient is presented in terms not of its own existence or identity but rather in terms of ‘world history, a euphemism for European history’ (86). There is also an attempt not to present the orient in modern terms but rather to create the imagined orient of the past in a modern setting. [T]he Orient was reconstructed, reassembled, crafted, in short, born out of the Orientalists’ efforts. (2001b: 87) Hence oriental history becomes a history not of the oriental people but rather a history of the orientalists’ invention and potency. Said identifies this recreation of the orient as the project of the colonizers to perpetuate their control over the orient and also to maintain power over it. Drawing out a distinction between pure and political knowledge, Said suggests that no artist or critic of any sort can 60 Identity Politics and the Third World be divorced from the conscious or unconscious experience of his/her social and political environment. No writing can be termed ‘nonpolitical’ as all writing is influenced, directly or indirectly, by the socio-political environment (10). [P]olitical society in Gramsci’s sense reaches into such realms of civil society as the academy and saturates them with significance of direct concern to it. (11) With the influence of the political on the civil, the latter is bound to be ‘tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact’ (11). This means knowing constantly that: [O]ne belongs to a power with definite interests in the Orient, and more important, that one belongs to a part of the earth with a definite history of involvement in the Orient almost since the time of Homer. (11) The modern orientalist, hence, identifies himself as a hero entrusted with the task of rescuing the agency-less orient from succumbing to obscurity. This idea of restoring, and many ways even creating the orient, and bringing it simultaneously to the modern world of sciences and refined arts leaves traces of power on the orientalist. The orientalist, lured by this aspect of power continues to ‘copy’ the inherited oriental experience into history (121). The Construction of the Orient 61 With reference to the concepts of ‘strategic location’ (the place of the author vis-à-vis the text and the subject), and ‘strategic formation’ (the relationships between various texts and kinds of texts and genres and their influence on the discourse building phenomena) (20), Said analyzes how an orientalist author occupies a position of authority in his narrative. The imperial authorial position privileges certain concepts, strategically obscuring the objectivity of a text and the real picture remains hidden. [T]he written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as “the Orient”. (21) The oriental does not control or reflect the creation of his identity as a discourse. He can only go as far as to suggest it in the first place, but the rest of the idea is purely a creation of the colonizer. This creation is controlled by the doctrinal and theoretical urge to define the orient in intellectual standards guided by the determining historical works which have been revisited from time to time but hardly ever challenged. The pronouncements made about the orient are the ‘purest form of Romanticism’ (137). By the time of Renan, as noted by Said, the ideas regarding the orient had become a necessity for the European scholar. All of European 62 Identity Politics and the Third World scholarship by then was based upon a comparative study of oriental scholarship and its European counterparts in religion, culture, philology and science (141), and the stereotypical notions about the orient were a prerequisite to define the west as superior to the east. It is as though the orient is placed in the laboratory, or the museum where it can be dissected and displayed and talked about in exaggerated forms and treated as something which is at the disposal of the European scholar who has the authority to define it at will. Renan’s ‘philological laboratory’ becomes the ‘locale of his European ethnocentrism’ from where the power is processed (2001b: 146). The idea of a constructed orient indicates a fabricated identity. For Said, the construction, or fabrication of the orient is not only a romantic endeavour for the orientalist but also a ‘messianic’ opportunity. The orientalist approaches the orient as a romantic experience which can enrich the former with its spirituality and antiquity, but is simultaneously an area which requires the orientalist’s intervention so as to evolve itself into a modern and scientific entity (154). The orientalist assumes the role of a generous benefactor bringing about the redemption of the orient. According to Said, the orientalist approaches the orient as a place in the past one has to return to. It is a home coming in some ways as it allows one to be free from the material bondages of the western world: a place of pilgrimage and The Construction of the Orient 63 cleansing. This romance attached to the orient makes it a poetic ‘restorative reconstruction’ to create knowledge about the orient and make it accessible for the westerner (168). But the spiritual treasures of the orient are not raised to a point where it can be elevated from its positional inferiority. Whatever utility the Orient possessed for resolving European problems there was an overriding consensus built and set into concrete by the intellectual temper of the Enlightenment, the stasis of the Orient, in contrast to the progress of the West. (Sardar 38) At the same time, there are a few aspects of the orient which are not easy for the Europeans to digest. These need to be deleted or appropriated. This entails modifying the observed fact to make it fit for European consumption. The orient is then ‘reborn as European right-to-power over it’ and the identity of the orient is created out of the historically brought forward discourse and personal fantasies of the colonial masters (179). The field of orientalism derives its identity from its relationship with other schools of study, social institutions and political fact, and by and large denotes a sort of consensus: certain things, certain types of statement, certain types of work that have seemed for the Orientalist correct. . . . Orientalism can thus be regarded as a manner of 64 Identity Politics and the Third World regularized (or Orientalized) writing, vision, and study dominated by imperatives, perspectives, and ideological biases ostensibly suited to the Orient. The Orient is taught, researched, administered, and pronounced upon in certain discrete ways. (2001b: 202) The language used by the orientalist then becomes an endeavour for the perpetuation of western empire and not the orient, and this language with its ‘metaphors’, as Said quotes from Nietzsche, becomes ‘canonical, and obligatory to a people’. It becomes a set of ‘illusions’ which have been so engrained in the psyche of the people that their counterfeit can barely be identified (2001b: 203). The ‘orient’ does not stand for the identity of the colonized people, but rather denotes the field of meanings attributed to the term. The discursive representation of the orient, then, does not depict it but only offers a representation which is embedded first in the language and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer . . . implicated, intertwined, embedded, interwoven with a great many other things besides the “truth”. (272-3) The imperial process necessitates the confinement of the orient by the orientalist in patterns bound by him, so that his authority in displaying the orient is maintained. It is thus that the orient The Construction of the Orient 65 is defined as stagnant and homogeneous to maintain a stereotypical ‘other’ for the occident. Discussing the change that has come about with the advent of capitalism and globalization, Said states that the orient is ‘dehumanized’ for American consumption and policy (291). The orientalist’s propaganda now includes a detailed philological study of the orient so as to employ the diplomatic policies for global economics. The supremacy is established in the corporate machinery of seemingly fair and open markets. However, the dogmas regarding oriental inferiority, antiquity, inability to define itself and ability to incite fear in the “civilized” world are as rampant as ever. The orient is still defined by a reductive reaction of the orientalist to the oriental experience. The traditional construction of orientalism is manifest with newer and more contemporary discourses. The orient becomes a fragmented and ‘amorphous’ other in postmodern terms (Sardar 116), embodying newer essentialisms with the traditional discursive attributes. [New] formulations of Orients emerge from the repository of shared Orientalist understanding, that is assimilated by cultural osmosis from many disparate strands and locations. . . . In postmodern times, “the Orient” has been globalized, it is located everywhere and everywhere it can be subjected to 66 Identity Politics and the Third World Orientalization, from the one ruling perspective that defines itself as the West. (Sardar 114) The present state of third-world identity, with its inferior and essentialist status even in fragmentation and multiplicity, points towards a continued significance of the study of the discourse of orientalism and its application. Calling for a skeptical attitude towards discursive systems, Said suggests that in the current scenario an attempt towards recounting an authentic idea of third-world identity can be achieved only in a space which allows multiple voices and their interplay. Said’s deconstructive analysis of the discourse of orientalism belongs to what Aijaz Ahmad identifies in his 1995 essay ‘Orientalism and After’ as the well-known intellectual tradition of writers debunking the great monuments of their own academic discipline or examining the complicity of intellectuals in dominant ideologies and fabrications of illegitimate power. (173-4) This tradition of criticism involves a re-reading of canonical texts so as to unravel the strategies of power implicated within them. In ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, Said again marks his interest in charging against the ‘metropolitan power’ with a ‘decentred consciousness’ (214). Said gives immense significance to the post-colonial ‘revisionist’ works which The Construction of the Orient 67 allow the repeated perusal of the colonial experience so as to break down the absolute identities of “self” and “other” (2001b: 352). Said's research is centered on the creation of the discourse of orientalism and its application. His analysis of third-world identity as reflected through the discourse of orientalism ostensibly debunks the canonical version of the binary opposition between the east and the west. However, Said nowhere rejects the opposition between the orient and the occident. In the three aspects he employs to study the discourse of orientalism − academic, ontological and historical − the orient is always in a position of powerlessness against the west, as a laboratory subject of observation, an inferior alter-ego, and a colonial subject respectively. In strengthening the polarity between the east and the west by his ‘remorseless drive to judge the texts of orientalism into a straightforward “for” and “against” division’ (Young, 1990: 177-8), Said becomes rather anti-occidental in his perception of orientalists. It is thus that Bart Moore-Gilbert criticizes Said for ‘homogenizing the sites of enunciation of Orientalist discourse . . . suppressing important cultural and geographical, as well as historical differences in the varied cultures of Western imperialism’ (45). With plentiful references to Foucault and Gramsci, Said develops a theory regarding the creation of the discourse of 68 Identity Politics and the Third World orientalism. The west creates the idea of the oriental ‘other’ so as to define its ‘self’ in opposition to it. The history of Orientalism shows that it is not an outward gaze of the West toward a fixed, definite object that is to the east, the Orient. Orientalism is a form of inward reflection, preoccupied with the intellectual concerns, problems, fears and desires of the West that are visited on a fabulated, constructed object by convention called the Orient. (Sardar 13) Since this knowledge about the orient was to define the west by default, as an opposite of the former, the orient was made to inhabit everything that the west despised or lacked. Said goes as far as to suggest that the west sees the orient as ‘a sort of surrogate and even underground self’ (2001b: 3). Critics agree with Said: Orientalism is surrogate self-definition of the dominant culture as much as deployment of the difference of an Orient. (Sardar 116) Moore-Gilbert however finds a complexity in Said’s definition of the orient as an ‘underground’ self, which implies that the west defines the orient as an object that is outside but still inside, in so much as it is a far off experience and an inferior image of the self at the same time (44). But Said nowhere claims to define the orient. He believes that his work is just an The Construction of the Orient 69 attempt at understanding orientalism as it is designed by the west. Said does not suggest that the orient is an ‘underground self’ of the west, but rather that it serves as one for it. Further, the Foucauldian analysis of orientalism by Said brings forth the concept of defining identity by difference. In line with Antonio Gramsci, Said believes that there is a relation between what is defined as the ‘civil’ and the ‘political’ society (6). The former consists of schools and families, and the latter consists of social and political institutions. The civil society is affected by the political society through ‘consent’ rather than direct rule. According to Said then, In any society not totalitarian . . . certain cultural forms predominate over others, just as certain ideas are more influential than others; the form of this cultural leadership is what Gramsci has identified as hegemony. (2001b: 7) Said mentions that the European had an invincible ‘positional superiority’ (7) over the orient in every relationship with the latter. In the absence of any great resistance to the superiority of the west by the colonized, the orientalist continued to strengthen the discourse of orientalism to propagate and immortalize imperial rule. But hegemony through consent is not everlasting and is consequently questioned. This raises doubts about Said’s and 70 Identity Politics and the Third World Gramsci’s assumption of a silent and ‘consent[ing]’ orient. This explanation assumes a stereotypical response to colonial rule and does not consider any subjectivity of experience. The colonized are seen as inert and devoid of agency. In such a state of affairs, the colonized would have continued to be under imperial rule and there would have been no attempts towards deconstructing the myths of orientalism. The large body of work on orientalism bears testimony to the fact that the proposition of a ‘consent[ing]’ oriental is unreal and does not explain transformation through resistance (Ashcroft, 2001: 40). Said is of the view that oriental identity is created out of literary and historical narratives. He asserts that no artist or critic of any sort can be delinked from the conscious or unconscious experiences of his life and its environment. This environment contains the social and political reality as well. A writer or a critic is then always tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact . . . [No] production of knowledge in the human sciences can ever ignore or disclaim its author’s involvement as a human subject in his own circumstances, then it must also be true that for a European or American studying the Orient, there can be no disclaiming the main circumstances of his actuality: that he comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second. (11) The Construction of the Orient 71 With this backdrop of social and political influence, the artist or critic of the eighteenth century west saw the orient first as a place where Europe had economic interests, and then as a place of real experience. These interests seemed to the west the foundation on which the history of the new world could be constructed. Said concludes that no writing can be termed ‘nonpolitical’ as all writing is influenced, directly or indirectly, by the socio-political scenario (10). By so relating the concept of politics and literary criticism, Said defies the ‘suprapolitical objectivity’ claimed by the so called ‘true’ knowledge (10). He also brings together two supposedly distant streams in a relation that cannot be severed. Even an ardent critic of Said, Žiauddin Sardar, credits him for adding the new dimension of literary criticism to the erstwhile historical study of orientalism making it a multidisciplinary exercise. Further, with reference to Foucault and his theory of generating power through knowledge, Said brings the ‘repackaged critiques of Orientalism into a new strategic location’ (Sardar 67). But with this relation between the political scenario and culture, there appears the problem of locating the critic. If all knowledge is affected by the political and social scenario of the artist or critic, then how can any knowledge be objective? Said suggests that a critic be simultaneously inside and outside the text, so as to provide his subjective experience with a sense of 72 Identity Politics and the Third World objectivity. But what Said fails to explain is the method to ‘effect critical distance’ (Young, 1990: 168). Said himself admits in ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, that it is impossible to produce knowledge that is non-dominative and noncoercive . . . in a setting that is deeply inscribed with the politics, the considerations, the positions, and the strategies of power. (200) Despite this acknowledgement of incapability to define the role of the critic, and the rather humanitarian and progressive intention of questioning the hegemonic overtones of narratives of identity that he states in his ‘Afterword’ to Orientalism (351), Said does not succeed in resolving the issue. With every effort to objectively debunk the previous narrative, a critic creates a new and different, but inevitably influenced view about identity, and the authority granted to intellectual rhetoric creates a new narrative to debunk. The creation of a ‘true’ knowledge that is not affected by the critic’s historical, social, geographical, economic, political, cultural and intellectual environment is a euphoric idea which cannot be fulfilled. According to Said, the discourse about oriental identity was handed down to the west by the long history of a rampant myth of orientalism that had been in currency since Homer. This myth was turned into a sort of discipline by the The Construction of the Orient 73 Napoleonic invasions of Egypt in the 18th century. Said notes in Orientalism: [A]fter Napoleon, then, the very language of Orientalism changed radically. Its descriptive realism was upgraded and became not merely a style of representation but a language, indeed a means of creation. . . . the Orient was reconstructed, reassembled, crafted, in short, born out of the Orientalist’s efforts. (87) In ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’, he restates that the orient was created by the west in the 18th century, ‘leav[ing] the Orient far behind’ so as to advance colonial rule over it (202). It can be said then, that the historical discourse about the orient served as the raw material which could be manipulated to create an orient that justified colonization. It is observed with respect to Said’s Orientalism that it uncovers the way by which a discourse upon repetition becomes a knowledge tradition [which] is so integrated with structures of economic or political power that it bec[omes] handmaiden to colonialism; indeed, it articulate[s] the forces of colonial aspirations and justifie[s] colonialism in advance. (Sardar 69) One may say that the orientalism in practice since the times of Homer had begun to be used as a political tool in the 18th 74 Identity Politics and the Third World century with colonialism. The 18th century, simply put, marks the beginning of colonial or political orientalism. This aspect of Said’s theory has been carelessly missed out by critics who challenge the relationship between colonialism and orientalism as presented by him (Ahmad, 2005b; Irvin 285-6). Through a play on words singled out to manipulate meaning, Ahmad concludes rather irrationally that colonialism was, according to Said, ‘a product of Orientalism itself’ (2005b: 181). Academic orientalism had been in practice since the times of Aeschylus. Ahmad acknowledges that orientalism had ‘already been set in motion . . . in the earliest of the Athenian tragedies, not in general but in the specific regularities which will henceforth determine its structure: Asia’s loss, Europe’s victory; Asia’s minuteness, Europe’s mastery of discourse . . .’ (180). But the Athenian tragedies were not designed to assist a political venture. They were reflective of the historical state of affairs (Irwin 11-12). The future colonial relation between these communities was incidental. That the orientalism of the 18th century drew its legitimacy in part from the long history that preceded it was only reflective of its political intention and colonial point of view. It would be too simplistic to conclude that the historical discourse about the orient led to the Napoleonic invasions or colonization, or that the accounts of Napoleon’s invasions created a discourse about the orient which in turn led to The Construction of the Orient colonialism (Moore-Gilbert 41). But colonialism 75 and orientalism are, to a great extent, co-dependent forces, not entirely responsible, but still historically necessary, for each other. A similar misreading is offered by Sadik Jalal al-’Azm, when he concludes in a totalizing fashion that to Said orientalism as a discourse was solely responsible for colonization and that he was forcing a relationship between ‘Academic Orientalism’ and ‘Institutional Orientalism’ (7). Jalal al-’Azm wonders that had the long tradition of Cultural-Academic Orientalism fashioned a less peculiar, more sympathetic and truthful epistemological framework, then the Powers would have acted on the Orient more charitably and viewed it in a rather favorable light. (8) Critics like Ahmad however disagree with the idea that a discourse about a particular community can lead to its colonial occupation. Ahmad denies the significance granted to orientalism in colonial terms and explains that colonialism was a function of imperial capitalism (2005b: 184). What Jalal al-’Azm and Ahmad fail to observe, however, is that Said nowhere mentions that orientalism was the only reason for colonization. Said suggests that the discourse of orientalism served as a basis for ‘cultural 76 Identity Politics and the Third World hegemony’ which granted a ‘positional superiority’ to the westerner ‘in a whole series of possible relationships with the orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand’ [my emphasis] (7). Said goes as far as to acknowledge that orientalism is not ‘representative and expressive of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world’ (12). What is more, Said has, probably intentionally, avoided the term ‘colonization’ in Orientalism as far as possible, because his primary concern is to deconstruct the discourse of orientalism and not that of colonization. Said suggests that the myths about a decadent orient served as a justification for colonization and the exercise of hegemony over it. The colonizers as well as the colonized were made to believe that the occupation of the orient was an act of humanism rather than material advancement. For the colonizer such a humanist projection was used to justify the colonial rule to the west and to create a discourse of western superiority and magnanimity in the colonies. Through the gamut of knowledge about the orient, recycled and reiterated over time, western man was universally accepted as the higher being charged with the messianic task of humanizing the colonized peoples. With an imputed Darwinism of ‘survival of the fittest’ (Spencer 444), the white man became the self-proclaimed “fit” race without whose guidance and governance, the “unfit” non-white races would perish. What Kipling termed the ‘white man’s The Construction of the Orient 77 burden’ (280), and Marx observed as a ‘regenerating’ ‘mission’ (1973: 320), was in fact an acknowledgement of the belief that it is only through western control and supervision that the orient can be revived from its endless decadence. As Young remarks in White Mythologies: [F]rom the colonial perspective, humanism began as a form of legitimation produced as a self-justification by the colonizers for their own people, but later . . . humanism was utilized as a form of ideological control of the colonized peoples. (161) E. M. Forster, in A Passage to India (1999), presents this inherent belief of the colonizer in the civilizing mission through Ronny Heaslop, the hero who ardently believes that he has been chosen to undertake the enormously difficult task of organizing the ‘muddle’ that was India. But paradoxically, the façade of humanism created by the colonizers led to a disillusionment in the ‘mission civilisatrice’ (Said, 1994a: 33) and finally resulted in a decolonizing mission. Fanon criticizes the so-called humanism of the colonizer in his revolutionary work, The Wretched of the Earth (1961): Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. 78 Identity Politics and the Third World For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. (251) Aimé Cesàire similarly reacts: My turn to state an equation: colonization = thingification. I hear the storm. They talk to me about progress, about achievements, about diseases cured, improved standards of living. I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled . . . institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibility wiped out. . . . I am talking about thousands of men sacrificed to the Congo-ocean. . . . I am talking about millions of men in whom fear has been cunningly instilled, who have been taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkeys. (1972: 21-22) Similar echoes of disillusionment in western humanism are evinced in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, where Marlow realizes ‘the horror’ of it all through the suffering of Kurtz (2003: 106); and in Sally Morgan’s My Place, where Arthur Corunna derides the white man’s pretense of humanism and philanthropism (1987: 266-8). In the preface to Fanon’s work, Jean Paul Sartré confesses passionately: The Construction of the Orient 79 Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love honor, patriotism and what have you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty niggers, dirty Jews and dirty Arabs. (2001: 22) Said similarly observes that for the colonizer the Orient and everything in it was, if not patently inferior to, then in need of corrective study by the West. . . . Orientalism, then, is the knowledge of the Orient that places things Oriental in class, court, prison or manual for scrutiny, study, judgment, discipline, or governing. (2001b: 41) This seeming generosity of governance on the part of the west was based on a discourse of oriental inferiority vis-à-vis the west. In an analysis of individual writers and officers of the west, Said shows how they viewed the orient as a homogenously inferior and stagnant category for which a European make-over was imperative. Said explains that the orient was granted a politically manufactured identity which served two main purposes for the western ruler: first, it provided an opportunity to create an identity for the ‘self’ in opposition and superiority to the oriental ‘other’; and second, it supported the western claim to colonial advancement. This is not to say that colonial rule could not be established without 80 Identity Politics and the Third World orientalism, but that the discourse about an inferior orient eased the colonial invasion. The politics of identity manifested itself in the intensification of oriental inferiority vis-à-vis the west. Said elaborates through references to literature, history and documented accounts of colonialism that oriental identity was a crafted definition, seldom based on individual experience and depicted in timeless terms. The philosophy of humanism was a garb to disguise the political intentions underlined in the creation of an oriental identity. However, the concept of humanism was applied in absolutely non-humanist terms in imperial colonies. Similarly, Said dismantles the pretense of western humanism with western scholarship. It is worth mentioning however, that Said’s argument against the so-called humanism of the west that favoured the ‘white man’, originates in the west. According the Young, Said uses western theory to debunk a western discourse (1990: 171). His dependence on western criticism is an incongruity. In his attempt to counter the western constructs of oriental identity, Said employs arguments from the west alone and does not allow the orient to have a voice. He seems to debunk western discourse about the orient by referring to their narratives and does not let the ‘real’ orient, if there is one, speak. Further, if a critic’s social and political environment influences his writing, as Said himself The Construction of the Orient 81 explains with reference to the relationship between ‘civil’ and ‘political’ society (2001b: 11), then how far can one depend upon western criticism of western systems? Along with that, if Said suggests that western representation of the orient is not real (174), he must provide a few instances of the orient defining itself, even if one is to finally conclude that there is no ‘truth’, in Nietzschean terms (Nietzsche, 2000: 359). It is for the lack of a second voice that Said’s work sounds ‘monologic’ (Moore-Gilbert 51; Ning, 1997: 61). Ironically the western voices which have ‘always silenced the Orient’ are the only voices heard in Orientalism besides Said’s (Ahmad, 2005b: 172; Warraq, 2007: 266). Said is charged for ignoring the work of theorists like Tibawi, Djait, Hodgson and Alatas, who came before him and questioned the discursive identity of the orient as presented in the works of the orientalists. But their eastern origin and their political location in colonized countries caused their voice to be deprived of the international audience that Said commands owing to his own location in a metropolitan Western University. Critics also accuse him of denigrating Islamic scholarship as grotesque and fanatic when he develops a polarity between the east and the west as the religious and the secular worlds respectively (Sardar 75-76). 82 Identity Politics and the Third World Paradoxically, the success of Orientalism is based on the very dynamic that sustained Orientalism as an arch discourse in the first place. (Sardar 68) In other words, the counter-discourse which is supposed to come from the orient still comes from the western/powerful narrator. Further, Said’s dependence on western theory is bound to complicate things when he claims to demystify western discourse about the orient. Said condemns oriental identity as created by the west but does not provide any solution or alternative ideas for the orient. The western definition of the orient is rejected because of the colonizer’s political intentions and lack of experience. However the attack on orientalism is again from a source which is equally lacking in experience and can be guided by the politics of criticism. There are some problems with Said’s treatment of orientalism as a discourse too. Said’s dependence on Foucault is somewhat unrealistic. Foucault suggests that the imperial discourse is used for the hegemonic purpose of creating a subject identity against which a ruling identity can be designed (Ashcroft, 2001: 40). Foucault’s analysis of the society ‘privileges discourse and language as the prime determinants of social reality and . . . power as “decentred”, “impersonal” and arbitrary in terms of its “social interests”’ (Moore-Gilbert 41). Said also acknowledges a dependence on Gramsci’s theory of The Construction of the Orient 83 hegemony which suggests that domination of a community is possible only through ‘consent’ by the dominated (2001b: 11). Such suppositions are rather simplistic and ignore the possibility of resistance and revolution. In order to merge Foucault’s discourse theory with the Marxist perspective of power as a source of control through repression, and the Gramscian concept of hegemony, Said presents orientalism as a scheme which is totalitarian, direct and consciously orchestrated (Moore-Gilbert 41). Whereas Foucault describes power as the unconscious creation of systems of knowledge which privilege a certain power, Said defines it as a conscious design whereby things are projected with an intention to power. This is not to say that the colonizer did not have an intention to power, it just suggests that it cannot be possible that the westerners had a homogenous desire to create a colony wherein the malicious and treacherous interests of their community can be fulfilled, and had the synchronization to bring it about in such a universal manner. This would entail that the oriental identity created by the west was not entirely rooted in colonial desire and could have a strain of reality in it, even if in the smallest detail. Said’s inability to make up his mind regarding the influence of individual authors on the creation of the discourse about third-world identity is highly problematic and comes as a conflicting idea. At times, Said seems to side with Foucault in 84 Identity Politics and the Third World saying that every author bears an indelible imprint of the ideas preceding him and his actuality and cannot write beyond their influence (2001b: 11, 204). At other times, however, Said expresses his utmost belief in the ‘determining imprint of individual writers’ (23). This incongruity in Said’s founding ideas poses a problem of approaching the politics of identity governing the discourse about the third world (Irwin 290). Further, Said seems to ignore the fact that Foucault belongs to the anti-humanist mode of thought and applies his theory to understand the humanism of Auerbach (MooreGilbert 41). Unlike Foucault, Said believes in the centrality of European identity and its power to create history for the world. Further, he suggests that there runs a singular discourse between the Greek and European mode of thought about the orient, thereby connecting the Greek and European identity in line with the humanist tradition. Finally, Said elevates the canon of ‘great books’ to the level of something that can create or destroy power. Though he attempts to discredit their power, he still uses a similar kind of canonical western critical system to do so (Ahmad, 2005b: 167-8). These fundamental differences between Said and Foucault make his reliance on the latter questionable and rather flimsy. In addition to this, Said supports Renan’s view that the orient was a sort of object of study in a ‘laboratory’ where the western ruler stands ‘creating, confining and judging the The Construction of the Orient 85 material he discusses (2001b: 143). Such a description is not only dehumanizing but also unrealistic in presuming total inaction on the part of the orient. Said asserts this dehumanizing view in ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’ where he states that ‘the Orient’s actuality receded inexorably into a kind of paradigmatic fossilization’. This ‘fossilization’ leaves the orient as a powerless laboratory subject on which the anthropology of the west can be defined (203). With reference to the western projection of the orient, Said notes that the west reverted to a ‘classically standard image’ (154) of the orient, which was eventually ‘racist . . . imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric’ in its approach (204). This static picture of the orient becomes timeless in Said’s theory and almost always depicts a racist treatment of the orient as an entity incapable of evolution and change. But Said ignores the fact that the same western history which he condemns has presented various faces of the orient. Western history presented the orient and its evolution through the colonial rule, resistance and finally revolution. He ignores that ‘the West has always engaged in (re)negotiations of power with the East, which is never conceived of as absolute’ (Moore-Gilbert 51). Said is accused of presenting the orient as a perpetual victim, lacking agency and ‘wallowing in self-pity’ portraying the west as a constant tormentor universally 86 Identity Politics and the Third World denigrating the east without mercy or exception (Warraq 29, 267). Later, however, Said contradicts his own version of the western discourse of orientalism as timeless and homogenous when he talks about ‘latent’ and ‘manifest’ orientalism. Said explains that the orient slips farther and farther from western imagination and experience. This vision of a far receding orient is ‘latent’ orientalism which includes the inherited fantasies and imaginations that cannot be reached or fathomed. ‘Manifest’ orientalism (206) is experienced by the traveller or trader and exaggerated to include the whole orient in a textual representation. Said suggests that the classical ideas about the orient are juxtaposed with the real experience of the orient. These perspectives from narratives of different times exist in a ‘tension’ with each other, but finally ‘converge’ (Young, 1990: 170). In Said’s words, [W]hat the scholarly Orientalist defined as the “essential” Orient was sometimes contradicted, but in many cases was confirmed, when the Orient became an actual administrative obligation. [my emphasis] (223) Said seems to point at a difference between the earlier and later experience and narration of the orient by the west. This implies that the western discourse about the orient is not, after all, timeless, as suggested by Said. Further, the concepts of ‘latent’ The Construction of the Orient 87 and ‘manifest’ orientalism are presented in an essentially binary arrangement which creates a problem of analysis with respect to narratives of colonialism. Said presents these two aspects as sometimes contradictory but later converging, but does not clarify the link between these ‘stark’ alternatives (Moore-Gilbert 42-3). It is noteworthy that the western conception of oriental identity differs from the historical discourse about it. The ‘latent’ identity of the orient is one which stretches beyond western limits of absorption. In every experience of the orient, there is something that remains obscure. This obscurity, no matter how different in each circumstance, is collectively termed oriental mystery (2001b: 206). Eventually mystery comes to be imagined as an essential part of oriental identity in western perception. The textual experience of the orient, or the ‘manifest’, differs from the ‘latent’ identity. This difference can allow an alternate identity for the third world. It can be used to offer a sense of evolution to third-world identity. But the western observers cannot allow such a contradictory perception to persevere. The reasons for this practice range from political motivation to salability. The western critic cannot offer an alternate and/or popularly undesirable oriental identity to the western readers. The difference between the old and the new perception of the third world is negotiated in the spaces of oriental mystery. In keeping with the age-old 88 Identity Politics and the Third World discourse about third-world identity, the meager experience of the orient is used as a sample to represent the third-world at large. But Said can be accused of homogenizing the thirdworld as well. Not only does he restrict his study of orientalism to the Arab world (Ning 61; Sardar 70; Warraq 266), he also uses it as the absolute reflection of colonial practices ignoring the difference of colonial treatment, identity politics and reactionary/ revolutionary methods employed in various parts of the third world (Young, 1990: 171). Said’s almost obsessive urge to combine various theories of power and presenting the west as a scheming perpetrator against the orient makes him almost create a discourse about occidentalism: ‘a stereotyping in reverse’ (Sardar 71). He ends up creating an essentialist image of the occident vis-à-vis the orient, so much so that he concludes at one point that every European in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric. [my emphasis] (2001b: 204) The fact that he does this reflexively reaffirms the Foucauldian theory of discourse being an unconsciously perpetuated social belief. What is more, Said’s deep-rooted belief in the essential occidental identity as opposed to the oriental identity makes The Construction of the Orient 89 him assert the polarity between them that the west had been strengthening. Said becomes rather anti-occidental in his perception of orientalists. He is accused of ‘homogenizing the sites of enunciation of Orientalist discourse . . . suppressing important cultural and geographical, as well as historical differences in the varied cultures of Western imperialism’ (Moore-Gilbert 45). Said’s work appears to be a strategic move against all western attempts to know the orient, ignoring what could just be ‘disinterested intellectual inquiry’ (Warraq 38). The ontological definition of orientalism, as presented by Said, suggests that it is ‘a style of thought based upon the ontological and epistemological distinction between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident”’ (2). Said here creates a ‘fixed’ identity of ‘a Europe . . . which has always had an essence and a project, an imagination and a will; and of the “Orient” as its object ─ textually, militarily and so on’ (Ahmad, 2005b: 183). The unchanging object-subject relationship strengthens the opposition between the two discursive categories. Further, Said dates the discourse of orientalism and hence a European idea about the orient back to the times of Homer, which suggests that the European conception of the orient is homogenous and timeless. The acceptance of an ‘ontological distinction’ between the orient and the occident is what Jalal al-’Azm calls an ‘orientalism in reverse’ (18). Said explains that there exists an ontological 90 Identity Politics and the Third World distinction between the orient and the occident ‘to the decisive advantage of the latter’ (Jalal al-’Azm 6) even prior to any colonial advancement made by it (2001b: 42). This is suggestive of Said’s belief in this ontological difference. Said attempts to expose the discursive biases with relation to ‘Ontological Orientalism’ (Jalal al-’Azm 18) but he himself seems to believe in these differences. However Said cannot be blamed altogether for homogenizing western ideas about the orient. He explains the difference between English and French colonialism though the difference of perspective between Edward Lane and Chateaubriand as colonial travelers. The British show an impersonal and scientific treatment of the orient, whereas the French show a rather aesthetic interest in the orient (2001b: 192). However, Said can be accused of creating absolute representatives categorizing out French of and Lane and British Chateaubriand colonialism on and these representative figures (Moore-Gilbert 46). In an interview with Bhattacharaya, Kaul and Loomba, Said defends himself against critics who accuse him of homogenizing the imperial conception of the orient. [If] it was homogenous, I wouldn’t have spent so many pages talking about it and giving, adducing, so many examples. The point is that it is not homogenous. (4) The Construction of the Orient 91 But then again, [T]here is a kind of deep structure of Orientalism, which is able to multiply and proliferate in all kinds of ways. Orientalist writers all depart from the same premise, that there is a line separating ‘us’ from ‘them’. [my emphasis] (4) Said defends himself against critics who accuse him of homogenizing the west but eventually makes a sweeping statement about all western writers and their perception of the orient as an essential and absolute ‘other’. Critics like Bernard Lewis suggest that Said ignores the scholarship of orientalists and accuses them falsely of discursive practice (1982). Lewis, in a rather ‘ludicrous’ manner (Sardar 69), juxtaposes European conceptions of the orient with the European revision of Greek literature and the culture of Hellenism. He suggests that just as the revival and description of Hellenic literature and culture by Europe was not a political endeavour, similarly, orientalism should not be tainted with such accusations (49). Said answers Lewis in the Afterword of 1995, where he sheds light on the incomparability of orientalism with a revival of Hellenic literature on the ground that while the former is done with the intention of 92 Identity Politics and the Third World empire building, the latter is purely an academic adventure (343). Robert Irwin similarly accuses Said of undermining the intellectual intention of orientalists in his book For Lust of Knowing. There is however a basic difference between Irwin and Said with respect to their definition of the term orientalism. Said gives three definitions for the term in the Introduction to orientalism: academic, ontological, and political or historical (2-4), whereas Irwin understands orientalism only as a scholarly enterprise concerning the orient, completely devoid of political overtones. Irwin defends orientalists by suggesting that their intentions were purely intellectual, (therefore the title: For Lust of Knowing), and had no political leanings. But Irwin ignores the political repercussions of these seemingly ‘suprapolitical’ (2001b: 10) intellectual endeavors and the fact that they were designed within the limits of the contemporary social ideologies. These social ideologies, repeated and reiterated through literature, strengthened the social beliefs about the orient, thereby creating what can be called a discourse. The orientalists wrote for and by the taste of western academia, and those who wrote in Arabic and Persian reproduced the existing western academic notions about the orient, so that they can serve as hegemonic texts. But Irwin ignores these factors in his obsessive endeavor to prove that The Construction of the Orient 93 Said was being exceedingly anti-occidental by discounting the work of orientalists. Ibn Warraq treads on lines similar to Irwin and Lewis and observes that the curiosity in Europeans to know more and more about faraway lands and their cultures drove them to oriental studies. Further he suggests that there is a substantial time gap between the first accounts of oriental history and culture by the west and the annexation of the orient by imperial powers. Said’s observation that there is a deep complicity between oriental scholarship and oriental occupation stands refuted by Warraq (45). Through extensive references to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Xenophon, Dante, and many other western scholars, Warraq attempts to present Said’s criticism of orientalism as a fraudulent representation of western scholarly attempts. To Said, the various works of orientalists attempt to construct oriental identity, and ‘the construction of identity is bound up with the disposition of power and powerlessness in each society, and is therefore anything but mere academic wool-gathering’ (2001b: 332). Even an ardent critic of Said like Jalal al-’Azm clarifies that Said ‘at no point seeks to belittle the genuine scholarly achievements, scientific discoveries and creative contributions made by orientalists and orientalism over the years’ (5). Said acknowledges the fact that orientalism and orientalists have made constructive and 94 Identity Politics and the Third World positive contributions in the area of ‘Sanskrit grammar, Phoenician numismatics, and Arabic poetry’ (2001b: 96). But despite this acknowledgement, Said seems to be essentially anti-occidental, especially in his treatment of Dante. Said discusses Dante’s Inferno as a representative text of occidental ideas, oriental identity and culture. Said describes that Dante places Mohammad in the eighth circle of Hell, in close proximity to Satan himself, who lies beyond the ninth circle. Before Dante reaches Mohammad, he passes by sinners of a lesser order: ‘the lustful, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the heretics, the wrathful, the suicidal, the blasphemous’ [my emphasis] (68). Dante places Islamic scholars like Averros, Avicenna and Saladin in the first circle of Hell for having deviated from the true path of Christianity. Dante sees Islam as a deviant sect misguided by a heretic who was once a Christian: Mohammad. It is arguable that Dante’s projection of Islam is not an anti-oriental propaganda but rather a matter of personal religious belief. Further, Dante’s treatment of Islam was not a part of the universal western perception of Islam. Through a study of Dante’s contemporaries like Boccaccio, it can be observed that various texts saw the orient differently in those times and that Dante was not part of a discourse production (Irwin 43-47; Moore-Gilbert 58-9). Moreover, Dante places devout Christians in Hell too, so his work cannot be termed as Christian propaganda against Islam (Ahmad, The Construction of the Orient 95 2005b: 189; Irwin 42). Though Said may be criticized for excessively charging Dante, it is nevertheless noteworthy that Dante considered following Islam heretic and punishable. This belief, to begin with, signifies a belief in the inferiority of the orient vis-à-vis the occident, a belief in the ontological distinction between the two, which serves as the foundation for the discourse of orientalism to take shape. Though it is maintained that Said sees the west as east’s ‘other’ in homogenous and totalizing terms (Ning 58-9), and that he creates a discourse about imperial treatment of the orient, Said innumerably warns his readers against such presumptions and discourses. But Said’s warnings and defenses against the creation of such essentialisms remain ineffective considering that his deconstructive efforts have repeatedly been pronounced as an oblique acceptance of the polarity between the east and the west. Said maintains throughout his work that he only aspires to question the structures of power and canonicity through his work. He expresses his concern for revising the Eurocentric perspective through his work. He accepts that the east and the west are different from each other, but the discourse of orientalism ‘implies hostility, a frozen reified set of opposed essences, and a whole adversarial knowledge built out of those things’ (2001b: 352). Further Said suggests that the differences between these two categories may not be ignored but brought to a ‘new way 96 Identity Politics and the Third World of conceiving the separations and conflicts. . . . going beyond the stifling hold on them of some version of the master-slave binary dialectic’ (2001b: 352-3). It is notable however, that this acceptance of difference and defensive reaction of Said towards accusations of anti-Occidentalism come after a gap of seventeen years of criticism. There is a marked difference in Said’s aims towards the study of the discourse of orientalism between 1978 and 1995, the years of publication of the work Orientalism and the later appended Afterword respectively. Said abstains from any direct and defined solution to the problem, but just reiterates the necessity of accepting difference in humanist and constructive ways, rather than in xenophobic terms. Said seems to present a solution in euphoric celebration of difference. But this conclusion seems misplaced after a long critique of orientalist attitudes towards the orient and a repeated denouncement of them. Throughout his work, Said maintains that the western conception of the orient was unreal, but towards the end he accepts the unreal definition in suggesting that one should acknowledge these differences with a secular view. Said’s refusal to give any solution for orientalism comes as a silent acceptance of it (Young, 1990: 167). By not offering a solution to the problem of orientalism, and denying the possibility of a dissipation of difference itself (2001b: 352), Said resolves the conflict between the polar The Construction of the Orient 97 identities and fixes the hierarchy and division of power between the two (Bhabha, 1983: 200). Said seems to accept not only the polarity of identities, but also the gendered representation of the orient as a woman who is acquired by the western man. The essentially masculine symbolism of the colonizer’s experience of the orient is described in Orientalism and used as a basis for discussing the western approach towards the orient (184-189). Said explains Nerval’s experience of the orient in the following terms: The Orient symbolizes Nerval’s dream-quest and the fugitive woman central to it, both as desire and as loss . . . [of the] . . . vessel of the Orient. [my emphasis] (184) And then again, with reference to Flaubert, Said concludes that [T]he Orient seems still to suggest not only fecundity but sexual promise (and threat), untiring sensuality, unlimited desire, deep generative energies. (188) The orient is defined in terms of the sexual experiences of the colonizer. That Said never questions the symbolism of femininity with reference to the orient suggests his acceptance of the metaphor (Moore-Gilbert 213-4). However, in ‘Orientalism Reconsidered’ Said addresses the question of gendered orientalism. Said suggests here that his intention was 98 Identity Politics and the Third World to simply reiterate the fact that the colonizer treated the colonized in an essentially male centric manner (212). However, his failure to criticize such feminization of the orient in the text points to an unconscious acceptance of it. It is noteworthy however, that even if Said would have questioned the polarity between the east and the west, or the gendered definition of the orient, there would still have been an anomaly. The discourse of orientalism has been denounced as a set of myths and fabrications designed and authorized to suit the western intention of empire building, and/or self-definition. But was the discourse purely based on European intentions? If the discourse was altogether false, how could it have helped in perpetuating centuries of western power and dominance on the east? Said at one point suggests that the discourse about orientalism, as created by the colonizers, was not true, and then establishes that this very discourse was used to extend control over the orient. It is hard to believe that the western ‘pseudoknowledge’ about the orient could have supported centuries of imperial rule (Warraq 44). On the other hand, if this construct regarding the orient could create an empire for the west, it is not altogether false perhaps, and includes some strains of reality as experienced by the western scholars (Sardar 72; Young, 1990: 169). It can be suggested then that the orientalist versions of the east and its religious and social behaviors are not altogether false or condemnable (Jalal al- The Construction of the Orient 99 ’Azm 11-12). One may understand then that the discourse about the orient is not a collection of pure falsehoods, or ‘a creation with no corresponding reality’ (2001b: 5), but has some reality. It is just that the discourse of orientalism is not entirely true, and the timelessness and homogeneity associated with it are definitely debatable. Critics also point out that if Said finds no representation ‘true’ or ‘real’ in line with Nietzsche then how can he call the western definition of the orient a false account (Ahmad, 2005b: 193-4; Jalal al-’Azm 9). But Said is not to be mistaken here for professing the idea of a real orient which has been misunderstood by the orientalist. He admits that there exists no representation of the real orient, but that orientalism ‘operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting’ (273). Said nevertheless rejects the orientalist’s representation of the orient as untrue. This absolute denial of the orientalist’s representation, by default, points towards the possibility of a real representation, and this reality itself is questioned by Said’s own thesis about the “truth” behind representations. Critics refute Said’s grounds for questioning the authenticity of orientalism if ‘the line between representation and misrepresentation is always very thin’ (Ahmad, 2005b: 193; Warraq 23). 100 Identity Politics and the Third World Ahmad accuses him of grounding his argument in the nihilistic assumption that every representation is a misrepresentation. But Said’s view, or Nietzsche’s, does not implicate the absence of all meaning and reality. It rather suggests that any representation can be construed variously depending upon its context (in this case the location of the critic), so any representation can be a misrepresentation (Menon, 1992: 2135). Said explains his stand with a reference to Shakespeare and how his works are revised and re-presented by people generation after generation. Every scholar attempts to define Shakespeare with a new perspective. But that does not mean that a real Shakespeare does not exist without these perspectives and representations (2001a: 200). Said here seems to suggest that no representation can be a ‘true’ account of any object, because every representation is embedded in the cultural and ideological baggage carried by the one who undertakes the task of representing things. The western account of the orient is not true but that does not mean that a true orient does not altogether exist. However, the problem of the real orient persists despite this explanation. A true Shakespeare can exist, as suggested by Said, because whatever that ‘true’ Shakespeare was, it is not a mutating and organic being anymore and is open to various definitions. The orient however still exists and a representation of this living, evolving, interacting, experiencing entity cannot be understood in terms The Construction of the Orient 101 as simplified as Said seems to suggest with the current example. Moreover Shakespeare was a single person and his works have a single original reality unlike the orient that is a multiple and mutating whole and cannot be categorized in one unitary identity. Said has been criticized for overemphasizing the significance of literature (Irwin 308) and exaggerating the significance of orientalism with reference to colonization. He acknowledges that an encounter with an alien culture leads to the creation of certain myths so as to make it comprehensible to the observer. Such domestication has not been condemned by Said either (2001b: 60). But in the case of orientalism, which roughly translates as the creation of certain myths about the far off orient for western consumption, Said does not observe similar levels of acceptance. But it cannot be overlooked here that the domestication of the orient was not for western consumption alone, but to make it suitable for western occupation. Further, Said does not intend to condemn the creation of a myth about the orient or the categorization conducted to make it comprehensible, but to explain that it is a discourse and not the reality. In Orientalism, Said primarily focuses on third-world identity as reflected in the eyes of the west. Said suggests that the western idea of oriental identity is one created out of an essentialist and foundational belief in the idea of the latter’s 102 Identity Politics and the Third World inferiority vis-à-vis the former. The orient embodies the stark opposite of the west. Said’s approach towards identity is undoubtedly polarized in Orientalism. Since “the orient” represents what the west is not, it is not the real orient but rather a western imagination. He iterates on the western inability to identify the ‘real’ orient. By this rejection, he hints at there being an orient that the western eye is incapable of catching. This leads to two rather opposing results: first, the identity of the orient has to essentially be something, because it is necessarily not what the west supposes it to be; secondly, since that ‘real’ orient is not, and according to Said cannot be defined, the space of oriental identity is open to myth and imagination. Further, Said’s study of oriental identity is restricted in scope and time. He studies the discourse in a temporal stillness and passivity where hardly any ‘emergent’ or ‘residual’ i forces are experienced (Williams, 1997: 40). The scope of his analysis is also restricted to the politics of identity and the psychological overtones of creating the ‘self’ by creating a suitable ‘other’. Said does not delve into the area of cultural politics and identity metamorphoses in this analysis. From a postcolonial point of view, Said’s efforts at challenging the previous notions about oriental identity have been enormously significant. The fact that his work has been discussed and argued upon endlessly bears testimony to its The Construction of the Orient 103 importance. Said wrote Orientalism in 1978, yet somehow, despite the stringent, and at times denouncing criticism levelled against his work, it continues to be an important document constantly undergoing close readings and re-readings. Said explains his intention in the Afterword appended to Orientalism in 1995. According to him, Orientalism is to be seen as ‘a multicultural critique of power using knowledge to advance itself’ (336). Said reminisces his own situation as a migrant from the orient to the west and highlights that he has been through the ‘procedure of crossing, rather than maintaining barriers’ [my emphasis] (336-7). Hence he intends his work to reflect a study in critique and not a reaffirmation of ‘antithetical identities’ (339). Through a process of demystification of the polar constructs of identity, Said claims to bring identity in a space where it can be observed outside the stringent categories of ‘self’ and ‘other’. Such an exercise helps understand the diasporic identity of people scattered throughout the world: Said’s paradox of identity is indicative of the complex identities of diasporic and postcolonial peoples throughout the world today. Paradoxes linked to this question of identity run through Said’s work, but far from being disabling, such paradox is a key to the intellectual force of his writings, locating them firmly in a world in which ideology has material consequences and in which human life does not 104 Identity Politics and the Third World conform neatly to abstract theory. (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 2) Referring to the forces of post-modernism and postcolonialism, Said expresses his intention of debunking the meta-narratives of Eurocentric perspectives. His intention is to bring about a situation where the categories of east and west can be finally deconstructed and the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ can be seen as complimentary identities rather than adversaries of each other. In this context, surprisingly, Said becomes the pioneer of the theory of multiculturalism and hybridity which Bhabha and his contemporaries are accredited with. Said gives immense importance to the dismantling of the structures of power so as to find a synthesis of opposing identities. In ‘Orientalism Reconsidered,’ Said demands a more vigorous ‘crossing of boundaries, for greater interventionism in crossdisciplinary activity’ (215). Said suggests that it is only through a thorough deconstruction of the existing dominative structures that the identities of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ can be reconstituted (215). However, Said conducts a more elaborate critique of colonial interaction which is accepted as the foundation for ambivalent attitudes between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ in Culture and Imperialism (1993), which is discussed in the next chapter. The Construction of the Orient 105 Notes i. Williams uses the terms ‘emergent’ and ‘residual’ (1997), to describe cultural evolution. While ‘residual’ denotes those cultures and values which cannot be exercised within the paradigm of the dominant culture, but which continue to live as an undercurrent and can resurface to challenge the dominant discourse, ‘emergent’ refers to those cultures and value systems that develop in response to domination. Together, these cultures challenge the dominant discourse and cause social evolution. 106 Identity Politics and the Third World Chapter 2 Beyond Orientalism Culture is both a function and a source of identity. − Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 88 When Goebbels, the brain behind Nazi propaganda, heard culture being discussed, he brought out his revolver. That shows that the Nazis – who were and are the most tragic expression of imperialism and of its thirst for domination . . . had a clear idea of the value of culture as a factor of resistance to foreign domination. − Amilcar Cabral (1973 : 39) As discussed in the previous chapter, Orientalism [1978] analyzes the development of discursive ideas about the orient which perpetuate western imperialism. Said closely observes how an essentialist orient is fabricated through the 108 Identity Politics and the Third World course of colonization so as to support imperial rule. But he restricts himself to the area of identity politics and its repercussions in relation to the myths of orientalism and their currency. Despite the overwhelming response it received, Said’s seminal work has been criticized for re-embarking upon a discourse of orientalism in the absence of an alternate identity (Young, 1990: 167). In his refusal to accept the western idea of the orient as authentic, Said does not provide an alternate account. Furthermore, the only voices heard in the analysis are those of Said and first-world theorists. The ‘real’ orient, if there can be anything like that, still remains silent (Ahmad, 2005b: 172; Moore-Gilbert 51). Moreover, in his discussion of the advance of imperial rule, Said entirely ignores the development of resistance to it (Ashcroft, 2001: 40). In the absence of resistance to the discourse, his account fails to provide a holistic analysis of identity politics, a task that he takes up later. Whereas the attention is centered on the construction of oriental identity and its colonial ramifications in his landmark work of 1978, its sequel, as it were, Culture and Imperialism [1993] focuses on the cultural aspect of imperialism, resistance to the colonial rule and the development of third-world identity with reference to it. Said emphasizes two key phenomena in this work: first, the ‘general worldwide pattern of imperial culture’ and second, ‘the historical experience of resistance Beyond Orientalism 109 against empire’ (1994a: xii). This chapter is directed towards achieving an understanding of culture with reference to imperialism and resistance in order to arrive at a thesis about the identity of the orient through the course of the colonial process. In Culture and Imperialism, Said focuses on culture as an evolving system which directs the colonial process and reflects on the identity of the colonizer and the colonized. This chapter is designed to decode the theory of culture as defined by Said so as to understand the trajectory of third-world identity through the course of imperialism and resistance. Through a critical analysis of Said’s fundamental definition of culture with its literary affiliations as explained in Culture and Imperialism, this chapter is directed towards liberating thirdworld identity, in any textual context, from the brackets of polarity and imperialism to resistance and finally internationalism. Beginning with a close analysis of Culture and Imperialism, the influences on Said and his foundational premise for his theory concerning culture, imperialism and resistance, the focus of this chapter will shift to the question of third-world identity. Colonial interaction, in the form of imperial advancement and the resistance to it, bears an enormous influence on third-world identity. The colonizer as well the colonized are both indelibly transformed in the course of 110 Identity Politics and the Third World colonial experience. The cultural aspects of imperialism, colonial interaction and resistance are of utmost significance when discussing the development of third-world identity. So before venturing into the area of identity, it is important to understand the term ‘culture’. Like identity, culture is also defined in fluidity. It is an ever changing process and never reaches a state of final signification. Raymond Williams understands it as ‘a whole way of life’ (qtd. in Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 89). To Williams, culture is an all-inclusive statement of being. Williams identifies it as an intricate historical process of struggle, communication and negotiation, in which the dominant and the sub-ordinate “class cultures” of an epoch or society interacted of course, in very uneven ways and together with other practices (production, consumption, politics, the family, the work etc.) and created distinct “structures of feeling”. (Benewick and Green, 1998: 260) With reference to the imperial process too, culture reflects the social impetus behind the western attempt towards occupying the non-west, the various relations developed between the colonizer and the colonized and the reactions and retaliations that ensued out of the colonial experience. In this respect, culture becomes exceedingly reflective of identity. Said defines culture as Beyond Orientalism 111 all those practices, like the arts of description, communication, and representation, that have relative autonomy from the economic, social and political realms and that often exist in aesthetic forms, one of whose principal aims is pleasure. (1994a: xii) With Arnold, Said believes that culture is the reservoir of the best a society has known. It signifies a cleansed and glorified image of the ‘self’ against the ‘other’ and provides as a justification for the extension of colonial rule upon the latter (1994a: xiii). He locates culture in the area of literature and arts so as to find an understanding of the politics surrounding the history of colonialism. The historical episode of imperial annexation and the resistance offered to it through various means are both functions of culture. Imperialism is directed by a cultural acceptance of the principal of Western Enlightenment, which Jameson describes as a part of a properly bourgeois cultural revolution, in which the values and discourses, the habits and daily space, of the ancient regime were systematically dismantled so that in their place could be set the new conceptualities, habits and life forms, value systems of a capitalist market society. (1991: 96) 112 Identity Politics and the Third World To Marxist thinkers like Gramsci and Williams, such cultural annexation is undertaken through hegemonic means which include the development of discursive knowledge such as can be projected to the colonized as a fact of nature (Gramsci 12; Williams, 1977: 108). It is only through a discursive projection of the native culture as inferior that the colonizer’s culture can be placed in a position of superiority. With the development of such hierarchies between the colonizer and the colonized, the entire process of imperialism is garbed in the disguise of a humanistic civilizing mission. The process of what seems to be the ‘progressive assimilation of native peoples’ is in fact an ‘attempt to deny the culture of the people in question’ (Cabral 40). Revolutionaries like Cabral identify culture as the means to counter imperialism, as it is only through culture that imperialism can be instituted or dismantled. [I]f imperialist domination has the vital need to practice cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture. (43) Beginning with an exceedingly national fervor, resistance movements against imperialism are primarily anti-colonial. But due to colonial interaction, the cultural space of the colonizer and the colonized becomes permeable and the stark opposition between the two is challenged. Resistance then takes the form of an inclusive reaction against imperialism and the culture Beyond Orientalism 113 supporting it. Along with forces countering the imperial occupation of colonies, resistance is also reflective of a culture that challenges stereotypes and essentialist categories. Culture reflects on identity through all these processes. The culture of imperialism is based upon creation of identity constructs for the colonizer and colonized in water-tight compartments of the superior ‘self’ and the inferior ‘other’. Resistance begins with retaliation from the ‘other’ in an exceedingly opposing manner and a default acceptance of the discursive constructs. But the cultural interaction caused by the colonial experience reflects upon the identity of the colonizer and the colonized and brings them to a space of negotiation and reconciliation. Like culture then, identity also becomes a means of establishing as well as challenging imperialism. With the Arnoldian premise of identifying culture with the best a society can portray and boast of, Said perceives the identity constructs of ‘self’ and ‘other’ as categories of invention and self-aggrandizement, created to mark distinction and uniqueness vis-à-vis each other. Scrutinizing the obvious ensuing hierarchies and implicit xenophobic tendencies of it, Said approaches culture as a ‘combative’ source of identity (1994a: xiii). At the same time, imperialism brings combative cultures into such proximity that they cannot remain distinct and pure. 114 Identity Politics and the Third World [B]ecause of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic. (1994a: xxix) Said’s Culture and Imperialism heralds a new phase in the study of third-world identity. With the introduction of culture, its inherent combativeness and the resultant hybridization due to cultural interaction and conflict, the canonical polarity between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ is indelibly challenged. Said uses the term ‘imperialism’ as ‘the practice, the theory, and the attitude of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory’ and ‘colonialism’ as ‘the implanting of settlements on distant territories’ (1994a: 8). Quoting Doyle he defines ‘empire’ as a relationship formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, by economic, social or cultural dependence. Imperialism is simply the process or policy of establishing or maintaining an empire. (1994a: 8) Said also insists that attempts towards colonization and imperialism are often guided by an ideological justification that ‘certain territories and people require and beseech domination, Beyond Orientalism 115 as well as forms of knowledge affiliated with domination’ (1994a 8). This ideological justification is based on the received perceptions of a pure and glorious past that the colonizing west creates for itself. According to Said, the power function of colonization rests upon ‘the pure (even purged) images . . . of a genealogically useful past . . . [excluding] unwanted elements, vestiges, narratives’ (1994a: 16). Through a process of selective inclusion and at times even romantic fabrication, the colonizer creates a ‘self’ image which promises a space of power and superiority against the colonized ‘other’. Peculiarly, the ideological justification that the colonizer creates for subjugating the east is not a planned strategy. It is guided by a genuine belief in the civilizing mission and a strong sense of moral responsibility that the western races harbour about themselves towards the education and control of the eastern races considered inferior by them. With reference to Conrad’s Nostromo, Said notes that ‘the rhetoric of power all too easily produces an illusion of benevolence when employed in an imperial setting’ (1994a: xix). The west holds a position of power vis-à-vis the east, and also has an opportunity to colonize it. This position helps the former validate the extension of control to the latter as a civilizing mission. Further, the belief in the ‘mission civilisatrice’ (1994a: 33) is so inarguably established among 116 Identity Politics and the Third World the western rulers that the discourse of power complicit with the imperial annexation programme and its ensuing exploitative means, all remain unchallenged. [B]y the nineteenth century Europe had erected an edifice of culture so hugely confident, authoritative and self-congratulatory that its imperial assumptions, its centralizing European life and its complicity in the civilizing mission simply could not be questioned. (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 87) But the superiority of the colonizer is challenged sooner or later and in the event of such resistance, the myths of selfaggrandizing culture are revealed. Through Conrad’s characters Marlow and Kurtz, Said explains how an affirmative belief of the former in the ‘mission civilisatrice’ is turned to an acknowledgement of the ‘darkness’ (1994a: 33) at the heart of it by the latter’s retrospective reference to ‘the horror’ (Conrad 106) of the colonial mission. However, in Conrad’s inability to openly criticize colonization, Said observes two visions: that the ideological impact of colonization can never be completely erased, and a fully realized or utopian alternative to imperialism cannot be found. The authoritarianism continues even after colonization ends. Said asserts with reference to narratives of colonization and/or resistance that they reflect a stringent polarity between Beyond Orientalism 117 the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ which may be contrary to subjective experience but is imperative for the mobilization of forces of imperialism and liberation respectively. Such narratives must be read ‘contrapuntally’, to analyze the political and coercive implications projected through them (1994a: 49). Such a reading calls for not only an observation in counterpoint to the narrative, but also to the minute details that are included or excluded by the author. It is through such a reading against the grain, that the various forces of cultural and ideological beliefs related to the author’s location are brought to the fore. It is also through contrapuntal reading alone, that the representational politics related with third-world identity can be explored and uncovered. With Goethe’s concept of ‘Weltliteratur’, Said elaborates that despite all the talk of ‘comparative literature’ and ‘interactions of world literatures with one another’, the hierarchy between the east and west is never challenged or crossed. It is maintained throughout that the colonized did not deserve to be heard or read and that the subjugated races could only be represented by the colonial masters (1994a: 52). This ideological premise of indubitable western superiority and rights of representation glares through the various art forms of the west and creates a cultural system of thought where the east is referred to as a silent homogenous entity with no individuality or presence. To Said’s understanding, such a 118 Identity Politics and the Third World wavering reference to the colonized lands and people in the canonical texts is occasioned by the authors’ distinct intention to write for European readers alone. Said calls for a contrapuntal reading of western art as a reflection of colonial attitudes and as a means of theorizing western perceptions of identity for the colonizer and the colonized (1994a: 79). With the basic premise that the ‘novel’ as a genre covers the ‘general worldwide pattern of imperial culture, and a historical experience of resistance against empire’ (1994a: xii), Said suggests that narratives themselves make a nation and reflect on its culture. He adds: The power to narrate or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them. (xiii) Further: In reading a text, one must open it out both to what went into it and to what its author excluded . . . one must connect the structures of a narrative to the ideas, concepts, experiences from which it draws support. (1994a: 79) Said suggests that there is never a ‘direct experience’ (1994a: 79), which can be complete in itself. There is always a perception regarding an experience which is narrated over time Beyond Orientalism 119 into an author’s psyche. The identity of the colonized also precipitates into the psyche of the colonial author and directs his experience of the native in a manner that the presumed oriental identity is still the fundamental representation. Upon closer observation of the ‘inviolable association’ (Mohanty, 2005: 103) of the novel with the bourgeois society, it is established that the then English novel necessarily contains colonial overtones and deems imperialism significant for the sustenance of the bourgeois society. In such a scenario, divorcing the novel from imperial history and economics would mean taking it away from reality. [T]he novel, as a cultural artefact of bourgeois society, and imperialism are unthinkable without each other . . . [I]mperialism and the novel fortified each other to such a degree that it is impossible to read one without in some way dealing with the other. . . . The novel is an incorporative, quasi-encyclopedic cultural form. (1994a: 84) Said further elaborates that there is a ‘structure of attitude and reference’ (1994a: 89, 134) that is followed by the canonical English narratives. Unconsciously perhaps, the British novelists approach the third world in a structured manner guided by the discourse of orientalism and the indubitable hierarchical relation between the colonizer and the colonized. In this scenario, the attitude of the novelists and the way in 120 Identity Politics and the Third World which they refer to the third world are both conditioned by the ruling discourse about it. Victorian novelists nowhere question the colonial annexation of the east but rather accept it as an inert fact strengthening the universal beliefs about oriental inferiority and the necessity of empire. Recognizing the novel as a generic medium for establishing western authority of narrating third-world identity and espousing the colonial enterprise Said demands for a contrapuntal reading of the authoritative representation of third-world identity and culture as the most significant means of resisting colonial subjugation. He asserts that representation through authoritative narrative art is a method of ‘keeping the subordinate subordinate, the inferior inferior’ (1994a: 95) and must be challenged. Said’s analysis of Victorian classics reveals a contrapuntal reading of popular western beliefs about the third world and the commonly accepted notions about eastern identity. With Austen’s Mansfield Park, a contrapuntal reading reveals a discursive authorial attitude towards the colonies and the colonized. The novel portrays a disciplinarian Sir Thomas Bertram as a supervisor at the Antiguan slave plantation whose authority at home in Mansfield Park is suggestive of his power in the eastern colony. His ownership and authority on the domestic front is reflective of a similar attitude towards the Antiguan slave colony. His absence causes a chaos at home Beyond Orientalism 121 and he is portrayed as the hard taskmaster who puts things to order. He is kind and magnanimous to the orphan heroine, Fanny Price, who has earned his generous patronage only after leaving her home in Portsmouth, which she herself begins to detest after living in Mansfield Park. Through such episodes in the narrative, Sir Bertram is shown as the benevolent and disciplining British officer whose presence is necessary to maintain order in the unruly colony. The colonized, symbolized by the orphan girl, can be risen from detestable poverty and uncivilized lifestyles only through the chastising control of the munificent British master. The novel serves as a ‘metaphor and metonymy’ of colonial relations (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 97) in drawing a relation between ‘domestic and international’ (1994a: 104) authority and a contrapuntal reading of this Victorian classic reveals the relation of culture and imperialism. Further, Austen’s reference to Antigua bears testimony to her up to date knowledge of the then colonial enterprise and her strong belief that colonial occupation and control were necessary for British success. Through a contrapuntal reading of canonical colonial texts, it is revealed that western art created a cultural environment in which colonization was perceived as an act of kindness extended to the less fortunate peoples. Victorian writers, who were a witness to this exercise of power by the colonizers, represented it as an act of philanthropism and 122 Identity Politics and the Third World absolved it of the blame of exploitation and enslavement. It is through the popularity of such narratives that a culture favouring imperialism was strengthened and the notions of third-world inferiority were solidified. [T]he power even in casual conversation to represent what is beyond metropolitan borders derives from the power of an imperial society, and that power takes a discursive form of a reshaping or reordering of ‘raw’ or primitive data into the local conventions of European narrative and formal utterance. (1994a: 119) Said holds thinkers like Max Muller, Renan, Charles Temple, Darwin, Benjamin Kidd and Emer de Vattel responsible for developing and accentuating ‘the essentialist positions in European culture proclaiming that Europeans should rule, nonEuropeans be ruled’ (1994a: 120). Quoting Carlyle and Ruskin, Said elaborates how the British approach towards the colonies and the peoples inhabiting them was one of a stern but goodintentioned ruler who knows what is best for the ruled (121-6). The colonial advance required an unshakeable and unshirkable belief in the civilizing mission and at the same time a complete belief in the degeneracy that threatened the colonized. The imperial exercise was based on a number of discourses which were developed and engrained in the western psyche through such narratives of undisputed power and inarguable intention Beyond Orientalism 123 of colonial goodness. The third world was identified as an inferior group of races who must be put under the supervision and control of the colonizers, as if being subservient to the British were the only good option available to them. Such ideas of essentialist distinction between the east and the west percolated in the works of art. This art created a culture which cyclically emanated colonial hegemonic beliefs on the social front. Taking an example from music, Said elaborates how Verdi’s opera Aida displays a strong European prejudice about Egypt as a deplorable country. The eroticism, court room cruelty, music and exoticism associated with Egypt are all derived from canonical narratives of the east and what is considered to be eastern. Aida, an opera meant for the Italians, based on Egyptian patterns, with music from grandmasters like Wagner, was in itself a hybrid form of an opera, used to project the homogenous and essentialist attributes of the orient. Verdi uses the ideas of Mariette on ‘Egyptology’, which ‘is not Egypt’ (1994a: 141). Moreover, Mariette’s ideas were based on two historians, both French. Hence, the authenticity of Verdi’s account becomes dubious. The story of Aida is a clear reference to ‘rivalries of imperial powers in the Middle East’ (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 100). The modernizing attempts of Khedive Ismail, the then ruler of Egypt, come in conflict with the general Egyptian 124 Identity Politics and the Third World traditions and cause a split in the city of Cairo, with half of if displaying modern European lifestyles and the other half standing for Egyptian culture and tradition. The opera house built for Aida stood on the divide between the opposing halves of the city and the opera became a manifestation of the opposition between the east and the west. Just like the city of Cairo is divided into two halves to suit European sensibilities, similarly, Egyptian identity and culture is presented in a canonical form to make it palatable for western audiences. Shifting the attention from Egypt to India, Kipling’s novel Kim, when read contrapuntally, reveals his steadfast belief in the civilizing mission and the superiority of the British vis-à-vis the colonized Indians. The adventures and boyish pranks of Kim are clear manifestations of the ‘pleasures’ of ruling the natives. Further, there is a sort of essentially male and authoritative narcissism about characterization in the novel. A similarity can be drawn between the colonizers and Lord Baden Powel’s boy scouts who were English boys trained to be of civilizing service to the rest of the community, abiding by the strictest of laws (1994a: 166). Said highlights the absence of sexuality in the novel as a reinforcement of the purity and piety of colonial advance as a mission taken over by men to reach the ultimate truth (169). Moreover, their search for the River of cleansing has connotations of salvation that the westerner wanted to attain through the colonial practice, ideas Beyond Orientalism 125 which can be dated back to the days of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. In this novel, the lama has been placed under the security and sovereignty of the British rule. This patronage allows him to reach the River of cleansing through Kim. The idea is clear. A native can attain his cleansing and be one with the universe only through the civilizing British rulers: essentially male and pure. Further Kipling is simultaneously sympathetic towards the Indians and towards the cause of British colonialism. He exhibits a strong belief in the notion that the British rule was the best course for India and efforts of Indians to oppose the British are presented by him as catastrophic. With reference to the Revolt of 1857, Kipling writes that ‘a madness ate into the army’ and the British had to call them to ‘strict account’ (qtd. in Said, 1994a: 178). Thus, in Kipling’s narrative, ‘the native is naturally a delinquent, the white man a stern but moral parent and judge’ (1994a: 178). In colonial understanding then, the natives had no identity of their own, unless granted by virtue of British patronage. Kipling is a spokesman for the colonizer who has been raised into believing the divinity of the civilizing mission and the inevitability of ruling the natives. Said explains two things: the influence of colonialism on culture, and the fact that the colonial ruler did not and could not see the inherent imperialism in its practices. With reference to Conrad and the African representation in Heart of Darkness, 126 Identity Politics and the Third World Said asserts that ‘Marlow’s audience is English, and Marlow himself penetrates into Kurtz’s private domain as an enquiring Western mind trying to make sense of an apocalyptic revelation’ (1994a: 198). The orient has been projected through canonical literary texts in stereotypical images of a slavish object deserving only the so-called beneficent western rebuke. Covering a wide space of the colonized world, Said considers the case of Camus and Algeria. In the French empire building exercise, ‘prestige’ was very important, besides the obvious profit and power motives. The French self-perception guided this impulse of ruling the other, lesser communities. The supposed purity and genius of the French was the motivating factor for the imperial enterprise with France. Along with the mission civilisatrice, the French ‘vocation superieure’ (1994a: 204) was also a driving force behind the occupation of Algeria. Albert Camus comes out as one notable writer of French Algeria, who manages to draw an Austen-like picture of colonialism in his works. Camus’ imperial vision was guided by the French colonial venture historically and a vehement denial of Algerian independence. In Camus’ stories and novels, the French presence is not explicitly detailed but described implicitly as the only history that needs to be mentioned. In The Outsider, the Arab’s existence is purely ‘incidental’ (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 105). Existing in utter namelessness, Beyond Orientalism 127 the Arab seems to be stripped of his identity and his killing does not become the reason for Mersault’s conviction but rather the fact that the Algerian sun had put him in a situation of existential isolation that the French consciousness could nothing but prosecute. Further, in the same novel, the institutional disciplining machinery of the office, the court, the social police are all French. The Arab finds the place of the violent and self-governed, impulsive native, committing himself to the actions governed by instinct rather than order. Further, Camus observes a ‘waste and sadness’ in the colonial exercise as it amounts to nothing significant and causes existential dilemmas (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 105). In Said’s contrapuntal readings, canonical works display an implicit intimacy with the colonial programme and a genuine belief in the superiority of western identity and culture and a fundamental obligation to civilize what is considered to be the beastly east. The ideas regarding third-world identity and the representation of it through such a vast range of narratives exhibits the common elements of faithlessness in the capability of the native, the benevolence of the western ruler, the patronage of the west as the only source of civilization for the east and the indisputable hierarchy between the east and the west. Said’s assertion that the colonizer does not strategically synchronize his imperial mission throughout the world, but 128 Identity Politics and the Third World truly believes in it as a facet of his destiny and divine duty as a westerner, comes as an unmistakable feature in these readings. However, Said’s work does not reflect only on the complicity of culture and imperialism, but also takes into account the reaction of the native to the colonial rule. His thesis ‘speaks of largely unopposed will to overseas domination, not of a completely unopposed one’. The west established its control in the colonies because of its position of power in the physical, economic, political and socio-cultural arenas (1994a: 225). But imperialism is not met with an inert and passive native. Resistance, in some form or the other, is an inevitable corollary, in most cases even an offshoot, of imperialism. Said elaborates through readings of canonical texts that the native is represented as a homogenous unidentified entity lacking agency. But postcolonial texts reveal that some form of agency is always brewing as an undercurrent in the least, in the colonized world. Further, this resistance is not homogenous in being totally rejecting, but rather appropriates the culture of imperialism to the native culture. It is also not directed only from the colonized. The myth of the civilizing mission disintegrates in the psyche of the colonizer too and results in the development of a resistance that covers the ‘largely common although disputed terrain provided by culture’ [my emphasis] (1994a: 241). Said’s reference to a common ground Beyond Orientalism 129 between the colonizer and the colonized anticipates the development of a space of mutual affiliation and negotiation rather than complete opposition and rejection. The colonizer’s disillusionment in the civilizing mission brings him to a space where he begins to question imperialism as a philanthropic endeavour. Such a strong disillusionment makes the colonizer doubt his ‘self’ image as a superior human entrusted with the noble task of reform, and by default, the inherited image of the ‘other’ as an inferior beastly being is also challenged. Said’s theory of imperialism and resistance and his thesis on identity is not inclusive of native cultures alone, but also takes into account the culture and psyche of the colonizer. With colonial interaction and cultural overlap, characters like Mrs. Moore and Mr. Fielding in Forster’s A Passage to India, cease to be pure Europeans separated from the natives, and somehow cross the ‘anthropomorphic norm’ (1994a: 242). The native protagonist Aziz too, comes to occupy the middle space of anxiety. There is a sort of coming closer but not a total mélange. They are together in the end, but still apart. Resistance, according to Said, is a two-fold phenomenon of first reclaiming the physical territory through geographical resistance, and then reclaiming the cultural territory through ‘ideological resistance’ (1994a: 252), which may also be inclined towards the pre-imperial native culture and the imaginations of a pristine past in its initial stages. This 130 Identity Politics and the Third World nationalistic sentiment becomes important in the resistance machinery. But at the same time, there is an urge to retain the colonial experience in the native culture and it is this native tendency along with an affiliation with colonial culture that reflects in postcolonial third-world identity. At the core of all voyage literature of the Renaissance period, there lies the story of a western adventurer voyaging through the colonized world and then emancipating it from the slumber that had hitherto enveloped it. The colonizer seemingly perceives the colonized as a blank which can be narrated as the west fancies. It is for this reason that resistance is immediately an effort by the colonized to reclaim territorial control and to revisit the narratives of colonialism and narrate them again with direct agency. This revision of the past is undertaken so that the postcolonial future can be shaped with a speaking and acting native who can narrate the ‘reinterpretable and redeployable experiences’ of colonialism to assert an image of his identity as perceived by himself (1994a: 256). Quoting Lamming’s analysis of The Tempest, Said suggests that Caliban is seen as an occasion which can be used for the development of an “other”. In such a scenario it becomes imperative that the myths of Prospero’s progress be broken and it be realized that if Caliban is consumed in an effort to create an identity for Prospero then, Caliban himself would have a history or an identity. But it is to be remembered Beyond Orientalism 131 simultaneously that ‘while identity is crucial, just to assert a different identity is never enough’ (1994a: 257). There are three significant aspects of cultural resistance: first is the restoration of the nation to itself with its own history and narratives (259). Second, is the fact that resistance does not refer to staunch anti-colonialism alone, but also to contrapuntal revision of colonialism. [R]esistance, far from being merely a reaction to imperialism, is an alternative way of conceiving human history. It is particularly important to see how much this alternative reconception is based on breaking down the barriers between cultures. (1994a: 260) This alternative method of revisiting history inverts the narratives of imperialism not only to subvert them, but also to understand the ideology of the colonizer. And third, the decolonizing practice does not refer to moving back to national compartments, but rather to the establishment of a culture of whole worldliness. There is an integrative human quality about resistance movements (1994a: 261) which must not be denied. One can also note here that the resistance movements have different origins, at times even first worldly, hence, the new independent cultures have to be identified as hybrid and not nationalistically compartmentalized. 132 Identity Politics and the Third World The history of all cultures is the history of cultural borrowings. Cultures are not impermeable. . . . Culture is never just a matter of ownership, of borrowing or lending with absolute debtors and creditors, but rather of appropriations, common experiences, and interdependencies of all kinds among different cultures. (1994a: 261-62) Taking the example of Ireland, Said elaborates how the Eurocentrism active in the colonial occupation and control of Ireland was challenged by a native resistance full of patriotic fervor. But ironically the proponents of this resistance were the Irish classes educated in Europe. Thus the end of European imperialism heralded the creation of pseudo-nationalist leaders who ‘replicated the old canonical structures in new terms’ (1994a: 269). Resistance movements primarily begin as nationalist, anti-imperialist endeavours. As the outsider exercises his rule through the land, it is of utmost importance to acquire the land first. The effort to regain identity and culture as the natives know it requires dealing with the colonial structures of high culture and identity created through imperial discourses. Such a resistance is based on imaginations of a pure and untainted native past that the colonizer exploited. This imagination, however leads to restating the colonial discourse of stark opposition between the colonizer and the colonized. What is required then is the adoption of a narrative of identity and culture which is neither pristine as the native imagines, nor Beyond Orientalism 133 colonial as the European would have it, but an amalgam that one can feel at home with. Nativism, alas, reinforces the distinction [between the white and the non-white] even while revaluating the weaker or subservient partner. And it has often led to compelling but demagogic assertions about a native past, narrative or actuality that stands free from worldly time itself. (1994a: 275) Ironically, nativism replicates the same stereotypical images that imperialism sets for the native. The Negritude movement and Rastafarianism are examples of these incongruent resistances, which ‘accepted the dialectical structure of European ideological confrontations but borrowed from the very components of its racist syllogism’ as Soyinka explains (qtd. in 1994a: 276). In the Irish context, Yeats calls for patriotism and nativism in his early poetry, but at the same time establishes that reversion to nativism would bring in a claustrophobic identity which contains its own chauvinisms and is enclosed within itself with no room for outside influence (1994a: 284). Like the colonizer influences native culture and identity, native resistance to imperialism influences the colonizer to doubt the civilizing mission. The revolution against imperialism that immigrates to the first world is in the 134 Identity Politics and the Third World form of distinguished literature from the east which constantly breaks the discourse of eastern passivity in the western mind. Foucault calls these ‘subjugated knowledges’ (qtd. in 1994a: 293), whose language is imperial, but the invention or thought is not, and that in itself is the input the third world could give to modernism. It is with such a mélange that there comes about something that can be called an internationalization of culture (1994a: 294). This internationalization occurs in response to the voyage literature on larger observation. This conscious effort on the part of the colonized to enter, study, appropriate and represent canonical colonial culture, as a form of resistance, is what Said calls the ‘voyage in’. The voyage in, then, constitutes an especially interesting variety of hybrid cultural work. And that it exists at all is a sign of adversarial internationalization in an age of continued imperial structures. (295) Said calls for a movement that no longer subscribes to an either-or situation in culture but associates with a hybridized form of identity which is at once affiliated to that of the colonizer as well as the colonized. Of course, the space of such hybridity cannot but be that of constant polemic between the forces working within it. Just like the imperial annexation of colonies was not possible without native collaboration (whether in the form of Beyond Orientalism 135 consent or of occupying the space of the middle men, who worked as agents of the colonial exercise), the resistance to colonial rule cannot come without the residual imperial tendencies, and most post-imperial native control is replete with similar ideas of superiority and subjugation. Even the element of pride in nativity, which acts as a significant agent in resistance movements, becomes the basis of continuing divisional identification and hierarchical relations between the east and the west. Fanon calls these the ‘pitfalls of nationalist consciousness’ (2001: 88). Said notes that unlike Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, who see the intellectual as a person of the west guided by a psychological, economic and historical will to power, Fanon sees the intellectual as one who can move his consciousness from nationalist tendencies to real humanism (1994a: 324-25). Finally, Said ventures into the territory of neocolonialism where America is the new colonizer occupying and controlling the world with its programme of capitalism and its genuine belief that it is only through American rule and guidance that the world can be raised to prosperity and progress. On much the same lines as imperialism, American capitalism is also founded on the hegemonic discourses of American superiority and validity of American representational systems alone. With the example of the Arab world and its depiction by America as a lawless state that needs to be put to 136 Identity Politics and the Third World order by the American, who is ‘a kind of Puritan super-ego’ (1994a: 357), Said explains that colonialism continues in the world still within the same hegemonic and discursive structures of discrimination, and is guided by the same compliance between power and knowledge. The American propagation of capitalistic structures all over the world has led to the mapping of new cultural spheres which can be conducive to the international market dynamic. With such multi-national capitalism, comes the inevitable gap in the social wealth distribution thereby cyclically perpetuating American power and the need for American ascendancy. Further, within the culture of multinational capitalism, identity for the first and the third world is created in compartments of supplier and consumer, producer and service provider respectively. But domination, as seen before, is bound to cause resistance. The stereotypical images of the third world created by colonial and capitalistic empires have received resistance from people of both western and non-western origin. What is required though is a movement towards reconciliation rather than retaliation. Said calls for the development of a postcolonial world culture which can be inclusive and can allow for a consolidation of cultural experience rather than isolating peoples in xenophobic terms (1994a: 407-8). Beyond Orientalism 137 Said understands culture with its literary affiliations as the focal point of colonial interaction and sees it as an important site of colonial politics. In continuation with his theory of the hegemony of literature and concerned arts in creating a discourse of orientalism, Said widens his scope of colonial observation to include the highly crucial space of culture as well. He perceives culture as the site of constant contestation between the colonizer and the colonized. This space reflects the many possible relations between the two, ranging from interaction to resistance; from combat to symbiotic co-existence. Said empowers the space of culture with the capacity to revolutionize social processes. His analysis is aimed towards exposing the power of culture and its development in understanding the journey from colonial subjugation to independence and finally to hybridized affiliations and reconciliation of differences. Said advocates the creation of a culture which is more tolerant in nature and does not venture into the regressive ‘politics of blame’ (1994b: 45) but rather liberates the society from its xenophobic tendencies. But Said’s thesis on the cultural aspect of imperialism and resistance and its subsequent application to the understanding of third-world identity is disputable. Said’s foundational definition of culture as autonomous of ‘the economic, social and political realms’ (1994a: xii-xiii), is elitist, canonical and rather selective. It tends towards the 138 Identity Politics and the Third World Arnoldian high culture of strictly aesthetic and elevating experiences. Moreover, the autonomy that he grants to culture makes it a concept which is at a distance from the world of real experience (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 89). Said believes that culture is ‘impervious’ to the ‘dialogue’ between the colonizer and the colonized 1998: 7). His definition of culture then becomes exclusive of the direct social and political impact. He treats culture as a projecting screen on which the dynamics of social realities appear only through the via-media of literature and arts. However, this definition makes one wonder if the cultures of imperialism and resistance can be accommodated in the study of these arts alone. This is similar to the criticism offered to Said’s Orientalism, where he seems to attach an exaggerated importance to literature in creating and sustaining discourses for the maintenance of imperial control (Jalal alAzm 14). In Culture and Imperialism he again identifies the novel as a medium that helped ‘to keep the Empire more or less in place’ (88). In Orientalism, Said restricts himself to the study of the creation of an inert category called the orient, as if it were constructed in a laboratory without any resistance whatsoever. Said has moved from that study of identity creation, to a more dynamic observation of identity transformation. His previous dependence on Foucault seems to have given way to a new resonance of Gramsci and Fanon. Said clearly depends upon Beyond Orientalism 139 Foucault in relation to the construction of an essentialist orient so as to define the west in a state of power. But Foucault seems to stagnate himself in the politics of power to an extent that any possibility of resistance is entirely ignored. Said suggests that Foucault ‘more or less eliminates the central dialectic of opposed forces that still underlies modern society’ (1983: 221). Foucault restricts his analysis of power to the space of strict binary opposition between the colonizer and the colonized, and does not move beyond it. He sees the artist as a powerless tool in the hands of the dominant power bloc (Moore-Gilbert 62). Gramsci, on the contrary, deals with the politics of difference and of mobilizing forces to ‘modify a political situation’ (1998: 10) according to Said. Foucault influences Said in the study of orientalism as a discourse, but when discussing the process of mobilization of agency, Gramsci occupies a significant space. In Fanon, Said finds an elaborate process of the development of resisting forces. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon draws out the process that underlies the mobilization of resistance to domination. Fanon identifies three stages that lead to an active phase of resistance. The resisting force comes from the native intellectual who manages to understand the politics of power and knowledge that the colonizer rests upon. In the first phase, the native tries to emulate the colonizer in his ways so as to empower himself by the same means. Influenced by the power-knowledge syndrome, the native attempts to grant 140 Identity Politics and the Third World himself power by rapaciously devouring the sources of western knowledge. This phase includes a description of personal ideas in a language and syntax which is imported. But very soon, the matrix of western knowledge and native psychology creates an alienating effect and the native experiences a severe need for a more personal voice. The almost neurotic need for a voice that is one’s own results in a sort of reversion with reverence for all that is essentially native. Suddenly, the language and knowledge of the colonizer becomes repulsive and there comes a violent movement from the culture of the colonizer to the pre-colonial culture of the colonized. Ironically, this includes exhuming the past and revitalizing it with a sort of exoticism which is very similar to the western discourse about the orient. The Swadeshi Movement in India and the Negritude Movement in Africa are examples of this phase. It is this sudden need to revert to the nativist symbolism that is exemplified in Ngugi’s reversion to his native language Giküyü, as the appropriate medium for expressing his ideas. The final phase of active resistance comes from disillusionment with the earlier phases. The tool of active aggression is offered to the masses as a sanctifying and liberating means through the works of literature. The intellectual now begins to mobilize the masses in a language of active resistance. This phase is marked by violent attacks to colonial bondage that finally lead to liberation and independence (1994a: 176-80). Said depends Beyond Orientalism 141 upon Fanon’s model of resistance to observe the trajectory of resistance culture in literature and the arts. It is through this culture that the identity of the colonized can be mapped in the context of imperialism and resistance. Said is also influenced by Antonio Gramsci and Raymond Williams in their insistence upon the potential of ‘emergent or alternative consciousness allied to emergent and alternative subaltern groups within the dominant discursive society’ 1986: 152). His dependence on Williams begins with Orientalism, where he attempts what Williams calls the ‘unlearning [of] the inherent dominative mode’ (1958: 376). But Said’s dismantling of the dominative mode in Orientalism is restricted to questioning the identity construct in the precise moment of establishing a discourse about an essentialist orient. In Culture and Imperialism he engages in the study of identity in a much more violent and transformative process of decolonization. Whereas the study of the literary discourse of identity to establish empire can be termed academic, the issue of resistance and identity belongs to the real state of affairs. With Culture and Imperialism, Said ventures head-on into the area of ‘writing-as-action’ (1975: 24). The culture of imperialism is based on the discourse of orientalism. Literature serves as a vehicle for the spread of this discourse in the culture of the colonizer as well as the colonized. A resistance to that discourse also has to come by way of literature. Said identifies 142 Identity Politics and the Third World literature in general and the novel as a genre in particular as a medium for the study of the culture of imperialism and its inevitable corollary: resistance. He identifies the novel as a medium that reflects the social, cultural, economic, political and ideological realities of its time and it is this ‘worldliness of novel’ (13) that provides him with the means to revisit the culture of imperialism. Further Said develops a resistance theory based on the three stages elaborated by Fanon while unlayering the literary mode of resistance following his premise. Said’s analysis of culture begins with a long revision of Orientalism. He restates his theory of creation of the discourse of orientalism elaborating the nuances of the process in greater detail and correcting and defending his stand in response to the criticisms offered to his previous work (1998: 4-5). The first half of Culture and Imperialism mirrors a returning glance to his earlier work and exhibits a strong compatibility with the Afterword to Orientalism that Said wrote in 1995. In the epigraph from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Said clearly emphasizes that the drive to colonize was fuelled by a strong and unshakeable belief in the morality of colonial occupation. The colonizer was convinced that the occupation and governance of foreign lands was not an act of greed or malice, but rather an act of philanthropy. The westerner revered the belief and thought of himself as a messiah who had Beyond Orientalism 143 been entrusted with the divine task of civilizing the wild orient. This ‘idea’ (1994a: vii) that Kipling called ‘the white man’s burden’ (280) and Said termed as the ‘mission civilisatrice’ (1994a: 33) is the foundation of the culture of imperialism. It not only justifies the annexation and enslavement of foreign lands and peoples, but also makes the process seem like a matter of right for the colonizer. The colonizer’s craving for power works behind a façade of charity and seemingly absolves him of all tyranny. This acceptance of the ‘mission civilisatrice’ as the primary aim behind colonization and a strong inherited belief about native degeneracy created a western ideology that saw imperialism as a divine exercise and not an exploitative ambition. The popularity of the belief in the western capability of reforming and civilizing the east created a strong culture of reckoning the western ‘self’ as a superior species, and formed what can be called the culture of imperialism. The culture of imperialism drew upon the history of the west. The inherited myths about western superiority over the orient and a genealogically received ‘mission civilisatrice’ (1994a: 33) justified the western occupation of the orient. The power function of the imperial process had to be situated in a pure and ‘useful past’ which was exclusive of ‘unwanted elements, vestiges, narratives’ (16). This selective and polished representation of western past could legitimize the imperial 144 Identity Politics and the Third World process and affirm the discourse that ‘certain territories and people require and beseech domination, as well as forms of knowledge affiliated with domination’ (8). Since this fabricated history was used to create the discourse of the orient in stark opposition, the very idea of opposition also remains to be questioned. If the west did not represent its real ‘self’, the discursive oriental ‘other’ did not reflect the real ‘other’ either. The process of orientalism then becomes a discourse of double fabrication. The identity of the orient created in the process of orientalism had nothing to do with “The Orient” then, and was a fictional creation in imagined contexts. In his study of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Said makes two observations about the culture of imperialism: first, that there is a colonial cultural residue that continues to remain in the culture of the colonized even after they are free from imperial rule; and second, that there is no utopian alternative to imperialism. The forces of nationalism take over where imperialism leaves. Further, Said discovers that both Kurtz and Marlow believe in the morality of the colonial process to begin with but ‘acknowledge the darkness’ at the heart of it (1994a: 33) by the end of their African experience. But Conrad’s realization of this ‘horror’ (106) does not encourage him to liberate the natives of his novel from the clutches of colonization. Said explains this split saying that there are two sides to consciousness: subjective/ individual consciousness Beyond Orientalism 145 and secular/ cultural consciousness (1994a: 35). While the first offers an individual and uninfluenced reaction to experience, the second reflects a popular opinion. In the case of colonialism, the secular vision is the one that necessitates the polarity between the east and the west and makes them two distant and antagonistic entities. It is this secular consciousness that makes Conrad agency-less in the face of his subjective conclusions of ‘the horror’ (Moore-Gilbert 70). Ahmad makes a similar observation in his essay ‘Culture, Nationalism and the Role of Intellectuals’ that ‘intellectuals are also caught, individually and collectively, in movements of history much larger than themselves’ despite their power to contradict those movements (1996: 425). With the colonized this secular consciousness takes the form of combative and essentially opposing forces. Said presses upon the need to harness the subjective consciousness so as to allow a comparative reading of culture and identity (1994a: 49). He borrows the term ‘contrapuntal’ from music to define a process of highlighting one voice among the others while not eliminating the others. He suggests that ‘[t]he effect is of a multilevel sound’ (qtd. in Bouyami and Rubin, 2000: 426). Said’s insistence upon reading against the grain is related to: [T]he formation of cultural identities understood not as essentialisms . . . but as contrapuntal ensembles, for it is the case that no identity can 146 Identity Politics and the Third World ever exist by itself without an array of opposites, negatives, oppositions. (1994a: 60) Identity then becomes a constantly contrapuntal phenomenon, and not a state of being in isolation. Said establishes an infinite conflict in identity. It is notable that Said allows a subjective voice to the colonizer here as against his erstwhile totalizing vision of a universal occidental culture and literary production. In Orientalism Said expresses his opinion that the western intellectual strictly adheres to the task of strengthening the discourse about oriental inferiority and the necessity of colonial enterprise (2001b: 204; 1998: 4). Here he gives a more realistic treatment to the role of an intellectual. Said iterates upon the profound relationship between literature and the social space and observes that the literature of France and Europe bore a permanent backdrop of colonization, but never confronted it (75). With examples like Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and the popularly quoted Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Said explains that the process of colonization and imperial control of far off lands was not only an accepted phenomena in these novels but also a necessary process for the maintenance of western high culture (1994a: 75). To be able to understand the politics of this culture of colonial acceptance and support Said Beyond Orientalism 147 advocates a contrapuntal reading of ‘both processes . . . that of imperialism and that of resistance to it’ (79). Said suggests that a ‘structure of attitude and reference’ towards the colonial process develops parallel to the novel (1994a: 89). He identifies the novel as a genre that strategically works towards ‘keep[ing] the Empire more or less in place’ (88) and generating a ‘globalized worldview’ (90) about oriental identity and culture vis-à-vis colonialism. However Said marks an organic movement in the way empire is perceived from the age of Austen to that of Conrad. This change in the attitude towards colonialism reflects a slow demystification of the imperial façade of humanism. With a contrapuntal reading of Verdi’s Aida, Kipling’s Kim and Camus’ The Outsider, Said exemplifies that these texts reveal the cultural underpinnings of imperialism in the way the colonized are represented in them. There is an ‘immutable background voice’ (1994a: 212) of colonialism in these texts. All these were written for a western readership and a reading of them from the oriental perspective reveals the politics of narration and the firm ground that the discourse of orientalism held in imperial culture. Said defends himself against the notion that all literature is strategic in imperial occupation and changes his stand from Orientalism in accepting that ‘there are always resistances’ (1994a: 225). In his earlier work, he denies any 148 Identity Politics and the Third World resistance whatsoever and suggests that the orient is inert in its subjection to oriental discourse and domination (2001a: 203). But here he seems to move into a rather dynamic plane of colonial relations. He also corrects his notion about a homogenous representation of the colonized as inert and regressive in the literary work of the colonizers. He finds that in the later realistic work of Conrad and Forster one can read the failure of the presumptions about imperial humanism and the prejudices about oriental degeneracy (1994a: 226). The second part of Said’s work is devoted to the culture of resistance developed in counterpoint to the culture of imperialism. The culture of imperialism creates a discourse about oriental identity in stark opposition to the myths of western culture. Said’s constant attempts at questioning this discourse find a new methodology when he dismantles the cultural matrix contrapuntally. He engages in a contrapuntal reading of imperialism to unfold a culture of resistance directed against the discourse of orientalism and its application in the imperial process. Said identifies two voices in the experience of imperialism: that of the colonizer in the form of metropolitan discourses; and, that of the colonized in the form of resistance to imperialism (1994a: 234). The simultaneous experience of these voices creates a dissonant and ‘disjunct’ scenario where various cultures contest ‘contrapuntally Beyond Orientalism 149 together’ (234). It is out of this contrapuntality that Said attempts to theorize resistance against imperialism. Said is of the view that the issue of resistance has been unduly resolved by equating it to a force in opposition to western culture. Resistance by means of opposition tends to aggravate the polarity between the colonizer and the colonized (1994a: 237; Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 106). Since the ideas of nationalism are framed in absolute opposition to the projected western culture, nationalism tends to solidify the polarity between the east and the west, thereby affirming the discourse of orientalism rather than countering it, which was the real motive behind resistance (Innes, 1998: 123). Said clarifies right at the outset, that his theory of resistance is not directed against a community but the culture of imperialism. His attempt is to counter the hegemonic dominant discourses and not any particular community or nation. Resistance is analyzed not in the colonial space of east and west but in the imperial space of domination and liberation. His theory of resistance is directed not only against the colonial rule, but also against the postcolonial domination of nationalism, and the current American ascendancy. Said’s rejection of the polar identities of east and west as objects of his study for the cultural domain of imperialism and liberation suggests his movement beyond the essentialisms of orientalism and occidentalism to a resistance against the 150 Identity Politics and the Third World codifying forces of representation. There is a conspicuous movement beyond the boundaries that divide cultures, to place identity in the real space of influence and evolution rather than situating it in mythical arenas of warring fanaticisms. Said transcends the barrier of ‘opposition of inside and outside which inaugurates all binary opposition’ (Marrouchi, 1991: 70). Without doubt, national identity is extremely significant in the early stages of identity formation in counterpoint to dominating representations but one should be critical of the way in which national consciousness changes to nativist tendencies if not controlled in time. Nationalism is an important tool in creating a sense of ‘solidarity’ (Ahmad, 1996: 401) and identity between the colonized against the hegemonic control of the dominative mode, but it comes as a stumbling block in the path of ‘reconciliation between the West and the non-West’ (Moore-Gilbert 65). Nationalism needs to be transformed and adapted ‘in tangible ways’ to the larger battle against hegemony (Ahmad, 1996: 399) precisely like the metropolitan tools of narration. Without such transformation, nationalism can become exceedingly separatist and counterhegemonic in nature (Ahmad, 1996: 403). [U]nless national consciousness at its moment of success [is] somehow changed into a social consciousness, the future would hold not Beyond Orientalism 151 liberation but an extension of imperialism. (Said, 1994a: 323) Referring to the Negritude movement, Said explains that nationalist movements, though resistant in nature, are ‘trapped inside [themselves]’ (1994a: 276). Here, Said seems to echo Fanon and Cesàire in their belief that the development of a nation as resistance is a bourgeois phenomenon which must be opposed vehemently as it is at best a local reincarnation of the imperial process (Mohanty 123). Echoing the views of Fanon and Wole Soyinka, he links such nationalist movements to other resistance movements; such as, Yeats and the Irish context. Such endeavors of locating identity in the space of a mythical past are isolating in nature. Nationality, nationalism, nativism: the progression is more and more constraining. [my emphasis] (1994a: 277) Said brings forward a theory of resistance not through opposition, but rather a deconstructive and alternate methodology. He echoes Fanon’s warning against the ‘pitfalls of national consciousness’ (1994a: 323) and necessitates the appropriation of metropolitan culture to accommodate the expression of nationalism and resistance to domination. Resistance is most effective when it acquires a place in the mainframe of dominant culture and then transforms it to 152 Identity Politics and the Third World ‘establish cultural difference within the discursive territory of the imperialist’ (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 106). This complex area of resistance is to be read outside the scope of separatist and fracturing categories. The discourse of orientalism is based on the politics of opposition in timeless and universal frames. The resistance to it ought to come out of attempts to reconcile the supposed oppositions and grant them an organic and individual rhetoric. The idea of resisting through establishing essential oppositions is regressive in nature. Rushdie asks about culture: [D]o cultures actually exist as separate, pure defensible entities? Is not mélange, adulteration, impurity, pick ‘n’ mix at the heart of the idea of the modern, and hasn’t it been that way for almost all this shook-up century? Doesn’t the idea of pure culture in urgent need of being kept from alien contamination lead us inexorably towards apartheid, towards ethnic cleansing, towards the gas chamber? (1999: 21) The mythology of purity and denial of acculturation leads to a violent xenophobia and further to cultural fanaticism (Ashcroft, 2001: 25; Chatterjee, 1999: 3). The culture of resistance cannot be backward looking and obstinately exclusive of the colonial experience. On the other hand, the culture of resistance can be progressive if it allows a ‘secular’ expression. To Said, Beyond Orientalism 153 [The] dense fabric of secular life can’t be herded under the rubric of national identity or can’t be made entirely to respond to this phony idea of a paranoid frontier separating “us” from “them”─ which is a repetition of the old sort of orientalist model. (qtd. in Sprinker, 1992: 233) Said stresses upon the importance of reading the text of culture and identity in counterpoint. In the postcolonial space, resistance can result in a fanatic and defensive recourse to tribalism or it can be maneuvered towards ‘some grand synthesis’ through a ‘clarified political and methodological commitment to the dismantling of systems of domination’ (2001c: 215). Said has been criticized for not acknowledging forces of resistance from the colonized in his earlier work (Ashcroft, 2001: 40). But he clarifies in Culture and Imperialism that imperial power was never accepted by a supine and inert non-Western native; there was always some form of active resistance and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the resistance finally won out. (xii) This seems to reflect that imperialism subsequently results in resistance. Resonating the Foucauldian belief that ‘where there is power there is resistance’, it can be simplistically concluded that resistance is an unavoidable effect of imperialism (Said, 154 Identity Politics and the Third World 1998: 5). But Said’s theory of resistance does not end with active aggression against the colonizer. He observes two distinct stages of resistance: ‘primary resistance’ which includes the reclaiming of the ‘geographical territory’ under siege; and, ‘secondary resistance’ which refers to the reconstitution and restoration of the ‘cultural territory’ (1994a: 252). The active aggression against colonial rule is followed by a resistance against the mental and cultural domination against hegemonic forces. This resistance against the mental imperialism extended by the dominating ruler in the form of discourses is a means towards reclaiming the native imagination (Chatterjee 13). It is this form of liberation that Said concerns himself with in the main. Said situates his theory of resistance in the space of literature and suggests that the act of restoring the suppressed past of the native can be materialized through a process of ‘writing back’ to the empire (260). This act of writing includes not just a contrapuntal reading of canonical texts but also a rewriting of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. This rewriting of canonical texts reflects an ‘intellectual and figurative energy reseeing and rethinking the terrain common to whites and nonwhites’ (1994a: 256). Such an exercise is transformative in that it resists the canonical binary by subverting its canonicity. Re-writing of canonical texts in a way returns the ‘gaze’ of the colonizer and Beyond Orientalism 155 ‘transforms our view of cultural possibilities’ (Ashcroft, 1991: 35) thereby diminishing the staunch imposition of imperial stereotyping. This act of revisiting the past in counterpoint is to come to a state of liberation with an acceptance that the history and culture of the colonizer and the colonized are inevitably inscribed in each other and they cannot be subscribed to a precolonial past. Such a study in counterpoint is vital to the development of a diversely affiliated identity and it is this space of identification in hybridity that allows for the dismantling of the essentialist compartments of ‘self’ and ‘other’. This process of writing back includes a breakdown of the oppositions between various cultures. It includes entering the dominant discursive mode and transforming it to allow the suppressed voices to speak, not in the absence of the dominant voices, but in counterpoint with them. This form of resistance marks a movement towards empowerment through a denial of essentialist representations. Further Said’s insistence upon the presence of both voices and the creation of cacophony is to suggest the idea that culture and identity in the postcolonial world cannot be defined or defended in a space of singular voices. The identity of the postcolonial world, on the other hand, can only be defined in a state of continuous conflict. By acquiring the western means of representation and subsequently appropriating them to reject domination, the 156 Identity Politics and the Third World orient, once considered powerless, is brought into a state of challenging dialogue with the metropolitan intellectual. Locating the space of resistance in literature is based on a premise that narratives themselves make a nation and that ‘[n]arrative itself is the representation of power’ (1994a: 330). The author of a text has the authority to tell. This authority, if acquired by the native, allows for the telling of the story from the other side of the canon. Said’s theory of resistance is based on this thesis regarding the relationship between power and narration. The language and the syntax remain those of the dominant class but are appropriated to the native’s experience. This exercise of appropriation is metaphorically significant as it represents the movement of the native into the space of narration, hitherto reserved for the imperial ruler alone. As opposed to nativist methods that demand a complete substitution of dominant forms with the oriental means, such an exercise is more inclusive and anticipates a resolution and reconciliation of identity, rather than continued exclusion and chauvinism. Total substitution of narrative techniques with native forms would restrict the counter narrative to native readership alone and would not let contrapuntal voices be heard in the western world. This would result in a resistance which is isolated from the rest of the world. To make resistance a global phenomenon of opposing human suppression, rather Beyond Orientalism 157 than a conflict between two categories, Said insists upon a voyage in (1994a: 295). Resistance is then directed towards acquiring the metropolitan literary mode and appropriating the language to suit the national expression (Chatterjee 7). This is exemplified in Raja Rao’s successful attempt to ‘convey in a language not one’s own, a spirit that is one’s own’ by infusing the ‘tempo’ of Indian life into an Indian English expression (2000: v). Rushdie’s methodology of writing ‘outside the whale’i demands a similar appropriation. Outside the whale is the unceasing storm, the continual quarrel, the dialectic of history. Outside the whale there is a genuine need for political fiction, for books that draw new and better maps of reality, and make new languages with which we can understand the world. (1991: 100) Achebe similarly believes that: English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings. (1975: 62) The space of this hybrid work is a space of constant polemic between the forces working within it. It is in this polemical 158 Identity Politics and the Third World space of conflict, appropriation and attempts towards resolution, that the postcolonial third-world identity is defined. Said is criticized for accepting the west as superior to the orient (Jalal al-’ Azm 18). By insisting that the native must enter the metropolitan centre and appropriate it, Said repeats the canonical belief of superiority of the west in contrast with the orient. The orient has to voyage in to the mainframe of western culture to liberate himself. This conscious movement towards the canon for empowerment makes the native undeniably aware of western superiority. Said demands an appropriation of the western systems of narration and thereby necessitates the acquisition of western cultural and linguistic tools to liberate the orient. He accepts that the western culture is the metropolitan culture and his repeated insistence upon the native adapting to the metropolitan culture so as to transform it makes western culture an unshakeable and unchallengeable entity. On the other hand, the native is defined as extremely malleable. The native intellectual is identified as the human force capable of redirecting western sources of power against the western discourses of power. The native intellectual is empowered in Saidean theory to ‘voyage in’ to the metropolitan centre and dismantle its constructs. But Said simultaneously makes the identity of the native intellectual a fluid construct which ‘can make “the voyage over” to a new transnational cultural identity’ wherever it is located (Moore- Beyond Orientalism 159 Gilbert 72). Said identifies innumerable powers of strategic and productive resistance in the native, but at the same time defines identity for him in a space of no affiliations. This transformative aspect of resistance is suggestive of a sort of compliance within resistance. Following the model offered by Fanon, the first phase of resistance is the phase wherein the native intellectual imbibes the sources of western empowerment (Fanon, 2001: 176). There is a sort of compliance that resistance resorts to right at the outset. In the native’s attempts to resist domination, the first step is that of emulation of the western model. This emulation is personified in Macaulay’s ‘middle men’ who are in the oscillatory space of mixed affiliations. In this phase resistance is obliquely viewed as a colonially orchestrated process. The experience of colonial domination shows that, in the effort to perpetuate exploitation, the colonizer . . . provokes and develops the cultural alienation of a part of the population, either by so-called assimilation of indigenous people, or by creating a social gap between the indigenous elites, and the popular masses. As a result of this process . . . the urban or peasant petite bourgeoise, assimilates the colonizer’s mentality. (Cabral 45) Native intellectuals like Senghor, Achebe, Soyinka and Yeats were educated in western models and their location is 160 Identity Politics and the Third World problematic vis-à-vis their syntax and content (Innes 123-4). The dubitable identity and culture of these ‘middle men’ most often results in the third phase of resistance where they dismantle the colonial structures by reconciling the oppositions between cultures and accepting the transformation that imperialism causes. However, it would be too simplistic to assume that resistance through nationalism is totally compliant with imperial culture and is a ‘legacy of imperialism’ (Spivak, 1993: 281). It is believed that in emulating the west, the native borrows the western sense of nationalism, and the resisting forces directed against imperialism are in fact the greatest victory of the colonial forces. But such a supposition would become problematic if one were to observe the conflict between native and imperial identity in post-colonial terms. Decolonization . . . required theoretical realignment in the very framework of the existing theory of state. . . . But implicit in that was another agreement: namely, that as one undertook the necessary surpassing, one could not simply bypass or take easy recourse to an infinite regress of heterogeneities; one had to go through the Marxist categories, in order to arrive on the other side. . . . One had to take stock . . . of what one had at hand, as a theoretical legacy and as a historical experience. It was at this point . . . that the most productive disagreements began. (Ahmad, 1995b: 15) Beyond Orientalism 161 Further, had the forces of nationalism been borrowed and emulated alone, a resistance movement based on them would not have resulted in such a popular following or in the final independence of the colonized. Taking the example of India, one can observe how the systems of democracy and citizenship were established soon after Independence through nationalistic resistance (Ahmad, 1995a: 4). Third-world identity bears in it the imprint of a precolonial past, the colonial experience, the resistance though nationalistic means and the reconciling efforts of the native between forces of nationalism and incorporated influences of imperialism. Nationalism may primarily be a western term, but it is appropriated by the resisting native to oppose subjugation by all dominative modes: imperial as well as nationalist. The resistance to imperialism comes from an amalgam of forces which employs both opposition and incorporation. It is because of this dual movement that the space of third-world identity becomes ‘hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic’ (1994a: xxix). It is this multiplicity of identity and culture, without a fanatic warring of ideas within, that Said attempts to uncover through his theory. To him, such an acknowledgement of hybridity in culture and identity marks a progressive movement in the society from the separatist oppositions to an environment 162 Identity Politics and the Third World conducive to inclusion. It is by developing a ‘pluralistic vision of the world’ (1994a: 277) that a true sense of ‘liberation’ can be brought about in the imperial space (278). The act of liberation suggests rising above and beyond the bonds of one’s existence. Resistance to imperialism and hegemonic control should be directed towards transcending the bonds of race through an inclusive and conciliating form of resistance (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 112). Further Said takes the concept of imperialism to the space of American ascendancy and suggests that the representation of America as the nation entrusted with a ‘world responsibility’ because of its unsurpassable superiority over the rest of world continues the play of representations as a means of empowerment (1994a: 345). In counterpoint, the east is defined as terroristic and fanatic (375). A demolition of the essentialist identities created out of the American ‘will to power’ is possible only through a dismantling of these strategies to power by a greater ‘voyage in’ to the structures of power and revising them from a view in counterpoint. Despite the inconsistent structure of Culture and Imperialism (Moore-Gilbert 70), Said manages to draw a theory of resistance based on conciliation rather than antagonism. He manages to break the binaries of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and find a sense of identity in the space of overlap between them. Bringing identity into the hybrid space of Beyond Orientalism 163 constant contestation, he celebrates the ideas of secularism, tolerance and acceptance as against the essentialist oppositions of constraining representations. Observing that resistance to subjugation comes not only from the colonized but also from the colonizer in the form of disillusionment in the civilizing mission, Said brings the colonizer and the colonized to a ‘largely common’ ground (241). With the native emulating and appropriating the colonial experience and the colonizer doubting the ethics of imperialism, Said populates the middle space of colonial experience with ‘differentiated’ peoples, hybridized by colonial interaction (xxix). Referring to the space of anxiety and distrust in the imperial mission shared by the colonizer and the colonized (241) Said almost explains the working of the middle space and the interstices without using the terminology in currency. He provides the ground on which the theory of multicultural identities can be developed. One can almost hear Bhabha as an expectation in Said, who claims in his Introduction to Culture and Imperialism that ‘because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic’ (xxix) and concludes with the idea that ‘[n]o one today is purely one thing. . . . Imperialism consolidated the mixtures of cultures and identities on a global scale’ (407). 164 Identity Politics and the Third World But Said seems to embark upon the idea of a common culture of difference created due to the colonial exercise and seems to arrive at a possibility of resolving the conflict between identities and cultures by passively accepting them as a matter of fact. He suggests that ‘hybrid counter-energies . . . provide a community or culture made up of numerous antisystemic hints and practices for collective human existence . . . that is not based on coercion or domination’ [my emphasis] (406) and further that a secular realization and acceptance of difference includes ‘not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one’ (408). Such a supposition seems to be a rather far-fetched and utopian, which is almost impossible to envisage. His model of a global ‘common culture which also recognizes and respects legitimate differences and which does not preserve the political status quo by attempting to negotiate away real and material conflicts of interest by appeals to a “higher” reality embodied in a quasi-spiritual sphere of shared texts’ (MooreGilbert 72) is highly unrealistic and shows strong affiliations to an imagined community of peaceful and equalitarian hybridity. Said reaches the space of hybrid identity and acknowledges its presence but rather unrealistically imagines to pacify all difference and develop a utopian and homogeneous global culture of hybridity. Beyond Orientalism 165 In the area of third-world identity, Said’s work can be appreciated as a landmark in that he initiates the idea of a mixed identity and culture as opposed to the previous notion of identity as a pure and reclaimable form. But beyond that, Said seems to locate identity and culture in the space of hopefulness and deviates from the space of real experience. Said shifts abruptly from his study of culture as what it is to culture as what it should be. In this movement, the question of thirdworld identity becomes a point of conjecture in the utopian world of mutual coexistence and peaceful secularism. Identity once again gets situated in the space of homogenization and commonality. Said manages to bring forward the question of hybridity and undeniable differentiation of culture due to colonization, but he restricts himself to the cultural aspect of it. The discussion of identity in the hybridized form remains to be discussed in his work. Notes i. Rushdie’s term ‘outside the whale’ is explained in his eponymous essay included in Imaginary Homelands (1991), in reference to Orwell’s ‘Inside the Whale.’ Being inside the whale becomes an act of being ‘swallowed, remaining passive, accepting…. It is a species of quietism’ (qtd. in Rushdie, 1991: 95). Outside the whale is a space of writing outside the canonical structures, revising the ruling patterns and writing in counterpoint with ‘rowdyism’ (Rushdie 99). 166 Identity Politics and the Third World Chapter 3 Locating Hybridization In Orientalism, Said approaches the discourse of identity with a view to observe the polarity enmeshed in the canonical narration of colonial experience and to challenge it on the grounds of homogeneity, universalism and ideological prejudice. He further establishes that the creation and iteration of the discourse about oriental identity is intended to justify the colonial authority of the occident and, on a more psychological level, to provide as an ‘other’ for the projection of the western ‘self’ in opposition to it. Though Said succeeds in debunking the essentialist definitions of oriental identity, he fails to provide an alternate 168 Identity Politics and the Third World account for it. Challenging the authenticity of the occidental projection of oriental identity, Said also raises the question of an authentic (and essentialized) orient. He envisions an idyllic picture of a secular world in the Conclusion of his Culture and Imperialism [1993] where narcissistic antagonism of various cultures and communities is replaced with a sense of mutual harmony. He concludes his work by saying that ‘[n]o one today is purely one thing. . . . Imperialism consolidated the mixtures of cultures and identities on a global scale’ (1994a: 407). But the issue of multiple identities is resolved to quite an extent by considering that they can be ‘consolidated’. Further in the hope of there being no desire to dominate the other in a heterogeneous society, Said euphorically envisions an absence of hierarchy. His analysis is an important starting point for the study of identity beyond binary oppositions but does not go very far in it. Identity in post Saidean terms, is conceived as a site of constant definition and redefinition, between the politics of self and other. It is defined in a state of mixed affiliations. The colonial experience is logically viewed as one that mutates the traditional identity of the orient and the occident transforming them into a community of culture received from either of the factions. Homi Bhabha elaborates upon this mixedness of hybridity in The Location of Culture (1994). Locating Hybridization Although Bhabha furthers Said’s 169 challenge to essentialist definitions of identity, there is a marked difference in his approach towards the issue. While Said’s analysis concerns the issue of discourse formation and the construct of oriental identity, Bhabha’s focus is not the authentic representation of oriental identity but rather identity in the culture of hybridization. Bhabha investigates the development of interstitial and overlapping identities and abstains from developing a theory of the authentic orient. In his study of hybridization, Bhabha magnifies his scope to include both the subject positions of the colonizer and the colonized. His work is not restricted to the study of the orient as in the case of Said. Finally, while Said’s attempt to question the discourse of polarity concludes in a euphoric resolution of conflict, Bhabha claims to accentuate the complexity of identification by observing fissures within the categories of self and other. Bhabha’s area of focus can be divided into two phases. In the first, he emphasizes the concept of identity and its nuances in the colonial period, and in the second, asserts the collective existence of various communities of the world in a multicultural society (Moore-Gilbert 115). While the first phase marks a rather minute study of identity and its development with respect to colonialism, the second phase is devoted to the postmodernist study of postcolonial societies. 170 Identity Politics and the Third World Closely referring to Bhabha’s The Location of Culture, this chapter is designed to critically analyze the first phase of his work. Focusing on Bhabha’s theory of ambivalence and identity defined in the interstitial space between the colonizer and the colonized, this chapter aims to elaborate the concept of identity with respect to the question of hybridity. Bhabha’s treatment of identity and his theory about hybridization are closely observed in the colonial context along with a critical analysis of the key terms of hybridization in postmodern terms. But before venturing into a critical analysis of Bhabha’s thesis on third-world identity, a brief introduction to The Location of Culture is pertinent. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha challenges the definition of identity as a fixed state of being. He approaches it rather as a constant attempt towards being. To him, identity is not a static concept but an endless process. In order to understand the endlessness of this process, it is relevant to understand how the concepts of space, time and being are perceived in the context of postcolonial hybridization. The categories of space, time and being are not observed as linear terms of existence, but rather split in the hybrid plane. Bhabha approaches space as inclusive of that which lies beyond the borderlines and boundaries. In so doing, the spatial aspect of identity offers not only that which is affiliated but also that which may be antagonistic (1994: 1). With reference to time Locating Hybridization 171 again, Bhabha observes that the present is not a ‘synchronic’ continuation of the past into the future because of its movements, parallels, conflicts, hierarchies and complexities (6). Finally, being is not restricted to presence but includes a constant reference and allusion to absence as a polar opposite. Further, if identity is construed as a constant attempt towards being, and not being as a final entity, every definition of identity includes its presence as well as lack of it (1). By so splitting the fundamental bases of identification, Bhabha approaches hybridization as an endless process of erupting differences and efforts to negotiate them. In so doing, his analysis is one that dissects identity further and elaborates the inclusion of the other in the self at various levels. Bhabha’s work begins with a revised survey of the colonial discourse theory and a clarification on his perspective regarding theory. Countering the theory of binary identification systems with a theory of hybridization, Bhabha acknowledges the inevitable recourse to discourse in counter-theory. In a Foucauldian sense, he observes an ostensibly antagonistic relation between theory and counter theory. He suggests that the attempt to dismantle a discourse theory is generally associated with an urge to counter its authority and canonicity with a counter-authority and counter-canonicity. He identifies an ‘adversarial authority’ in counter-theory which is ironically directed against the structures of authority (1994: 33). But this 172 Identity Politics and the Third World authority is only a theoretical phenomenon and remains at a distance from the ‘truth’ or the real social apparatus. Bhabha urges us to think of political phenomena beyond the theoretical relations of causality/ reaction (33-34). His views on theory and the lapse of reactionary conclusions place his ensuing discussion of identity in a space which is not defined by structured and received perceptions. He begins his analysis by disclaiming stratified conclusions ‘refusing to let his terms reify into static concepts . . . to avoid . . . repeating the same structures of power and knowledge’ (Young, 1990: 187). In defining the subject of contemporaneity or the political truth of the day, he advocates a critical position neither left nor right, but one which can split the experiential being into both. The resultant is not a liberalist or secularist definition but rather one that splits the consciousness into here and there and then creates itself in the passage. With Bhabha, negotiation, translation, change, dialogue and exchange become important terms, all locating culture and identity in media res. He suggests that one must take an inclusive subject position in order to theorize the concept of identity and culture. This is clearly reminiscent of Bakhtin’s definition of hybridization as [A] mixture of two social languages within the limits of a single utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an utterance, between two different Locating Hybridization 173 linguistic consciousnesses, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation, or by some other factor. (1981: 358) Referring to Bakhtin, Bhabha emphasizes that identity must also be observed as ‘dialogic’ in nature. He questions the Manichean system of identification based on binary oppositions, and places the concept of identity out of the scope of closed definitions (1994: 44). With respect to identity, Bhabha’s work exhibits certain elementary changes. He contradicts the idea of conceptualizing and categorizing identity in terms, polar or otherwise. He suggests that identity is constantly in a state of flux and never reaches a final closure. Identity is defined as a process and not as a final and determinable concept. He insists that identity is constantly under transformation and mutation by experience or influence. This implies that communities and identities have very little in common. To remember Said here, No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are no more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. (1994a: 407) Identity based on communal or national categorization then, is only a way of beginning to penetrate into an individual’s being and loses importance very soon. In the colonial context, 174 Identity Politics and the Third World Bhabha begins by challenging the polar categories of self/other, white/black, occident/orient, west/east and so on, and suggests that these categories are dependent upon the stereotypical discursive categories which are of little importance. He rejects the system of binary codification and suggests that the colonial experience influences the culture and identity indelibly and causes them to be constantly differentiated. Bhabha refutes the polar view of identification as negative. To him, the idea of identifying something by telling what it is not is clearly based on separatist opposition. He emphasizes the importance of locating culture and identity in interstitial space. He suggests that: It is in the emergence of the interstices ─ the overlap and displacement of domains of difference ─ that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated. (1994: 2) He defines identity and culture in the space of ‘negotiation’ rather than that of ‘negation’ (37). Identity as negotiation depicts a sense of being in process and also draw[s] attention to the structure of iteration which informs political movements that attempt to articulate antagonistic and oppositional Locating Hybridization 175 elements without the redemptive rationality of sublation or transcendence. (38) Using Derrida’s concept of differànce, Bhabha defines identity and culture as categories which are defined by constantly erupting differences which defer a final signification (38). Attempts towards identification are only attempts towards negotiating these differences and defining with them rather than against them. In this process of negotiation, identity becomes inclusive of the past and does not stand in discontinuity with it. Further, it does not reflect a ‘unitary or homogenous political object’ but one in ‘philosophical tension, or cross-reference with others’ (38). Bhabha clarifies his approach towards identity as one which is beyond the antagonism of power struggles, inclusive of influences and depictive of continuous organic development in a state of conflict, rather than a finality of secular definition. His insistence upon ‘negotiation’ and ‘iteration’ shows his acknowledgement of the conflicting resonances in identity and culture and the necessity of enunciating them. He approaches this dynamic with a view to collaborate the various forms of enunciation and their scope to theorize the attempt to define identity (1994: 38). Bhabha illustrates the hybridity that characterizes the ‘moment of political change’ (41). The moment of change does not mean opposition of the erstwhile political situation but 176 Identity Politics and the Third World rather a multifold graduation from it. Not only is change affiliated and negotiated, it is also multileveled. For example, the postcolonial demand for liberty comes from various groups − the colonized, the depressed classes, women − all at various yet negotiated levels of marginality. There is a common element between them, yet a difference. Bhabha identifies hybridity not as a homogenous state but as a space of essential heterogeneity. He explains that ‘the principle of political negotiation’ (41) is an endless process in the attempt towards identity. He also stresses that there can be ‘no final discursive closure of theory’ (44). While critiquing the theory of an essentialist opposition between the east and the west established and strengthened by the colonizers, Bhabha dwells upon the idea of difference and explains that to him difference is an integral part of social and cultural identification, especially in the colonial context. Difference signifies the lack of sameness and creates the ground for the play of identity influence. He insists that the concept of identity should be located in the arena of ‘[c]ultural difference ─ not cultural diversity’ (47). He differentiates: Cultural diversity is an epistemological object ─ culture as an object of empirical knowledge ─ whereas cultural difference is the process of the enunciation of culture as “knowledgeable”, authoritative, adequate to the construction of systems of cultural identification. If cultural Locating Hybridization 177 diversity is a category of comparative ethics, aesthetics, or ethnology, cultural difference is a process of signification through which statements of culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate and authorize the production of fields of force, reference, applicability and capacity. (49-50) Whereas cultural diversity is viewed as a state of being in its final signification, a closure, cultural difference is a process of signifying a difference − a process of enunciation. Bhabha continues: The concept of cultural difference focuses on the problem of the ambivalence of cultural authority: the attempt to dominate in the name of a cultural supremacy which is itself produced only in the moment of differentiation. And it is the very authority of culture as knowledge of referential truth which is at issue in the concept and moment of enunciation. The enunciative process introduces a split in the performative present of cultural identification; a split between the traditional, culturalist demand for a model, a tradition, a community, a stable system of reference, and the necessary negation of the certitude in the articulation of new cultural demands, meanings, strategies in the political present, as a practice of domination, and resistance. . . . The enunciation of cultural difference problematizes the binary division of past and present, tradition and modernity, at the level of cultural representation and its authoritative address. (50-51) 178 Identity Politics and the Third World Once again, Bhabha stresses upon the terminology of process rather than one of final signification. Identity, to him, cannot be defined as a static balance between diverse cultural presences. Rather, it is to be defined as a continuous effort towards negotiating a balance between endlessly developing differences. He places great emphasis on the interstices or the ‘Third Space’ between cultures as constitutive of the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew. (1994: 55) Bhabha’s analysis is resonant with Fanon’s ‘moving metaphor’ with which he suggests that identity in terms of negotiation and translation is defined in a state of flux and is representative of the mobility of the signifier. Referring to Fanon and his liberatory theory, Bhabha says that when people move in a liberatory phase, they cannot be urged to chase a mythological nationalism. Signs signify different things at different times and subsequently, a new signification is developed in the third space of enunciation ─ beyond the binaries (1994: 56). This illustration allows a greater play to the process of signification through space and time. The sign is populated with a variety of meanings across space and time. It is this hybridization of the Locating Hybridization 179 sign, or the identity in postcolonial terms, which is brought to a hypothetical closure in the moment of enunciation, only to signify the difference (space) and deference (time) in its signification. For Bhabha identity is a metaphoric category which is defined in mobility and not in stagnation. His ideas echo in his essay ‘Culture’s In-Between’ where he defines the multicultural as a ‘floating signifier’ whose enigma lies less in itself than in the discursive uses of it to mark social processes where differentiation and condensation seem to happen almost synchronically. (1996: 55) Further, Bhabha explains in an interview with Jonathan Rutherford that the reference to diversity causes the eruption of two main problems: first, within the ostensible claim of encouraging cultural diversity, there is also always an effort towards the ‘containment’ of it, which leads to a bound and restricted articulation of difference within limits per se; and second (and more harmful), within the secular multicultural societies that promote a sense of variety and diversity, there are strong examples of prevailing racism as ‘the universalism that paradoxically permits diversity, masks ethnocentric norms, values and interests’ (208). Childs and Williams explain with reference to Bhabha: 180 Identity Politics and the Third World Cultural diversity, like multiculturalism, is a containing term that . . . denies contestation and hybridity through its assertion of simple plurality and the existence of pre-given cultural forms. By contrast, cultural difference focuses on the ambivalence of cultural authority, the split between on the one hand the demand for a cultural tradition and community, and on the other the political need to negate this homogeneity in the negotiation of new cultural demands. (1997: 141-42) Bhabha’s aversion to diversity comes from a belief in the illusionary secularism of the term and its finality which seems to restrict the eruption and articulation of difference. The idea of recurring as well as erupting differences and their negotiation to reach a sense of identity, leads to two qualifications: that the differences are present in a possibly conflicting state, and that they are negotiable and can be brought to signify an identity. Based on these aspects of difference, Bhabha develops his argument about the ambivalence caused due to the colonial encounter. Bhabha notes in close reference to Fanon, that with the disintegration of native identity under the colonial gaze, the frame of reference used for identification by the colonizer also disintegrates. There is a two-way neurosis or alienation in the colonial encounter: both in the colonizer and the colonized. With Fanon, Bhabha asks for a break from the ‘Manichean delirium’ (1994: 62). The post-Enlightenment white man Locating Hybridization 181 includes a shadow of the colonized. This dual/ parallel existence leads to an ‘ambivalent identification’ (62). This is not the parallel existence of the self and the other, but rather the ‘otherness of Self inscribed in the perverse palimpsest of colonial identity’ (63). The duality in colonial identity is one of simultaneous attraction and repulsion. Taking his cue from Freud and Fanon, Bhabha arrives at his thesis that colonial identity is informed with an ambivalent behavior of simultaneous attraction and repulsion for the other. For any subject to define his identity there needs to be an ‘other’. This other is not simply an opposite of the self but an image on which the contrasting perception of the self can be superimposed. The lines of difference then reflect the individuating features and points of difference, based on which, identity can be suggested and remarked (1994: 62). There is a desire for difference from the other, to individuate the self, and at the same time, there is a derision of that difference as a necessary prerequisite for identifying the self in a state of supremacy. Bhabha develops his theory of ambivalence based on his observation that the self and the other do not exist in parallels but are inscribed within each other (63). He observes a perversity in the identification process which brands it as one informed by simultaneous attraction and repulsion. 182 Identity Politics and the Third World The colonial relation reflects a complicated system of identification. The idea of black is a white creation and a basis for white identification. Identity is then split at both ends. [I]ts split representations stage the division of body and soul that enacts the artifice of identity, a division that cuts across the fragile skin ─ black and white ─ of individual and social authority. (Bhabha, 1994: 63) This split comes not as a forced phenomenon, but rather emerges from a colonial desire. The existence of the self in the colonial context bears an indelible inclusion of the other. In such a scenario, identity cannot be enunciated but with reference to the other, which ‘permits the dream of inversion of roles’ (63). This ‘dream’ posits a strong sense of ambivalence in the system and execution of authority and hierarchy. Further, colonial desire and demand of authority cause the native to crave for the space of the master, maintaining his anger all the while. This state of ambivalence leads to the emergence of colonial otherness and liminality. It is the in-between spaces of colonial contact that are populated with liminal identity (64). To add to this ambivalence the process of enunciation of identity is never a simple affirmation of a given definition, but rather an attempt ‘to be for an Other’ (64). It is willingly inclusive of the other and also attempting to be away from it. In the effort to react to a disintegrating identity of otherness, Locating Hybridization 183 identification becomes a process of returning to ‘an image of identity that bears the mark of splitting in the Other place from which it comes’ (64). The self’s reaction to the other is then, ‘not a simple rejection of difference but a recognition and a disavowal of an otherness that holds an attraction and poses a threat’ [my emphasis] (Childs and Williams 125). To increase the anxiety of a splitting self, colonial contact also offers the anxiety of an invisible gaze. The colonized identity is an invisible identity, in that it is identified by a sense of negation and absence. The identity of the other is defined in a vacuumized state where it cannot be ascertained or acknowledged as it is defined in negatives/ absences. The polar other then becomes impossible to identify and face. The identity of the self-created for this invisible other, then, is an image which is inclusive of the stereotypical invisibility of the colonized. Bhabha’s other has its identity under erasure by the white gaze (1994: 68). But the invisible other has a gaze too and looks on the white self. The anxiety of an invisible other gazing on the self creates the anxiety of identification ─ it leaves no room for self-affirmation. Bhabha deals with the concept of image and stereotype in great detail. But the concept of image bears direct consequence with ambivalence as an attribute of identity. He explains that identity as image is both representative of sameness and difference. It is an attempt to ‘double’ the self in 184 Identity Politics and the Third World reproducing it as an image, but at the same time it is a strong reminder of the absence of the self in its being. The image, by virtue of being an image, is not the self but only a simultaneous effect of presence and absence. In the identification of what is present in terms of absence, identity becomes a phenomenon of doubling: Its representation is always spatially split ─ it makes present something that is absent ─ and temporally deferred: it is the representation of a time that is always elsewhere, a repetition. (73) This makes an image/ representation always an attempt to double identity. It is never ‘mimetically . . . the appearance of a reality’ (73). Bhabha finds a basic flaw in the representation of image as identity. Image, by virtue of its being is always pretense of a presence: ‘a metonym, a sign of its absence and loss’ (73). Image can be understood only as suggestive of the identity, marking a beginning of the presence of identity. Bhabha suggests then, that the image in its partial mimesis is constantly an iteration of absence and presence, representation and repetition, making it only a ‘liminal reality’ (73). Bhabha locates identity in the liminal space where it is present but also absent. But this absence should not be seen in terms of loss. Rather it should be observed as a productive field of doubling (absence and presence), in which hybridized identities can be Locating Hybridization 185 enunciated. The inscription of absence in identity as image is depictive of a sense of otherness, marking its ambivalence. Bhabha attempts to understand the ambivalence of presence and absence and that of desire and authority as the means to dismantle the duality in identity as simultaneously being ‘decentered’ and ‘consciously committed’ (93). Bhabha elaborates that the stereotype is a paradoxical entity. He finds the representation of the stereotype at once stagnant in inherited perspective and mysterious, inscrutable and repetitive. He sets out not only to deconstruct the definitions of self and other, but also to understand the ‘productivity’ of ‘colonial power’ (96). He undertakes the task of analyzing the other which is simultaneously the object of ‘desire and derision’. Through an analysis of this ambivalence of the other, the definitive boundaries in colonial discourse can be crossed over (96). In discursive readings of the other, the other is not accessed but created. Bhabha notes that: There is in such readings a will to power and knowledge that, in failing to specify the limit of their own field of enunciation and effectivity, proceeds to individualize otherness as the discovery of their own assumptions. (100) Like Said, Bhabha believes that the orient is created out of the ‘unconscious positivity’ (latent) and the ‘stated knowledges’ 186 Identity Politics and the Third World (manifest) about it (102). Subsequently the colonizer, identified in contrast with the discursive construct of the colonized, also occupies the discursive space. In order to maintain the fundamental superiority of the colonizer, the stereotype of the ‘other’ must be maintained in its inferiority. Bhabha observes this stereotype in terms of fetishism. He elaborates using linguistic terminology: Within discourse, the fetish represents the simultaneous play between metaphor as substitution (masking absence and difference) and metonymy (which contiguously registers the perceived lack). The fetish of stereotype gives access to an ‘identity’ which is predicated as much on mastery and pleasure as it is on anxiety and defence, for it is a form of multiple and contradictory belief in its recognition of difference and disavowal of it. (107) There is simultaneously an acknowledgement of attraction and repulsion, difference as well as sameness: The stereotype, then, as the primary point of justification in colonial discourse, for both colonizer and colonized, is the scene of familiar fantasy and defence ─ the desire for an originality which is again threatened by the difference of race, colour and culture. (Bhabha, 1994: 107) Locating Hybridization 187 The anxiety caused due to this ambivalence marks the definitive point of fetishism. Basing his argument on the Freudian definition of fetishism in sexual contexts, Bhabha suggests that the stereotype causes a tension with the identity of the self in terms of its unfamiliar status, and at the same time, reiterates the familiar or discursive definition of the other which is desired to be so. The simultaneous recognition and disavowal of the other as a fixed definition complicates the relation between the colonizer and the colonized in taking them from the space of absolute opposition to one of vacillating reactions of desire and derision. This space of ambivalence is the space of negotiation of identity in the postcolonial context. The colonizer and the colonized serve as a site of fantasy for each other in being symbolic of opportunity as well as threat. The excitement of the colonial experience, alongside its anxiety, creates this fetishism and allows for an excited as well as anxious self-definition in relation to each other. Bhabha furthers the dynamism of this space of ambivalence by explaining that the simultaneous attraction and repulsion brings in the play of mimicry. Referring to Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1986), Bhabha notes how in the title ‘the disavowal of difference turns the colonial subject into a misfit ─ a grotesque mimicry or “doubling” that threatens to split the soul and whole, the undifferentiated skin of the ego’ (1994: 107). The stereotype is then seen as a site of 188 Identity Politics and the Third World ambivalence and doubling. It is not explored as a point of fixedness but rather as a point of fixation, where the self fixates with the other and iterates its identity based on the acknowledgement and disavowal of the other (108). Referring to Lacan’s ‘mirror phase’, Bhabha suggests that the subject position is marked by the experience of the ‘Imaginary’. With reference to the development of a child’s psyche, Lacan notes that with the mirror stage, a child begins to identify himself and approach visual images with reference to a self-image. Any encounter of difference from his own self or the image of his self brings a sense of aggression owing to the narcissism of the image of the self (2000). When the white man confronts the colonized, there is already a historical imaginary of the colonized to create the latter in the former’s experience. Establishing sameness with that imaginary, the white man experiences the colonized with narcissism and aggression: It is precisely these two forms of identification that constitute the dominant strategy of colonial power exercised in relation to the stereotype which, as a form of multiple and contradictory belief, gives knowledge of difference and simultaneously disavows or masks it. Like the mirror phase “the fullness” of the stereotype ─ its image as identity ─ is always threatened by “lack”. (Bhabha, 1994: 110) Locating Hybridization 189 Identity is created between the tropes of fetishism and the Imaginary on the one hand, and narcissism and aggression on the other. Bhabha explains that the stereotype requires repetitive encounter with the image in order to be fixed in the metaphor. Hence discourses are strengthened by repeated and static definitions, for example, African beastliness or Indian lethargy. But a repeated encounter of the stereotype is not the same every time. With an encounter of a stereotypical other that presents a difference with the imaginary of the self, there is bound to be a sense of narcissism and aggression. Further Lacan explains that the image one sees in the mirror marks a simultaneous sameness and alienation in the form of confrontation leading to aggression. In the colonial context then, Bhabha locates the space of identification in the arena of fetishism and ambivalence between the self and the other, as well as within the self (109-110). The devices of ‘metaphor’ and ‘metonymy’ are central to the discussion of the stereotype. The fetish-object, as a metaphor, masks the difference with the self and metonymically, shows the association with it too. The metaphoric sameness of the other and the narcissism of the self, coupled with an opposing metonymy of lack and aggression, constitutes the ambivalence of colonial relation (110). Bhabha’s ‘four-term strategy’ of studying the discourse of the other ─ metaphoric/ narcissistic and metonymic/ 190 Identity Politics and the Third World aggressive elaborates the creation of the discourse of cultural mummification and its fetishism. With Abbot’s views on repression, Bhabha explains that discrimination or colonial discourse is not based totally on disavowal or rejection. Repression of an object with total disavowal leads to its slipping into the unconscious, but in the colonial context, the object of repression is continually brought into consciousness, as a repetitive iteration of difference (113-4). This analysis of Bhabha becomes significant in two ways: firstly, it elaborates with greater clarity the conflict resulting from colonial interaction as opposed to earlier theories of vague mysteriousness and inexplicable affiliations; and secondly, despite offering a specific definition of the dynamic of colonial interaction, Bhabha maintains the deferral of final signification, through the use of terms like ‘trope’, ‘metaphor’ and ‘metonymy’. The analysis of the stereotype as the site of ambivalence becomes important as a link between the colonizer and the colonized in their attempt towards identification. Bhabha almost echoes Said’s observation in the ‘Introduction’ to Orientalism, where he says that ‘the main thing for the European visitor was a European representation of the Orient and its contemporary fate’ [my emphasis] (2001b: 1). He couples Said’s observation with Fanon’s theory about the significance of repetition in discourse. These stereotypes Locating Hybridization 191 may be ‘told (compulsively) again and again afresh, and are differently gratifying and terrifying each time’ (1994: 111). With a repeated and close reference to Fanon, Bhabha identifies the presence of the ‘stereotype-as-suture’ (115). The stereotype is a layered and split identity. It has a stereotypical definition in terms of body, race and ancestors. Bhabha marks how the stereotype is split into multiple identities connected under an amoebic definition (115). The area of ambivalence and stereotype is not restricted to movements of attraction and repulsion simply, but is complicated further. Ambivalence and fetish are defined as mutating into various proportions, so that there is a play within the conflict as well. As mentioned before, Bhabha extends the theory of ambivalence to the process of mimicry. The presence of a stereotype in discursive terms makes the identity of the other a fixed concept which is recreated for solidifying the colonial hierarchy. But Bhabha takes a different view of the colonial relation. He rejects the binary codification and lays emphasis on the creation of a race of colonized people appropriated to the culture and identity of the colonizer. For him, mimicry is a tool used by the colonizer to produce a class of ‘approved’ other (Childs and Williams 129). Elaborating on the concept of colonial mimicry, Bhabha explains that it requires a sense of difference or ‘slippage’ and 192 Identity Politics and the Third World the construction of an ambivalent identity which is ‘almost the same but not quite’. [M]imicry emerges as a representation of difference that is itself a process of disavowal. Mimicry is, thus the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which “appropriates” the Other as it visualizes power. (1994: 122) The process of mimicry is initiated by the ‘mission civilisatrice’ (1994a: 33). It is manifested in Charles Grant’s vision of providing the colonial with ‘a sense of personal identity as we know it’ [my emphasis], and in Thomas Macaulay’s attempt to create ‘a class of interpreters’ between the colonizers and the colonized, who are ‘Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’ (qtd. in Bhabha, 1994: 124). Further, this metamorphosis also takes place in the Imaginary and is reiterated through literature to gain discursive authority. But mimicry in its ambivalence and slippage allows only a ‘partial presence’ to the colonized peoples by providing them with the authority of identifying themselves with the colonial self but all the time maintaining a control on that authority by restricting them in a state of difference. This incomplete mimesis is purposed to land the identity of the other in the space between the binaries of white and black, occident and orient. While the Locating Hybridization 193 colonizer attempts to create a class of ‘middle men’ among the colonized in an image of the self there is always a gap in the cloning process which restricts the colonized from being completely white. He always remains restricted by ‘some strategic limitation or prohibition within the authoritative discourse itself’ (123). Tracing the presence of these ‘mimic men’ through the works of Kipling, Forster, Orwell and Naipaul (125), Bhabha explains that colonial mimesis is an endeavour to purposely and emphatically land between the binaries of self and other, white and black, orient and occident. Bhabha insists that the urge to historicize through mimicry is ironically the urge to authenticate the imitation. The repetition of mimicry/ the duplication and multiplication of imitations by the colonial writers and their characters is an erratic attempt at authenticating ‘partial representations’ (126). Contrary to Fanon, who approaches mimicry as a manifestation of colonial narcissism used to exhibit power (hence as an imposition of identity on the colonized), and Cesàire, who calls it a sort of camouflage, Bhabha sees it as a menacing concept. He elucidates that: The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority. . . . [It is] a partial vision of the colonizer’s presence; a gaze of otherness, that shares the acuity of the genealogical gaze which, as Foucault describes 194 Identity Politics and the Third World it, liberates marginal elements and shatters the unity of man’s being through which he extends his sovereignty. . . . [T]he look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the disciplined, where the observer becomes the observed and “partial” representation rearticulates the whole notion of identity and alienates it from essence. (126-7) The menace of mimicry is not depictive of an opposition or tension between the colonizer and the colonized. It is a factor of colonial identity. It is a play of mimicry whereby identity of the mimicking colonized splits into dual and simultaneous existence. This existence is always tending to an identity and is characterized by first, an acknowledgement of the presence of the colonizer and the colonized; secondly, an essential disturbance of the polarity in identity that served as the basis of colonial discourse; thirdly, a redistribution of the authority of representation; fourthly, the creation and validation of a counter-gaze from the colonized to the colonizer; and finally, a disruption of the discursive notions about the colonial, causing a state of partial knowledge, and rendering the authority of representation to no one in absolute terms. The partial availability of authority to the colonized allows for the dismantling of the discursive constructs of colonial identity. This suspension of identity discourse leads to a partial/ incomplete cognizance of identity. Locating Hybridization 195 To Bhabha, mimicry is a ‘metonymy of presence’. With Lacan, he believes that mimicry is similar to camouflage, as it does not repress difference but rather presents it metonymically (128). While Cesàire also defines mimicry as camouflage, his definition focuses on the element of similarity. Mimicry undoubtedly is an attempt towards making similar, but it does not refer to making the same. Mimicry only presents the threat of replacing the original, but always falls short of becoming the original. Bhabha places identity in the space between the polar categories and necessitates their suspension in the magnetic field of constant attraction and repulsion. Identity is affected by the influencing polarities and is constantly attracted to the other, but is essentially different from it too. Bhabha’s approach towards identity is one which places it in the space between the self and the other and necessitates that it be maintained in the space between and not be identified with any one absolutely. There is similarity but not exact duplication. It is this element of being ‘almost the same but not quite/white’ (Bhabha, 1994: 128), that Bhabha focuses on. Where Cesàire defines mimicry as a camouflage meant to repress difference, Lacan and Bhabha see camouflage as a form of resemblance that ‘differs from or defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically’ (128). Bhabha defines mimicry not as a convergence or harmonic mélange but rather as a resemblance, necessarily not complete and still posing the threat of 196 Identity Politics and the Third World becoming the object itself. This identity represented through mimicry is ironically authorized by the process of colonial objectification. By this colonial objectification of mimic identities, or the ‘identity effects’ (130), the menacing authority of mimicry is established which poses a threat to the absolute colonial authority. The power to represent shifts partly to the resemblance and causes a menace in that split. The narcissistic authority of colonial rule now splits and returns from the other side as a menace (131). From mimicry, Bhabha shifts to the ambivalence in civility in colonial rule. He finds an ambivalence in the approach of the colonizer towards the colonized in being ‘father and oppressor, just and unjust, moderate and rapacious’ (Macaulay, 1855: 21). This reveals a split in the identity of the colonizer as well as the colonized owing to the simultaneity in their civility. What threatens the authority of the colonial command is the ambivalence of its address – father and oppressor or, alternatively, the ruled and the reviled – which will not be resolved in a dialectical play of power. (Bhabha, 1994: 138) Further: [B]oth colonizer and colonized are in a process of miscognition where each point of Locating Hybridization 197 identification is always a partial and double repetition of the otherness of the self – democrat and despot, individual and servant, native and child. (138-9) As the concept of authority is ambivalent, the self includes the other. In this scenario of ambivalence then, with the colonizer and the colonized being ‘less than one and double’ (139), the authority of the colonizer is challenged because its premise of civility is challenged. Similarly, the subservience of the colonized is also transformed to a sly civility as he is not only a thankful beneficiary, but also an exploited victim. The civility of the colonizer displays the ‘paranoia of power; a desire for “authorization” in the face of a process of cultural differentiation’ (142), and that of the native displays a sense of hatred repressed only because of lack of authority. This hatred along with the colonizer’s authority leads to the development of the ‘litigious, lying native’ (143). The ambivalence of power meets the difference of the other with the will to be completely acquainted. The ambivalence of authority makes this will oscillate between the desire for love as well as power. In the repeated encounter of difference and inaccessibility of meaning comes the paranoia of hatred which is returned along the ambivalent lines of authority. The anxiety of simultaneously being father and oppressor splits the code of civility and creates a paranoid 198 Identity Politics and the Third World system of surveillance constantly dreading the native and his existence but still probing him. With this analysis, Bhabha brings the concept of colonial identity into the space of conflict and negotiation, as opposed to the discursive resolution of polar identification. Identity acquires a state where it is affiliated to no category completely, but is resonating between two ends. Further, when the signs of colonial authority, that is, the English language and western culture are imparted to the colonized, they derive an aberrant signification and a repeated encounter with these mutated signs leads to a disruption of authority. [T]he colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference. It is a disjunction produced within the act of enunciation as a specifically colonial articulation of those two disproportionate sites of colonial discourse and power: the colonial scene as the invention of historicity, mastery, mimesis or as the “other scene” of . . . displacement, fantasy, psychic defense and an “open” textuality. (Bhabha, 1994: 153) The simultaneous encounter of the discursive authority and its transformed signification subverts its claims to absolute power. The encounter with these mutated conclusions forces the Locating Hybridization 199 colonizer into retrospection and revision, often resulting in a deviation from the erstwhile received discursive perceptions. It is in retrospect that Marlow’s presumptions of colonial superiority are decoded through the African experience and he observes the ‘horror’ (Conrad 106). It is apparent then, that the colonial experience carries within it the ability to dismantle its foundational discourses. Referring to Derrida’s Dissemination, Bhabha observes ambivalence in the re-reading of colonial authority: Whenever any writing both marks and goes over its mark with an undecidable stroke . . . [this] double mark escapes the pertinence or authority of truth: it does not overturn it but rather inscribes it within its play as one of its functions or parts. (qtd. in Bhabha, 1994: 154) Subsequently then: Resistance is not necessarily an oppositional act of political intention, nor is it the simple negation or exclusion of the “content” of another culture, as a difference once perceived. It is the effect of an ambivalence produced within the deferential relations of colonial power – hierarchy, normalization, marginalization and so forth. (157) Bhabha observes that colonial execution of power and authority is based on the acknowledgment of difference. The 200 Identity Politics and the Third World rulers represent the colonized metonymically, ironically not by sameness but by difference. In the act of discrimination, therefore, one finds not a sense of repression of otherness but rather an articulation of it as ‘something different – a mutation, a hybrid’ (159). The other here is a hybrid as he is educated in the colonial religion, language and code of civility. It is such a partial and double force that is more than the mimetic but less than the symbolic, that disturbs the visibility of the colonial presence and makes the recognition of its authority problematic. (159) Bhabha defines hybridity as the sign of the productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and fixities; it is the name for the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal. . . . Hybridity is the revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of discriminatory identity effects. It displays the necessary deformation and displacement of all sites of discrimination and domination. It unsettles the mimetic or narcissistic demands of colonial power but re implicates its identifications in strategies of subversion that turn the gaze of the discriminated back upon the eye of power. For the colonial hybrid is the articulation of the ambivalent space where the rite of power is enacted on the site of desire, making its objects Locating Hybridization 201 at once disciplinary and disseminatory – or . . . a negative transparency. (159-160) The terms of vagueness about the identity of colonial objects arise not because of an inability on the part of the colonizer to arrive at an understanding but rather owing to a mutation of the original power function. With the example of the reception of the Bible in India, Bhabha observes that when the book is offered to the natives in an Indian language they accept it partially. They accept the knowledge and its authority as the word of god but reject the English/ British/white connection with it. This baffles the power-knowledge function of the book on one hand and allows the Indians to interpret the book in their own way on the other. So they accept Christianity partially – ‘we are willing to be baptized, but we will never take the Sacrament’ – and reject the white connection with the ‘Word of God’ (171). The book is appropriated as per Indian sensibilities and a new meaning/identity is imparted to it. The establishment of white authority through the authority of the book is challenged and the created mimetic version doubles it but reduces its power. It is the creation of less than one and double. Hybridity for the colonizer begins when the symbol of authority of colonialism is challenged as a sign which signifies difference to the colonized. It develops in this state of ambivalence where the symbol is accepted with its authority 202 Identity Politics and the Third World but also challenged. It is not a resolution of differences between different cultures but their suspension. It does not stand for moving from the ‘real’ originary to a middle space of recognition. It is rather a splitting of categories which causes anxiety by displacing the authority of signification. It does not mean a simple mix but a partial presence, or a ‘metonymy of presence’ (164). In a hybrid cultural scenario, authority loses its identity or predictability of presence. Authority, power and identity are then only metonymically present. In this metonymical, partial presence there is desire for recognition in terms of narcissistic authority. In the lack of recognizable authority, a mimicry/mockery of it arises. With Freud, Bhabha explains that with two different affiliations and belief systems, the ego is split into two psychical attitudes, and forms of knowledge, towards the external world. The first of these takes reality into consideration while the second replaces it with a product of desire. (164) Further: The hybrid object . . . retains the actual semblance of the authoritative symbol but revalues its presence. . . . It is the power of this strange metonymy of presence to disturb the Locating Hybridization 203 systematic (and systemic) construction of discriminatory knowledges that the cultural, once recognized as the medium of authority, becomes virtually unrecognizable. . . . The display of hybridity – its peculiar ‘replication’ – terrorizes authority with the ruse of recognition, its mimicry, its mockery. (164-5) It is the threat of the hybrid that challenges and dismantles the constructs of the ‘self/other, inside/outside’ (165). By so doing, the hybrid sign signifies a sense of ‘less than one and double’ in being less than what its original signification was and double in its old and new interpretations (166). Once the foundational discourses supporting the colonial programme are challenged, the constructs of polar identities are indelibly disputed. With the splitting of the codes of civility and the subsequent hybridization of identity, colonial authority is mimicked and in the process, mocked. Hybridity in its existence baffles the foundational myths about colonialist authority and discourse. The absolute polarity of identity, the myths of universal and timeless oriental inferiority and occidental superiority, the ‘non-dialogic’ nature of colonial encounter and history ─ all are challenged by hybridity (165166). In the event of mimicking the colonizer, the colonized mock his authority and an encounter with the mocking/menacing native creates the anxiety of colonial 204 Identity Politics and the Third World experience. The culture or knowledge of the colonizer is not received in its intended form but rather in the social and cultural context of the colonized. The colonial desire for authority or power through knowledge is betrayed in its native reception. Identity as represented through colonial discourse is received to create challenging doubles causing the anxiety of hybridity. The factor of challenging doubles creates an inevitable paranoia in the colonizer, ‘and once more resistance, in the shape of an anxiety spread throughout authority, is built into the application of colonial power’ (Childs and Williams 137). This split identity, which is less than one and double, can be articulated only through silence. Articulation, by definition suggests closure of signification and the split identity can only be enunciated by a deferral of signification. Silence on the other hand, imparts a non-sense and defers meaning. Bhabha discusses the concept of signification of identity through cultural relativism and suggests that the problem of cultural signification/definition arises from the fact that it wrongly presumes that cultures are essentially diverse and that cultural relativism is a war between originally ‘holistic cultures’ (1994: 179). Cultural signification is misconstrued as suspension of cultural difference to arrive at a so-called authentic account. Locating Hybridization 205 Bhabha places the culture of hybridity in the ‘colonial signifier – neither one nor the other’ (182). This placing of identity ‘split[s] the difference between the binary oppositions or polarity through which we think cultural difference’ (183). But signification is deferred ever more by the eliminatory approach of neither-nor, which fails to signify what identity is. But simultaneously in this space of defining by what it is not, identity is in the space of cultural performance of ‘crossreference’ (183). This furthers the discussion of Bhabha’s ideas on the silences and significations “being” and “not being” simultaneously. From the hybrid space then, nation provides as a metaphor for the collective imagination of the migrated populace (1994: 200). Bhabha locates culture in a mixed web of mythology, history, ideology, hybridity and many other influences, and explains that it is too complicated to be represented ‘in any hierarchical or binary structure of social antagonism’ (201). In the production of the nation as narration there is a split between the continuist, accumulative temporality of the pedagogical, and the repetitious, recursive strategy of the performative. It is through this process of splitting that the conceptual ambivalence of modern society becomes the site of writing the nation. (209) 206 Identity Politics and the Third World The traditional and historical accounts of a nation and its culture which create finite boundaries for it (pedagogic) and their narration within the contemporaneous space (performative) together create a representation of the nation, and subsequently identity, which is defined on the borderlines of experience. Bhabha defines the pedagogical as the historical and traditional self-definition of the people. The performative dissociates the image from the binaries of self and other: In place of the polarity of a pre-figurative selfgenerating nation ‘in-itself’ and extrinsic other nations, the performative introduces a temporality of the in-between. (212) The pedagogic notion of a nation as a homogenous entity is split by the performative that introduces heterogeneity within the nation. The borderlines, margins and liminalities within the nation reflect the ‘dissemination’ (212). This split structure of the nation within itself suggests the absence of one authoritative ideology. With reference to Said, Bhabha emphasizes the hermeneutic of ‘worldliness’ as a critical endeavour. Raymond Williams’ concept of ‘residual’ and ‘emergent’ also becomes important here. Bhabha locates culture in the space of the residual and emergent effects and calls for a shrewd observation of the process of signification (213). He finds counter-narratives as extremely important in Locating Hybridization 207 bringing the totalizing boundaries of imagined and essentialist nations under erasure (213): Once the liminality of the nation-space is established, and its signifying difference is turned from the boundary ‘outside’ to its finitude ‘within’, the threat of cultural difference is no longer a problem of ‘other’ people. It becomes the question of otherness of the people-as-one’ (215). Liminality of culture or a nation is to be realized in its contemporaneity in order to challenge the imagined finitude of the nation and to identify the difference within: The liminality of the people – their doubleinscription as pedagogical objects and performative subjects – demands a ‘true’ narrative that is disavowed in the discourse of historicism. (217) Referring to Kristeva, Bhabha suggests that the boundaries of a nation are faced simultaneously with the pedagogical element of ‘historical sedimentation’ and the performative of the lack of identity in the signification process (219). The ambivalence of signification of identity is caused by this ‘double writing’ (221). This liminality of identity which turns the difference from outside to within is the foundation of hybridization. Identity falls under the double writing of the pedagogic and the 208 Identity Politics and the Third World performative which causes its ambivalence of signification (221). However, the pedagogic and the performative are not to be misconstrued as oppositional to each other, but rather as complementary with reference to the study of identity. Bhabha studies the concept of culture as an entity under constant redefinition. He focuses on the idea of the nation and the challenges it faces from the double impact of the pedagogic and performative, to disseminate the construct of national signification and thereby challenge polar constructs of identity. Within the transnational influence of culture (due to colonization, migration, diaspora) the ‘semblance and similitude’ of cultural symbols and their articulation; and the ‘natural[ized]’ ideas of nation, peoples and communities undergo a complex translation (247). Bhabha calls for a ‘hybrid location of cultural value – the transnational as the translational’ to understand the concept of culture and identity (248). He finds a similar critical urge in other theorists, ‘to articulate the deferential (Jameson), contrapuntal (Said), interruptive (Spivak) historicities of race, gender, class, nation within a growing transnational culture’ (250). Bhabha’s concept of rewriting identity seemingly stems from the Derridean theory of ‘double writing’ which leads to the ‘irruptive emergence of a new “concept”, a concept that can no longer be and never could be, included in the previous regime’ (qtd. in Hall, 1996: 2). Further, Locating Hybridization 209 [i]dentity is such a concept ─ operating ‘under erasure’ in the interval between reversal and emergence; an idea which cannot be thought in the old way. . . . (2) Bhabha proposes that matters of culture and identity must be treated vis-à-vis the displacement caused due to postcolonial interaction and influence. Beyond the spatio-cultural boundaries of the colonizer and the colonized, postcolonial encounter gives rise to identity and culture that is constantly moving away from the absolute categories of orient and occident. The enunciation of identity in terms of its performance is fundamentally important in signification. Bhabha asks for an active/performative stance to identity rather than a passive/pedagogic repetition of it, so as to provide a counter-narrative for the inversion of discursive authority and ‘envisag[e] emergent cultural identities’ (1994: 257). Bhabha suggests that the absence of final signification does not mean no signification, but rather allows for the play of it. He brings the ambivalence into a productive phase similar to Derrida’s idea of ‘supplementarity’: [A] not-dialectical middle, a structure of jointed predication, which cannot itself be comprehended by the predicates it distributes. . . . Not that this ability . . . shows a lack of power; rather this inability is constitutive of the very 210 Identity Politics and the Third World possibility of the logic of identity. (qtd. in Bhabha, 1994: 258) He insists that identity must not be forced to a final signification, but should always be tending to it ─ always in a state of ‘contingency’ (267). Referring to the Indian Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Bhabha explains the play of signification within the context of individual cultures as a productive phenomenon. The symbolic significance of the British sipahi uniform on the Indian soldier, the greased cartridges as a western propaganda, the circulating chapatti and its multiple meanings, all convey a hybrid signification, arbitrary in nature. The violence of mid-nineteenth century is depictive of the uncertainty of meaning. It is depictive of binarism in being anti-western, and hybridity in being a sepoy mutiny portraying rebellion as well as orderliness (296). The hybrid identity of the rebellious soldier is the result of a lack of final signification. This lack however is not a lack of power but rather a menace which threatens the order of polar signification: The margin of hybridity, where cultural differences ‘contingently’ and conflictually touch, becomes the moment of panic which reveals the borderline experience. It resists the binary opposition of racial and cultural groups. . . . [T]he political psychosis of panic constitutes Locating Hybridization 211 the boundary of cultural hybridity across which the Mutiny is fought. (296) These hyphenated identities defined in a state of contingency can always be something else. Difference, in social terms, becomes something different from the polarities of one/other. It is ‘something else besides in-between’ (313). The otherness of hyphenated identities locates their performative agency in a ‘future – that emerges in between the claims of the past and the needs of the present’ (313). Differences in culture and power are constituted through the social conditions of enunciation: the temporal caesure: which is also the historically transformative moment, when a lagged space opens up in-between the intersubjective ‘reality of signs . . . deprived of subjectivity’ and the historical development of the subject in the order of social symbols. (346-7) Bhabha further suggests that the attempt to racially identify a community is to make the error of universalizing within a ‘homogenous empty time’ (358). Bhabha attempts to write culture in a way that goes beyond the binaries and becomes reflective of a movement. That ‘projective past’ as he calls it, refers to the approach towards the present as a constant development of the past. In this sense of continuity, the past is always being made and the lag that he emphasizes in the 212 Identity Politics and the Third World creation and enunciation of the past and the present gives the space for this creation. He calls for a greater transformation than the acknowledgement of difference, one that allows for us to live ‘in other times and different spaces, both human and historical’ (367). Identity then necessarily becomes a process of tending to signification, but never reaching it entirely. Bhabha’s concluding phrase of identity being ‘both human and historical’ posits in it the past as well as the executing present. The unusual bringing together of the historical and the human vividly describes Bhabha’s conception of identity as constitutive of the pedagogic traces of the past and the influences of the present affiliations and performances in an organic attempt to being (367). Bhabha’s attempts towards locating culture and identity emphasize the significance of bringing together the traditional past and the differentiating present into a state of negotiation. Within the space of hybridity, Bhabha attempts to replace ‘the unities of nationalism and the binaries of colonial discourse’ with liminality (Childs and Williams 143). Bhabha’s analysis of identity and culture in the space of hybridization undoubtedly marks a revolutionary leap from the Manichean system of homogenized branding that Said dealt with. The polarity that characterized identification in the colonial context was challenged by Said, but rather Locating Hybridization 213 inconclusively. Though Bhabha achieves a ground breaking success in the field of postcolonial theory, his attempt to define identity in the interstitial space can be criticized on various bases. His work begins with underscoring the importance of Derrida and Foucault in the area of identity politics. His dependence upon Foucauldian theory puts him on a similar ground as Said, but his insistence upon studying Foucault with reference to Derrida, and then Freud, takes him on a different and much more complicated tangent. David Huddart notes how Bhabha begins his argument about discourse mechanism with reference to ‘iteration’ and ‘statement’ in Derridean and Foucauldian terms respectively. The term ‘statement’ refers to the received beliefs about the other and ‘iteration’ refers to the continuous repetition of this statement to grant solidity to it. Bhabha explains that the discourse about orientalism was created by the iteration of the inherited beliefs about the orient. In a theoretical sense then, the idea of multiplicity and hybridity can also be granted currency through iteration. Further, every time identity or culture is articulated, it tends to aberrate from the earlier statement and creates new meanings. Bhabha emphasizes the importance of this variability of the statement of identity by repeated articulation of it (Huddart, 2006: 16-18). By bringing together Derrida and Foucault, Bhabha marks a shift from the static approach to identity as an 214 Identity Politics and the Third World unchanging discourse that Said was concerned with. The idea of mutability of identity explains the historical development of revolutions against colonialism and the unquestionable evolution of identity from binary stratification to hybridity. Bhabha suggests that ‘enunciation’ is central to the understanding of identity and culture (1994: 50). In line with Derrida, he suggests that it is in the enunciation of identity and culture that the static categories of discourse are dismantled and the process of identification by difference is realized. Being defined as an approximation in the interstices, identity is not a state of being, but an attempt to being. Identity is not defined in terms of either-or, but rather in terms of ‘neithernor’ (182). Bhabha locates the postcolonial identity in the space that lies between the self and the other. In this space of interstices, identity is defined by difference from the polar ends and owing to the continuous slippage in its location, its final definition is continually deferred. In his 1968 essay ‘Differànce’, Derrida observes about language that: [T]he substitution of the sign for the thing itself is both secondary and provisional: secondary due to an original and lost presence from which the sign thus derives; provisional as concerns this final and missing presence toward which the sign in this sense is a movement of mediation. (1982: 9) Locating Hybridization 215 Bhabha employs the theory of ‘provisional secondariness’ to the location of culture and identity and states that in the ceaseless process of identification, representation marks a moment of pause which provides a ‘provisional’ hint of identity through its doubling or imitation, making identity a ‘secondar[y]’ likeness of the subject; ‘almost the same, but not quite’ (1994: 122). Identity by differànce is only suggestive and never finally signifying. Further it is explained that identity and culture are not absolute terms and are constantly being constructed on the experiential plane. Bhabha applies the Derridean theory of ‘traces’ (Derrida, 1982: 12) on his study of identity and suggests that identity reflects the traces of the past tradition, the impact of colonial interaction and the influence of the other. Bhabha deconstructs the discourse of final and essentialist identities and brings the terms under constant writing and rewriting. This necessitates that identity be approached not as an absolutely reflective sign but be recognized in its slippage, and read between the lines. But in his dependence on the Derridean school of thought, Bhabha repeats its errors. One of the main points of criticism levelled against deconstructive reading can be applied to Bhabha too. M. H. Abrams points out in his essay ‘The Deconstructive Angel’ that deconstructionists tend to be overly skeptical of the signification process and develop a system of reading too much between the lines, making all meaning 216 Identity Politics and the Third World contestable (1989: 246), as if the sole purpose of language were to signify its other. The same is apparent in the excessive ambiguity and incommensurability of identity in Bhabha’s theory of hybridity. Identity is characterized by an endless indeterminacy and is placed in a constant state of flux where no signification is possible. Though one is made to wonder that if no signification is possible for identity, how are the social and cultural hierarchies created and how do they function within this fluctuating apparatus? Bhabha seems to repeat the euphoric error of imagining an absence of ‘transcendentalism’ and ‘sublation’ in a state of hybridity (38), that Said makes in his conclusion to Culture and Imperialism with secularism and a belief that in a total acceptance of difference, there would be no attempt to rule the other (1994a: 407-8). Further, in identifying by a sense of difference, Bhabha creates a binary opposition between presence and difference. The idea of a presence necessitates some state of stability from which difference can be marked. In his study of identity, Jonathan Rutherford observes that the discursive systems of knowledge are logocentric in nature as they privilege a central object of reference against which the marginal other is defined. Rutherford defines logocentrism as a system of knowledge that ‘rel[ies] upon some originating moment of truth or immanence, from which . . . [a] hierarchy of meaning springs’. It is a ‘dependence upon a guarantee of meaning that transcends Locating Hybridization 217 signification’ (1990b: 21). Antony Easthope observes that Derrida, and then Bhabha, treat presence as a ‘spatial identity’ in reference to which difference can be marked (1998: 344-45). The deconstructive moment of hybridity then brings back the theoretical irony of creating a logocentric system of identifying vis-à-vis a standard. Contradictory to this apparent fallacy, Bhabha, in his opposition to essential systems of knowledge refuses to define presence in stable terms, which raises two main problems: if presence is in fact uncertain, what are we marking difference from? And otherwise, if presence is granted any form of stability, the ghost of polar identification is exhumed once again in the form of an essential presence versus an essential difference. Further, Bhabha seems to privilege difference over presence. In his repeated preference to the interstices as the appropriate location of identity and culture, Bhabha sounds like a spokesperson of the space between. He ‘invites us to try and live in difference, in a state of pure hybridity’ (Easthope 345). His steadfast inclination for the interstitial space and hybridity reflects his preference for difference over presence. This essential penchant after hybridity and difference raises the question of branding difference as a necessity. Further with a shifting presence to mark difference from, Bhabha’s invitation likens to an endless dislocation of identity and culture; a ‘state of psychosis’ in Easthope’s terms (345). 218 Identity Politics and the Third World Bhabha places postcolonial identity in the interstitial space where it vacillates between the influences of the colonizer and the colonized. This identity is suspended in the space between, in a magnetic field, under the impact of simultaneous attraction and repulsion from both ends. This ambivalence towards the other is explained through the terms of psychoanalysis that Bhabha depends upon for his study of identity. With a psychoanalytic reading of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, Bhabha grounds his theory of ambivalence and mimicry on the Freudian and Lacanian models of fetish and camouflage respectively. Though Bhabha marks a revolutionary development in the treatment of postcolonial identity politics by including a psychoanalytic reading of the forces of response and resistance to the discourse machinery, his dependence upon psychoanalysis poses some incongruities. Bhabha begins with psychoanalysis as an aid to exploring identity politics, but very soon begins to emphasize it beyond bounds. One can almost wonder if Bhabha uses it as an analogy or supporting example or as a vital foundation for colonial relations (Childs and Williams 143). Bhabha’s sweeping dependence upon psychoanalysis draws attention to his surprisingly unquestioning belief in psychoanalytic theory (Moore-Gilbert 141). To add to it, his application of psychoanalysis as a general and universal explanation for colonial relations suggests some rather Locating Hybridization 219 simplifying assumptions. In his adamant repetition of psychoanalytic criticism to identity politics, he puts together the categories of the colonizer and the colonized together as the colonial subject (Childs and Williams 145; Moore-Gilbert 148149; Young, 1990: 192). This marks a shift from Fanon’s application of psychoanalysis to colonial relations as explained in The Wretched of the Earth. Fanon relies upon psychoanalysis to analyze colonial relations, but his analysis is strictly concerned with the psychodynamics of the interaction between the colonizer and the colonized within the political and historical colonial episode. Bhabha, on the other hand, refuses to define the colonizer and colonized in terms of self and other and insists upon defining them as ambivalent entities in the interstitial space. He subjects them to psychoanalytical observation irrespective of their political, social and historical place in the colonial power relation. In so doing, he harmonizes the colonizer and the colonized in a state of euphoric equality (even if it is characterized by being in a state of equal disorientation). In Said, Bhabha himself had criticized an attempt to theoretically simplify colonial power relations between the colonizer and the colonized (1983: 200). But here he seems to resolve the difference between the colonizer and the colonized altogether, which he ostensibly claimed to complicate. Further, his attempt to bring together the colonizer and the colonized in a unified subject puts his application of 220 Identity Politics and the Third World psychoanalysis to colonial relations in a contextual question. His psychoanalytic treatment of identity seems to be too general to be placed in the colonial context (Young, 1990: 192). In a Foucauldian manner, Bhabha begins his analysis of colonial politics with reference to the dichotomy of power and knowledge and their execution as discourse. But almost immediately, he takes a Freudian tangent when he suggests that the Foucauldian system of establishing power through surveillance in colonial contexts is not characterized by fixity, but by fetishism. With the tropes of metaphor and metonymy, he makes an aberration from the Foucauldian premise of coupling surveillance with fixity. He accepts surveillance, but attaches fetishism to it. With this, Bhabha explains the development of narcissism and aggression in identity politics (Young, 1990: 184-5). But Bhabha’s careful resistance to focusing centrally on colonial politics and his insistent reference to self and other outside the colonial hierarchy, suggest that his theory of fetishism is not depictive of his colonial perspective alone, but rather applicable in universal instances of othering (Childs and Williams 144). This makes fetishism a general corollary to attempts towards identity fixation and necessarily not restricted to colonial identity politics. Bhabha’s analysis becomes a general one as opposed to a specific study and cannot be Locating Hybridization 221 applied to the understanding of colonial identity without skepticism. Fetishism may be a general behavioural phenomenon related to othering but within the matrix of colonial power struggle and its political and cultural attributes, it may derive deviant overtones, which have not been analyzed here. With a generalized view regarding fetishism then, the application of Bhabha’s theory in terms of colonial identity politics becomes an erroneous concept. Within colonial politics, the general theory of fetishism seems to collectivize all the colonizers and all the colonized in a homogenous category characterized by a simultaneous ‘fantasy and defence . . . recognition and disavowal’ (Bhabha, 1994: 107). This collectivism points to a pervading sense of ambivalence in colonial interaction. This does not explain the extremist reactions to colonial encounter like the Swadeshi Movement of Mahatma Gandhi in India, or the Negritude Movement of Leopold Senghor and Aimé Cesàire in Africa. Bhabha’s excessive insistence upon the theory of fetishism brings him to the possible inadvertent error of homogenizing reactions of the self and the other. So he denies the hate and opposition syndrome of establishing polarity and homogenizing the colonizer and the colonized, but his model of fetishism homogenizes these groups again as being necessarily ambivalent. Hybridity becomes a branded necessity imposed upon postcolonial identity as a universal phenomenon. This 222 Identity Politics and the Third World marks the beginning of a new essentialism in the global scenario, which is discussed in greater detail in the next chapter. Further, Bhabha observes colonial mimicry as a mode of resistance in that it allows the return of the colonizer’s gaze by the colonized. Bhabha uses the example of ‘human warfare’ and camouflage in a Lacanian sense to explain this agency granted by mimicry (1994: 121). He also suggests that mimicry often turns into mockery when the grotesque ‘partial presence’ of the mimicked self becomes the means of countering the absolute authority of the colonizer. This is where the colonized other becomes the ‘unwitting and unconscious agent of menace’ according to Bhabha (Young, 1990: 188). But he fails to explain how the colonized other works as an unconscious agent in this form of resistance. He fails to describe it as ‘“transitive” or “intransitive”, active or passive’ (MooreGilbert 133). Bhabha obscures the degree to which this resistance is conscious or unconscious on the part of the colonized. This is another example of his equivocal use of terminology and his insistence upon deference of any sort of final signified. His vague opinion about the consciousness of agency in the process of mimicry makes his theory insufficient to define identity politics. Further, if this agency is in fact unconscious, its ability to mobilize a ‘public’ resistance becomes dubitable (Moore-Gilbert 134). In such a case, Locating Hybridization 223 mimicry as mockery may be threatening for the colonizer and his attempt to identify himself with respect to the mimicking/ mocking other but would have little or no political effect. With a strong reliance upon the Derridean theory of differànce and the psychoanalytic observation of identity and discourse, Bhabha arrives at his theory of hybridization, where he locates identity in the interstitial space and suggests that identity in the postcolonial space is defined by endless negotiation and not by antagonistic negation of the Manichean system. But the interstitial space and its dynamics of identity pose very vital problems in the area of identity politics. First, the location of identity in the interstitial space is characterized by excessive incongruity. The interstitial space allows no final signification, and identity is suspended in a state of endless vacillation between the self and the other. For starters, the very reference to the self and the other as the polar ends of this interstitial space suggests Bhabha’s reliance on the binary opposition as a starting point. Where Said was criticized for questioning the credibility of the polar model, but not denying it absolutely, Bhabha seems to make the same allowance, though it is incongruous with his own stand of there being no pure cultures (Childs and Williams 143; Young, 1990: 191). Moving further, the endless vacillation of identity between the self and the other indicates that identity cannot be determined in this space owing to the endless play in its 224 Identity Politics and the Third World signification. This brings us back to the observation made before that if identity is never finally signified, hierarchies or social/political power cannot be determined. But the fact that these powers do exist questions the credibility of this theory. Since hierarchies do exist, the interstitial space is perhaps not defined by a state of no final signification per se, but by levels of almost homogenously signified stages of hybridity. This homogeneity underlining hybridity is discussed in the next chapter. Further, identity is defined in terms of neither-nor, as opposed to the antagonism of either-or, that surrounded the polar method of discursive identity fixation. Bhabha locates the culture of hybridity in the ‘colonial signifier ─ neither one nor other’ (1994: 182). This placing of identity definitely refutes the binary system of locating cultural difference. But with the elimination of one and the other in this model, identity is deferred evermore. On a closer observation the ‘neither one nor other’ [my emphasis] model is ironically suggestive of ‘negation’, and not ‘negotiation’ which is Bhabha’s beginning premise for hybridization (1994: 37). In the neither-nor model, identity is necessarily defined as none of the polar entities and as something else. This goes contrary to Bhabha’s own idea of hybridity defining identities as ‘almost the same, but not quite’ (1994: 128), and in the interstitial space between the categories of the self and the other. Nevertheless, the interstitial space has Locating Hybridization 225 the tendency to define identity in liminality. This liminality or subalternity is defined by its location in a unique special condition which constitutes it as different from either alternative. Neither colonizer nor precolonial subject, the postcolonial subject exists as a unique hybrid which may, by definition, constitute the other two as well . . . marking an image of betweenness which does not construct a place or condition of its own other than the mobility, uncertainty and multiplicity of the fact of the constant border-crossing itself. (Grossberg 91-2) On the plane of time and space, identity is to be framed as an amoebic category having in part from the unidentified, but existing categories of ‘one’ and the ‘other’ (which may/may not be polar attributes of each other). The space of identity would then be inscribed under time and space and a third plane of experiential subjectivity, which would make identity an individuating phenomenon for each subject. This third plane is that of the unending play of signification of identity. 226 Identity Politics and the Third World Graphically, identity can be sketched as: Graphical mapping of identity on the planes of space, time and experiential subjectivity Identity here is defined as an amoebic structure developed out of a fluctuating dependence upon the provisionally defined and unstable perceptions of the self and the otheri, on the intercepting planes of time, space and experiential subjectivity which can be openly referred to as the ‘third plane’. Secondly, Bhabha seems to use the field of identity as a terrain for linguistic play of multiple meanings. Beginning with the structural codes of linguistic signification of ‘metaphor’ and ‘metonymy’ to define the ‘fetishism’ surrounding the play of colonial identification (Huddart 40-1), to his dependence upon the Derridean system of signifying by differànce, Bhabha revels in the ambiguity that splits the implication of nearly all the terms he uses ─ translation, negotiation, mimicry, subject ─ all derive multiple meanings in him. In an interview with Locating Hybridization 227 Jonathan Rutherford, he explains his understanding of the term ‘translation’. Acknowledging debt to Walter Benjamin, Bhabha explains that with reference to cultural translation, his idea is not of a strict linguistic sense of translation as in a ‘book translated from French into English, but as a motif or trope as Benjamin suggests for the activity of displacement within the linguistic sign. . . . [T]ranslation is also a way of imitating, but in a mischievous, displacing sense. . . . [my emphasis] (1990c: 210) Bhabha’s view of translation is one which demands a sense of displacement or play of meaning within the linguistic sign. Enamoured with the linguistic play of meaning in the Saussurean and Derridean traditions, he seems to celebrate the possibilities of signification within the signs of culture and identity mischievously. Further in his conversation with Rutherford, Bhabha explains that ‘negotiation’ to him is not a state of ‘compromise’ but rather a state of ‘subversion’ and ‘transgression’ (216). He understands negotiation as a state of revolution, where the circumstances and their connected discourses are fused together to break free from in a gradual procedure of reform. He refers to ‘political negotiation’ as the negotiation he means to signify. Again, the sign is made to inhabit possibilities of varied significations necessarily apart from the general connotation of it. 228 Identity Politics and the Third World The ambivalence that he gives to mimicry as a form of being ‘almost the same, but not quite’ (Bhabha, 1994: 128) has already been discussed in its capability of signifying an endless number of provisional hybrid identities. Bhabha splits the subject position too in housing the colonizer and the colonized, the self and the other in it simultaneously. Bhabha imparts a sense of overwhelming ambiguity to his work by stressing too far on the possibilities of meaning of all the signs used by him. So much so, that his work seems to lose certainty of signification: [I]n the opacity of his discourse, his descriptions of slippage and ambivalence begin to seem equally applicable to the rhetoric of his own writings which produce the forms and structures of the material that he analyzes and thus simultaneously assert and undermine their own authoritative mode. (Young, 1990: 197) Through all these attempts at displacing meaning and splitting signification, Bhabha seems to take identity into a state where the sign loses its linguistic/cultural signification and all meaning is floating and fleeting in ‘Terra Incognita’ as Stuart Hall calls it (1990: 235). Finally, Bhabha associates identity and culture with a constant flux and repeatedly appropriates his terminology to a sense of process and not one of finality. Subsequently, Locating Hybridization ‘diversity’ is replaced by 229 ‘difference’ (1994: 47), ‘representation’ by ‘iteration’ (38), and finally ‘identity’ is substituted with ‘hybridization’. ‘identification’ Bhabha ‘hybridity’ and emphasizes the with importance of discussing ‘identification’ as a process, as opposed to ‘identity’ as a notion. It is only by losing the sovereignty of the self that you can gain the freedom of a politics that is open to the non-assimilationist claims of cultural difference. (Rutherford, 1990c: 213) ‘Identification’, as opposed to ‘identity’ suggests a sense of alienation with any solid illusions of the self, which can be productively harnessed towards the ‘construction of forms of solidarity’ (Rutherford, 1990c: 213). Similarly, David Huddart observes in Bhabha a preference of ‘hybridization . . . hybridity’s ongoing process’ over ‘hybridity’. For him, ‘there are no cultures that come together leading to hybrid forms; instead, cultures are the consequence of attempts to still the flux of cultural hybridities’ (Huddart 7). Further, in Bhabha ‘negotiation’ (1994: 37) rather than antagonism, and ‘liminality’ (1994: 73) as opposed to purity and centered cultures become significant. His work is resonant with the mutability of identity and its negotiated metaphoric status. He attaches a strong sense of incommensurability with identity and 230 Identity Politics and the Third World his examples of ‘silences’ in colonial literature right from ‘the horror’ of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to the inexplicable echoing ‘boum ouboum’ in the Marabar caves of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India reflect his aversion to the remotest definition of identity (175-6). But while highlighting the silence, horror and ‘ouboum’ factor in hybridity, Bhabha fails to elaborate the element of signification in it. Hybridity is not a necessary/standard/universal phenomenon as Bhabha seems to suggest. He focuses on the process of identification and acculturation, but in his insistence upon the process, the concept of identity remains largely unattended. His work seems to display a play in the title itself, where The Location of Culture [my emphasis] refers to ‘location’ as a central concept denoting the process of cultural development, and not as a means to delineate ‘culture’ or identity. Nevertheless, Bhabha’s work is significant in substantiating the endless process of hybridization and the subsequent evolution of forms of identification. His work is central to all discussions of culture and identity in postcolonial global contexts. From the polar method of categorizing identity, the hybridized interstitial model of Bhabha definitely marks a sound development. It is with Bhabha’s work that the ‘contrapuntal reading’ that Said envisages finally becomes productive. Bhabha’s theory of situating identity and culture in Locating Hybridization 231 the space between, and his theory of ambivalence in colonial politics grants a new meaning to colonial and postcolonial history. Identity is released from the pedagogic containing definitions and is allowed a free play in the performance of the received perceptions. As we venture in the analysis of global cultures celebrating pastiche and variety, hybridity becomes an important phenomenon. Further, with the development of international trade and large-scale migration, identity becomes a matter of serious debate and deliberation. Bhabha’s theories and arguments about identity find extensive application in this era of capitalist globalism and are discussed in detail in the next chapter. Notes i. Ref: graph. It may be mentioned here, that the placing of the self in the positive and the other in the negative region respectively is not intended as an assertion of discourse. The definition of the other as a negative and opposite image of the self, forms the foundation of polar identification system which forms the basis of the culture of imperialism as well as hybridization, to quite an extent. The discursive ideas of the self and the other are undisputed sources of strong influence on third-world identity and within their constructs they occupy essentially opposing positions, which have prompted such placing. The broken margins of the self and the other reflect their permeability and mutability. Globalization and Identity 233 Chapter 4 Globalization and Identity Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, as elaborated in The Location of Culture, entails a mixed identity and a world culture that derives from various sources to create a multicultural society where there is a simultaneous feeling of belonging as well as alienation. Bhabha’s ‘interstitial’ space is defined with a sense of simultaneous attraction and repulsion, and its characteristic ambivalence leads to the anxiety of inhabiting the space in between; of being neither here nor there (182). It is the space of continuous deferral of identity where no final signification is possible (Bhabha, 1994: 267; Derrida, 1982: 9). The issue of identity has been of central importance through the analyses of colonial and postcolonial episodes of 234 Identity Politics and the Third World polar representations, resistance movements, and the ostensibly liberating theory of hybridization. But in the passage from academic hybridity to applied multiculturalism and forces of globalization, identity develops a new politics and representational dynamic that is ever more complex and critical. Multiculturalism and globalization are concepts founded upon the premise of hybridization through cultural contact. The previous chapter was devoted to the analysis of hybridity and interstices as explained by Bhabha, and their impact and relevance to third-world identity. While this has been broadly marked as the first phase of Bhabha’s work, the second phase is centered upon the collective existence of the various communities of the world in a multicultural society (Moore-Gilbert 115). In a multicultural society, where there is a constant effort towards globalizing the various and differing communities into a standard hybridized culturei, identity occupies a space of rigorous contestation. Within the complex grid of forces of international politics, capitalist economic system, brand wars, cyberspace dynamics, environmental concerns, and historical and cultural underpinnings, identity derives exceptional overtones and becomes the space of immense manipulation. Like the politics of colonization, the politics of multiculturalism is also not linear but quite complex. Identity, as placed within the Globalization and Identity 235 paradigm of hybridization, is targeted by various forces which shall be studied in comprehensive detail at this juncture. This chapter is devoted to a critical analysis of the representational politics of third-world identity and its location in the extremely volatile and fast moving era of multinational relations and global structuring. In order to define identity in terms of the culture of globalization, it is imperative to explore the concept of hybridization and globalization in applied terms. Globalization can be euphorically imagined as an attempt to universalize the interstitial experience. As an economic and political venture, it is based on the extension of the interstitial space to either side of the borders binding the interstices. With reference to the process of hybridization, Bhabha defines identity as ‘less than one and double’ (1994: 139). In simplified terms, identity acquires a state where it is affiliated to no one category in totality, but is oscillating between two ends. In terms of globalization, identity in this state of interstices is applied to cultural systems in universal terms. The attempt towards globalization is not universally homogeneous in its application or reception. It is only a development of ‘relations between cultures’ as T. S. Eliot puts it (qtd. in Bhabha, 1996: 54). Globalization refers not to homogenization but to the customization of global economic cultural systems to local preferences and taste. In this context, the global refers to what 236 Identity Politics and the Third World is manipulated by international, transnational and multinational economic forces to form the popular culture worldwide. With the advanced international communication systems and the hegemony of the corporate world to create identities for potential consumers, the global culture is a construct created to increase profitability. The local refers to the ethnic and/or traditional culture and its attributes. In order to increase salability, systems of global trade are appropriated to suit a consumer’s taste. The appropriation affects professional ethics followed by the corporate, modes of trade employed, and the final product offered to the consumer. This customization is of course only symbolic at most times and aimed to assist global acceptance and augment profitability. The culture of globalization rests upon making the boundaries and borders porous and inducing a spirit of inclusivity as opposed to the ethics of purity and segregation. Identifying the systems of interaction and inclusion propagated by globalization as an attempt to homogenize by subduing differences is too simplistic. [W]e should be careful not to equate the communicative and interactive connecting of such [local] cultures – including very asymmetrical forms of such communication and interaction, as well as “third cultures” of mediation – with the notion of homogenization of all cultures. (Robertson 31) Globalization and Identity 237 A homogenous world culture of globalization is not possible in the absence of an ‘other’ which can be ‘discarded, rejected or demonified in order to generate the sense of cultural identity’ (Featherstone, 1990: 11). Following the binary logic of defining the ‘self’ by the ‘other’, the ‘other’ in global terms must inhabit the extra-terrestrial space. This ‘other’ forms the foundation of the imaginary world of science fictions and it is against this common ‘other’ that the sense of a global homogenous culture can be developed. In the absence of a common ‘other’ then, the homogenization and compression of the various local cultures to one category is not only euphoric but also unrealistic. The culture of globalization in applied terms is rather a system of ‘glocalization’ (Robertson 34); it is a system of appropriating the extra-local or global culture to local tastes. It must be mentioned here that the term ‘global’ by definition refers to what belongs to the whole world including the local that is being globalized. But in the present context it refers only to what is perceived as popular in worldly terms by the local. Globalization then becomes a culture of incorporating in the local what is compatible with the global thus far. In very crude terms too, the “global” refers to what belongs to the whole world, which in turn is an amalgamation of various localities. 238 Identity Politics and the Third World The global then cannot lie beyond the local (Robertson 34) but includes it. It must be noted here however that the culture of localism is visualized as a response to the culture of globalization in the same way as the development of nationalism is seen as a natural corollary to imperialism. Said observes a Hegellian dialectic between nationalism and hybridization (in terms of migration) and suggests that ‘all nationalisms in their early stages develop from a condition of estrangement’ (2001c: 176). Globalization indeed refers to the ‘linking of localities’, but it also involves the ‘invention’ of localities (Robertson 35). In this context it becomes the process of ‘interlacing of social events and social relations “at distance” with local contextualities’ (Giddens, 1991: 21), or the ‘tailoring of many products to the needs of various local specifications’ (Ritzer, 2004: 76), real or imaginary. This makes ‘glocalization’ an effort towards ‘selective incorporation’ with ‘each nation-state incorporating a different mixture of “alien” ideas’ (Robertson 41). The culture of globalization then cannot be termed as one of homogenization; it is rather that of branding heterogeneity in a common system. Further, despite the visible commonness in the sweep of capitalism on a global scale, the political and social aspects of various localities remain distinct. Globalization appears to depict the evolution of human affairs towards a uniform Globalization and Identity 239 pattern, as Hobsbawm suggests, but the political and social systems remain far from uniform even though ‘gas stations, Ipods and computer geeks are the same worldwide’ (2007: 116). To add to this: [I]nclusion does not necessarily redress inequality nor does it produce equality. Adding to a never-ending list of members in “the global village” merely draws peoples into the capitalist system, complete with racial, patriarchal and global unevenness. (Chen, 2004: 13-14) This ‘unevenness’ on a global scale is clearly depictive of an essential heterogeneity in globalization. The simultaneous presence of sameness and difference is reminiscent of the power function of the imperial order in transforming the ‘other’ to a state of ‘almost the same but not quite/White’ as Bhabha suggests (1994: 122, 128). The location of identity in any circumstance is a complicated task, but within the framework of globalization it becomes all the more complex. The era of globalization has come about as a period when all lessons of history fail to predict what can happen. The advent of global capitalism has not only transformed the world of nations and identities in a novel way, it has also proved that the old method of analyzing culture is now fast becoming obsolete. As Aijaz Ahmad suggests: 240 Identity Politics and the Third World A knowledge of the world as it now is presumes corrections in the knowledge of the world as it – the world, and the knowledge of it – previously was. (2005a: 287) Before venturing on to a critical analysis of third-world identity in the sphere of multiculturalism, a few qualifications need to be made with regard to the foundational aspects of defining identity as a concept in the current scenario. Throughout history, debates regarding identity politics have been centered round the concepts of space and time and their relative significance in the process of identity construction and articulation. But these fundamental concepts have altered immensely in the age of globalization. The attempt to locate identity has always been closely tied to the space inhabited by it. The spatial referent of identity has always been a vital source of understanding it. Any analysis of identity is constantly evocative of the rhetoric of origin and habitation. It is based on these suggestions of place that identity is supplied with various characteristics often received through discursive perceptions. Similarly, time offers another reference to identity and with it the construct of identity completes its vector quality. Time refers to the period in which identity is experienced and framed. Identity is located at the conjunction Globalization and Identity 241 of space and time and defined at the point of convergence between the two. Our sense of who we are, where we belong and what our obligations encompass – in short, our identity – is profoundly affected by our sense of location in space and time. (Harvey, 2000: 294) However, in the era of globalization an unprecedented change comes about which not only alters the tangential location of these referents but also causes a transformation in the way they are perceived and articulated. The attempt to articulate identity is made by locating it in specific places ‘having an integral relation to bounded spaces internally coherent and differentiated from each other by separation’ (Massey, 2005: 64). The border lines between nations or communities, imagined or real, are then constitutive of the spatial factor of identification and locate them in a specific place that is separated from the others in a strict fashion and also related to them in the ‘self’ and ‘other’ symbiosis. Spatiality is a means to define the ‘self’ ‘in relation to the others, as entangled and separated’ (Grossberg 101). In the initial stages of identity analysis, the third-world represented the colonized space inhabited by the ‘other’, as opposed to the colonizing space, that houses the ‘self’. Discourses about identity were created by a process of linear 242 Identity Politics and the Third World humanization of space. The politics of colonialism has been deeply attached to geography and spatial situation. But in the present context, territorial situation has derived a new significance. This change has come about because of four main factors. First, with enhanced travel systems and the development of the tourism industry, migration or even crossing over the borders does not carry the defining metaphor of displacement as it did in the past. Unlike their ancestors who migrated as slaves or through self-willed but difficult passages, the present population migrates across borders independently and without much difficulty. What is more, like most other things in the world, migration is not an irreversible action in material terms and one can retrieve from it. With the migration of labour from third world to first world and that of infrastructure from first world to third world, economic and political geography is indelibly destabilized (Hardt and Negri, 2001: 254). Secondly, with the development of a parallel universe of the Internet, physical location has become a virtual aspect in the process of locating identity within social boundaries, allowing all to become equal “netizens” (citizens of the Internet), sharing a common space which is devoid of boundaries and barriers. Thirdly, due to the immense cultural contact and appropriation that comes with various historical, social and economic factors, people everywhere experience a similar social surrounding, but also a sort of alienation from Globalization and Identity 243 their original cultures. Finally, with the rise of multinational capitalism and its foundational globalization process, there is a growing desire not to belong to one place but rather be at home everywhere. The ostensible desire of cosmopolitanism comes in the form of the popular effort and ambition to be global citizens as opposed to belonging to a specific nationality. This reflects a transformation in the importance of restricted geographical location and identification with it. Considering the unchallenged flow of capital, consumer products and with them, global culture, there seems hardly any significance attached to belongingness in terms of identity or place. The idea of being an Indian, American or European national begins to crumble in the market place and collapses entirely in the cyberspace where there is total anonymity of space. Geographical or spatial identity then gives way to temporal-contextual mobile metaphors for identity which carry with them the ability of transmutation as well. Spatiality is no more a linear and straightforward concept but a complex experience of various cultures, communities and nations: ‘[t]he isle is full of noises’, to borrow Chantal Zabus’ metaphor (1998: 38). Further in the multicultural society, colonization changes from being territorial in the main, to economic and commercial. The process of defining identity has closer relation with economic location than territorial origin. Spatiality in terms of belonging to a nation or community holds 244 Identity Politics and the Third World a strong ground mainly in the form of spatial subjectivities, ceremonial national identities and narcissisms attached with them. This is not to say that identity has lost all relation with space of origin or habitation, but that space as a factor of determining identity has lost its rigidity and has acquired a transmutable form. Space can be both contextual and/or geographical in the global framework. With the hybridization of space, the imaginations of space in the form of nations and communities change into those of a ‘meeting place’ (Massey 68) where various spaces merge to create a place that is simultaneously homely and alienating. It is a ‘flattened’ world (Freidman, 2006) and since identity and space are understood to be ‘co-constitutive’ (Massey 10), identity fabricated on a virtual, non-static open space acquires a fluidity and openness of its own. Further, differences of space are reflected as differences of time. Temporality is observed as a spatial concept in the era of globalization. The globalizing world or the first world is seen as the advanced and progressive world aped by the rest. The progressive world is observed as ahead of the rest and is generally defined as fast moving. This difference in the treatment of temporality by space is suggestive of a lack of ‘coevalness [which] aims at recognizing contemporality as the condition for truly dialectical confrontation’ (Fabian, 1983: 154). In the absence of this ‘contemporality,’ space is marked Globalization and Identity 245 in terms of time relatively with regard to the rate of progress on the parameters set by the so called advanced spaces. In this condition, mimicry of the globalizing forces or the neocolonizers is not a state of being, but a state of time. It is no more ‘almost the same but not quite’ as Bhabha terms it (1994: 122), but rather almost the same but not yet. The evolution in the perception of space and time causes a radical change in the systems of location and identification. With this ‘time-space compression’, identity lands into a crisis of location and signification (Harvey 294). With respect to neocolonialism which is the other face of globalization, the term ‘third world’ also requires to be relocated in the study of identity. Without going into the chronological and historical development of the term, it can be said that the ‘third world’ broadly refers to the colonies of western imperialism. This is the group of nations and communities that have been colonized and subjected to the disruption caused by imperialism. This world is located against the imperial societies in a state of canonical polarity and is restricted in this opposition in homogeneous, universal and timeless frames. However, the third world has occupied a new meaning and location in the present context. The term no longer constitutes erstwhile colonized spaces alone but any part of the world which is not included in the superpowersii. It still remains promising as a ‘career’ as Said notes with reference to 246 Identity Politics and the Third World Disraeli in Orientalism (5), but it has become a more complicated career in the globalizing world. For one, with the euphemisms lent by the hegemony of capitalism, this ‘third world’ is no longer called an ‘underdeveloped’ world, but is ostensibly granted an organic quality with the comparatively redeeming and dynamic adjective: ‘developing’, which on the one hand sounds liberating, but on the other, ensures that it can be altered as per the demands of capitalism and the globalization process and that it will continue in the process of development, but never reach there as developed. Further, the ‘third world’ offers itself as a resource as well as a target. From hiring cheaper and trained manpower to buying abundantly available natural and mineral resources and finally creating a loyal consumer demand for products with the seeming claim of empowerment, the capitalist endeavour is to extensively exploit the prospects of the third world. Once again the seemingly liberating dynamism granted to the third world serves as the foundation for creating variable identity constructs for it as the service and manpower provider as well as the loyal customer. Though this is reminiscent of the colonial practice of trade and profit, the system of globalization operates with a certain difference. While the hegemony of imperialism is based upon creating myths of third-world inferiority, the hegemony of globalization rests upon creating myths of empowerment with Globalization and Identity 247 the consumer (third world) as the force behind the decisions of production. But, [t]he customer is not king, as the culture industry would have us believe, not its subject but the object. . . . The culture industry misuses its concern for the masses in order to duplicate, reinforce and strengthen their mentality, which it presumes is given and unchanging. [my emphasis] (Adorno, 2001: 99) The consumer is led to believe that ‘he or she is an actor, where in fact he or she is at best a chooser’ (Appadurai, 1995: 307). With active market research and advertising techniques, the capitalist industry creates a discourse of consumerism and since the consumer is centered in the third-world market, a myth regarding the centrality of the third world is also created. It is on this myth of centrality that the continuous demand of capitalist goods in the third world depends. However, in the garb of consumerism and demand centered market behaviours, the effective hierarchy of the world remains intact. The first world is still identified as a temporally forward world with the third world doggedly following the standards set by it. The logic of polarity still holds strong in the globalizing world but it is subdued on popular demand. The third and the first worlds still occupy distinct and oppositional positions, but the symbiosis of being mutually dependent (which was present 248 Identity Politics and the Third World in the strict binary of ‘self’ and ‘other’ too) is highlighted here to disguise the polarity with a pretense of alliance. The economic space of the globalizing world is at once bound and unbound. There is a simultaneous existence of ‘a geography of borderlessness and mobility, and a geography of border discipline’ and this paradox of space is ‘negotiated’ (Massey 86) through the forces of global capitalist discourses. There is an existence of free trade but the freedom is restricted by rules regarding the flow of capital in terms of direction as well as volume. When the parameters of observing sameness and difference change from race and nationality in the prime to capitalization indices, the understanding of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ is also bound to change. The binary opposition between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ in absolute separatism is replaced with a co-dependence in the culture of globalization. With the setting up of multinational corporations and transnational corporations, the first and third world come into an interdependent capitalist contact. The capital flows from the first world to the third world are monitored and regulated by the former establishing authority over the latter. Meanwhile the third world holds a position of promise as a source of cheap labour and services initially and a loyal clientele eventually for the first-world entrepreneur. Alongside this seemingly encouraging symbiosis, the threat caused to local and cottage Globalization and Identity 249 industries because of the advent of multinational giants arouses resistance in the third world against any kind of foreign influence. In the age of migration and competition with immigrants for employment, the first world too experiences a resistance from within against transnational expansion. This leads to the development of an ambivalent relationship between the first and third world and at the same time points to an apparent redistribution of authority between them. Bhabha points to the ambivalence related with the hybridized identity in occupying the interstitial space in The Location of Culture. He further emphasizes that the hybridized identity is constantly in a state of ‘transit’. The interstitial space is marked with a simultaneous ‘presence and absence’ that characterizes the ‘flux between polarities’ (Bhabha, 1994: 1). This indeterminacy and duality in identity reflects a break from the earlier patterns of defining the ‘self’ against an opposite ‘other’. The ‘other’ is now housed within the ‘self’ and is not just a referent to define the latter with; it is rather constitutive of the identity of the interstitial being. Further the development of an identity that is hybridized is bound to create a space where no final signification is possible (Bhabha, 1994: 267; Derrida, 1982: 9) as identity is constantly pulsating between the polarities in an ambivalent state of simultaneous attraction and repulsion (Bhabha, 1994: 107). The indeterminacy in signifying meaning suggests that identity in the interstitial 250 Identity Politics and the Third World space is marked with an attempt towards negotiating a balance between endlessly erupting differences. The stark opposition between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ which served as the foundation for the discourses of orientalism is replaced with a necessary condition for appropriation, translation, re- historicizing and re-signifying (55) the differences between various presences so as to negotiate an in-between identity which is not static in hybridity but constantly developing conflicts to negotiate. Another change that has come about in the era of globalization is that the systems of consumption have gained increasing significance over systems of production. With regard to identity performance too, the consumption ethic of an individual has gained greater consequence. Objects define ‘the performance of one’s personal and social identities’ (Woodward, 2007: 134). Further, consumption also becomes a parameter of establishing social hierarchies and categories. With Thornstein Veblen’s concept of ‘conspicuous consumption’ (1925: 68), consumption becomes a means to satisfy the demands of social status rather than functionality. Objects are used for the ‘cultivation of identity . . . irrespective of . . . [their] aesthetic or functional qualities’ (Woodward 135). With this emphasis on consumption and its conspicuousness, the significance of an object is determined by its ‘exchange value’ rather than its ‘use value’ (Baudrillard, Globalization and Identity 251 1998: 8). Identity has come to be greatly influenced by consumption and with the internalization of objects of consumption in the area of identity politics, a new dimension has come into play with regard to representational systems. Besides the interstices between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ that house the hybridized identity, a new interstices has developed between the ‘subject’ and ‘object’ of consumption. It is in the ‘potential spaces’ [my emphasis] (Winnicott, 1971: 100) between the ‘subject’ and the ‘object’ that the consumable object is ‘imaginatively elaborated’ (Winnicott 101) or ‘invested with meaning’ (Woodward 140) which in turn reflects upon the identity of the subject and transforms its definition. It can be said then, that there is an interstitial space between the subject and the object of consumption, in which the play of identification takes place. Quite like the imperial project, the project of globalization through capitalist multi-nationalism is also supported by a discourse of inevitability. The agents of the culture of free trade and exchange project the advent of globalization as a natural phenomenon as true and undeniable as ‘gravity’ (Massey 5). The spread of globalization is based on the discourse of its unavoidability and a belief that the underdeveloped and developing countries can be raised to development only by linking them to the transnational, firstworld controlled global market (Hardt and Negri 283). This 252 Identity Politics and the Third World representation of globalization as an essential and unstoppable phenomenon creates the groundwork upon which the discourses of its culture can be designed. This entails that identity in the world of multiculturalism and globalization needs must be globalized too. Since the third world represents the experimental ground for globalizing activity, identity with reference to the third world is necessarily put in inclusive and supranational terms. The culture of globalization also draws upon the rhetoric of world peace and harmony. Said envisions a euphoria of multiculturalism where cultures and identities can be consolidated on a global scale so that there is no desire to rule over the others (1994a: 407). Bhabha, though claiming to reveal the complexities of the hybridized cultural model beyond the simplistic conclusions of Said, repeats the error in imagining an absence of ‘transcendentalism’ and ‘sublation’ in a state of hybridity (1994: 38). The discourse of globalization bases itself on the same argument of peace and equality. It is believed that: [C]ross-culturality [is] the potential termination of an apparently endless human history of conquest and annihilation justified by the myth of group “purity”. (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 2006: 36) Globalization and Identity 253 Cross-culturality and globalization are suggestive of a movement beyond the rhetoric of “purity” to a state of hybridity which is not haunted by the drive to separate based on native originalities and their unadulterated existence. Where the culture of localism is seen to cause separatism, genocide, terrorism and war, the culture of globalization seemingly promises a peaceful and rather secular environment. But what becomes noteworthy in this context is that in the attempt to unite, the culture of globalization reminds local cultures of their differences as well. History bears witness that nations have always been in conflict with each other on various grounds: social, communal, religious, political, and economic. This clash in interests shows that different communities and cultures have different and possibly antagonistic features. In such a case, globalization cannot refer to a peaceful mélange of all cultures of the world, including their differences. As Held observes: [G]lobalization can engender an awareness of political difference as much as an awareness of common identity; enhanced international communications can highlight conflicts of interest and ideology, and not merely remove obstacles to mutual understanding. (qtd. in Pieterse, 1995: 49-50) 254 Identity Politics and the Third World In attempting to move beyond differences, globalization can also lead to exhuming them. It can lead to the ‘reinforcement of both supranational and sub-national regionalism’ (Pieterse 50). Further, if the culture of globalization advocates a transcendence of difference and a development of a collective community, the increasing instances of terrorism remain unexplained. The effort of globalization in making claims to world peace and harmony is suggestive of bringing about a kind of “homogeneous hybridization” in various communities of the world so that there is no conflict between them. But the terrorist attempts against the capitalist world order and its discourses of conformism are depictive of alternate identification systems which refuse to be cast into a homogeneous frame of differentiation. The space of interstices is simplistically imagined as the space of endless hybridization to the extent of homogenizing difference. This hybridization is unrealistically assumed to endlessly dilute difference and subsequently lead to a state where no signification is possible and no identity is determinable or recognizable. But the idea of an indeterminate, pulsating and multi-affiliated identity is not stable in the least. It is suggestive of a world order where identities are essentially fluid and floating in the common space of interstices. The world then should be a space marked with chaos and a total absence of hierarchies. But the world today is that of capitalism Globalization and Identity 255 and hierarchies are not only significant to it but also quite fundamental. The incongruity in the definition of interstices and identity is suggestive of there being a difference between the academic theories of hybridity and their application in real space and time. It is significant to note here that the process of globalization does not entail an attempt to bring about a culture of secularism and equality. A general view of the world shows that for all the tall claims of globalization and the ‘global village’ (McLuhan, 1964) there remains a strict hierarchy in the order of the nations and their state and rate of development. Reference to this difference is often ignored under the pretense that these countries are just a little ‘behind’ and will catch up soon (Massey 5). The culture of globalization is ironically ‘not truly global’. It is ‘geographically, economically and culturally partial and sectoral’ (Li 16). The positive effects of globalization are centered in a restricted part of the world while the rest of it pays the price for the former’s development. A telling example of this lopsided influence of the so-called global development is the following advertisement of the Royal Trust mapping the world as per the stock market capitalization (qtd in Li 19). 256 Identity Politics and the Third World An advertisement of the Royal Trust (Royal Bank Group) mapping the world The representation of the world in terms of capitalization indices reveals the prominence of the first world as a powerful and gargantuan space with the surrounding miniature spaces as insignificant. In this context, the role of the USA in propagating and perpetuating the neocolonial exercise of globalization cannot be ignored. As an agent of the globalization process, the USA holds an entrepreneurial position in the world today. This is not to state that capitalism or international trade is an American invention, but the employment of these forces to globalize the world into a single culture of subservience to capitalism is definitely an American strategy. In the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference of New England, the superpowers of the world constituted three Globalization and Identity 257 organizations with the ostensible claim to enhance stability in the various economies of the world, provide aid for developmental activities and develop free international trade relations maintaining the sovereignty of all nations and their boundaries. But these organizations soon changed not only in their nomenclature but also in their nature and role in world economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) which was formed to ‘administer international monetary flow’ [my emphasis] (Steger, 2003: 38) has come to dictate it. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which was formed to finance European postwar reconstruction, has mutated into the World Bank and funds industrial projects in the third world. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was meant to enforce ‘multilateral trade agreements’ (Steger, 2003: 38), but transformed as the World Trade Organization (WTO), it has become the nucleus of economic globalization as an American project. The objection to the World Bank is that it tends to make stringent conditions that conform to its own precepts of what is economically desirable, not those of the country itself. This is exacerbated by the fact that it works with governments rather than people. . . . The World Trade Organization . . . seems to be an outfit designed to facilitate entry for western or transnational companies into other markets on 258 Identity Politics and the Third World the best terms, while ensuring that the favour is not reciprocated the other way round, and doing nothing to alleviate the sinking price paid for commodities to the non-western world. (Young, 2003: 134) In the 1960’s and 70’s, when the newly industrializing countries (NICs) of the third world began to participate actively in global trade through export oriented industrialization (EOI), the ostensible claim of the World Bank to foster development seemingly flourished. But this development came at the cost of third-world national economies. Further, with the rise in offshore capital investment, and the subsequent shift from gold-dollar standard to the non-convertible dollar in 1971, the development programme turned into an exploitative regime. The third-world industry began to thrive on hefty loans from the World Bank which were multiplying constantly. The IMF took up the role of the banker of the world, and began the project of the development of the ‘transnational corporate system’ in collaboration with the World Bank (McMichael, 2000: 280). The third world was now trapped in the vicious cycle of surmounting debt, which was not to aid national development but rather to pay-off old debts. The trinity of American capitalism, that is, the IMF, World Bank and WTO then designed trading systems for the third world wherein profit generation for the US-based transnational corporations was the Globalization and Identity 259 unmasked and only motive. The off-shoring of production units to foreign soils for cheaper labour and resources, the outsourcing of jobs to low-paid foreign employees and the absolute invasion of the third-world market with international products and services are all means to strengthen American control on world economy. Under the impact of the globalization processes, the ethnic industries and national produce fail simply on the grounds of higher price. Further, with the off-shoring of TNCs in the third world, a surplus capital inflow is observed in the latter in the form of wages and salaries. However, this surplus is only a funding to create affordability in the third-world consumer for the first-world product. The American globalization strategy works through the modus operandi of generating virtual surplus capital in the third world in the form of loans to US-based TNCs, employing third-world resources and labour at cheaper rates to produce goods for international sale, and finally reaping enormous profits by selling to the third-world consumer. Further, in the garb of creating jobs for the natives and developing infrastructure, the TNCs rob the country of its economic independence and surpass the state’s authority simply by virtue of international network and economic supremacy. It is noteworthy that the third-world countries which house TNC production units mostly report a lower GDP in comparison to the TNC’s turnover (Steger, 2003: 48-51). Behind the glorious 260 Identity Politics and the Third World façade of global development, the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing tremendously leading to an imbalance in the social wealth distribution system. At the bottom line, this development reflects profits of the US governed TNCs and the development of the first world. Even within the nations, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (Sernau, 2006: 36). The handful of affluent that the third world celebrates with pride is a miniscule percentage of the total population and the lopsided distribution of wealth within these nations worsens under the capitalist order. For much of the world, globalization as it has been managed seems like a pact with the devil. A few people in the country become wealthier; GDP statistics, for what they are worth, look better, but ways of life and basic values are threatened. . . . Closer integration into the global economy has brought greater volatility, insecurity and inequality. (Stiglitz, 2006: 292) The poor are identified as ‘flawed consumers’ (Bauman 1998: 38, 90) as they are incapable of consuming from the capitalist market ‘in the manner that consumer society expects’ (Bryman 173). These ‘flawed consumers’ constitute the ‘other’ in the polar identification system of the global capitalist market which privileges the rich consumer as a ‘fully fledged member’ casting away the poor as an abnormal opposite (Bryman, 2004: 173). Globalization and Identity 261 Ironically, the third world which forms the foundation of transnational corporate growth in terms of economies of scale loses when it comes to establishing economic prowess. It is this victimization of the third world as a means of forwarding American trade which results in a backlash in the form of anti-globalization movements and terrorist attacks. The politics of identity now begins to take the shape of a much more tangible and empirical competition between the haves and the have-nots. The vicious cycle of third-world economic dependence on the first world increases the latter’s strength as an invincible leader in international economic scenario. With the established foundation of global capitalism, the representation of the world by the Royal Trust (refer: picture above) not only reflects power relations but also the strong and undeniable hierarchy in the world order despite all claims to secularism and equality with reference to globalization. Further, globalization brews on competition and not on unconditional integration. It is constantly iterative of the idiom of the nation-state and the relative development of one on top of the other through an interactive procedure (Li 17). The foundational tool of globalization is capitalism which is suggestive of profit through competition and this makes the culture of globalization that of division rather than integration. It can be observed that the performance of identity is competitive in nature in the capitalist multicultural/ 262 Identity Politics and the Third World multinational sphere and identity in its hybridity is competing against other hybrid forms for a higher position in the hierarchy of internationalism. Ironically however, the essential drive in individuals towards marking a ‘distinction’ or ‘difference’ from others is actually an attempt towards ‘conformism’ (Baudrillard, 1998: 92). This ambivalence in the system of identification through difference is the foundational premise upon which the cultural of difference is realized. Superficial peace and order is observed with reference to globalization, but this order is depictive of capitalist interdependence rather than a sense of universal philanthropism. As Marx and Engels note, capitalism makes all civilized nations and every individual member of them dependent for the satisfaction of his wants on the whole world destroying the formal natural exclusiveness of separate nations. (1965: 75-6) Such capitalist inter-relatedness makes individual members ambivalent in their relation with each other. There is a simultaneous feeling of competition and mutual development between the concerned nations. This characteristic partial symbiosis gives globalization the foundation upon which the discourse of world development and equality is based. Another important observation at this point is that the culture of globalization entails the process of actively making Globalization and Identity 263 global. This conversion of the “non-global” to the global necessitates pruning and trimming the perceptions of the “nonglobal” identities to the popularly believed “new improved inclusive version”. Like the imperial order, the discourse of globalization and the attempt to create a class of middle-men between various local cultures seems to suggest the production of a mix-and-match identity that is partly local and partly global. Globalization is presented not as a definite cultural form but rather as a culture of inclusion. This compatibilityinducing culture of internationalism, as it is perceived, is offered to local cultures in appropriated forms as per local trends. The culture of globalization is presented in glocal forms to make it palatable (Ritzer 169). By popular definition, ‘global identity’ is received as a sort of internationalism − a liberation from boundaries − a sort of elevation from origin to be at home everywhere. But what does ‘global’ include? The euphoric dream of secularism and the claim that it can be reached through the process of globalization (whatever the alignment refers to) raises serious doubts. First, if globality cannot be depictive of an equality of all in hybridity, can it be called global? Secondly, if it cannot be called global, who are the perpetrators of this discourse of globality? Thirdly, if globality is a consumer product (and so it seems to be), is it just a collection of tokens (harmless and mostly unimportant) from various cultures, loosely 264 Identity Politics and the Third World incorporated in the ruling culture? And fourthly, if it is so, what identity is promised to the people from these ‘token’ cultures? The study of identity with respect to the culture of globalization runs parallel with the study of capitalism and its politics. The culture of globalization takes on a ‘grobal’ form within the international capitalist scenario. It functions through ‘a process in which growth imperatives…push organizations and nations to expand globally and to impose themselves on the local’ (Ritzer xiii). In this profit oriented globally expanding market system, structures of growth oriented globalization, or ‘grobalization’ (Ritzer 41) govern the space of identity. Identity is fashioned on productive metaphors of internationalism tending to first-worldism. The simultaneously grobal and glocal measures of hybridization suggest a sense of difference in spite of orchestrated cultural interaction. The presence of this difference despite the seemingly “homogenizing” hybridization is suggestive of a process of ‘selective incorporation’ (Robertson 41) as well as appropriation of alien ideas to local sensibility. In such a space of interaction and incorporation, identity is not brought to a homogeneous and globally equal state but rather made permeable. Identity is universally hybridized due to globalization, but the extent and the Globalization and Identity 265 constitution of this fusion is varied and cannot be observed as a foundation for equality or homogeneity. However it can be said that hybridization leads to a difference in the performance of hierarchy. While in the era of imperial annexation, hierarchy was strictly governed by the binary discourses of superiority and inferiority and a seemingly direct and consequential claim to significance, in the era of hybridization, identity has developed a new referential system. With the strictly polar categories of identification in the prior times there was an obvious desire to fit in and claim belonging to one place. In the current scenario however, the state of being neither here nor there is not only suggestive of a widened scope of identity but also of an empowering position in the international system, free to choose and change one’s affiliations. Migration as a metaphor is not suggestive of uprooting but rather liberation. Similarly, the condition of being diasporic is suggestive of global association and grants a sense of cosmopolitanism to identity. Further, even as a victim the diasporic condition attracts attention and centrality in today’s world with its somewhat ostensible obsession with subalternity. Based on market indices and consumption dynamics it can be observed that hyphenated identity claims popularity. The facet of hybridity fixation can be observed in the literary scenario where with every success of Rushdie or Seth, the idea 266 Identity Politics and the Third World of diasporic existence and its anxiety becomes a source of excitement and every nomadic venture seems to hold a promise of productivity. The interstitial beings or the ‘liminal personae’, as Victor Turner calls them (qtd. in Ramraj, 1998: 216), are liberated from the stereotypical categories of origin and belonging and are free to selectively consume from the competition-based global free market. While Said describes exile as something ‘terrible to experience . . . [an] unhealable rift . . . [an] essential sadness’ (2001c: 173), he also acknowledges the present age as that of ‘the refugee, the displaced person, mass immigration’ (174). Even Bhabha accords a special status to the ‘migrant’s double vision’ (1994: 5). A radical change has come about with the wave of hybridization and cultural permeability. Migration is not necessarily a forced exile in the current age, but can be self-willed too (Ramraj 214). This latter form of migration is largely described as a preferred state of existence as it liberates the expatriates and émigrés from the ‘rigid proscriptions’ of restricted cultural or community spaces and allows an ‘ambiguous status’ to them, and ‘choice in the matter is certainly a possibility’ (Said, 2001c: 181). This matter of choice in cultural terms is the unfettering aspect of hybridization and can be a source of the euphoria of multiculturalism that Bhabha theorized upon (1994: 38). Globalization and Identity 267 Though the empowerment related with cosmopolitanism can be debated. By means of the installation of a continuous alterity with respect to other identities, the cosmopolitan can only play roles, participate superficially in other people’s realities, but can have no reality of his or her own other than alterity itself. (Friedman, J., 1995: 204) Similarly, intellectuals who migrate from their nation to the first world and claim the voice of the third world have been accused of refusing their national identity and taking on a firstworld status (Ahmad, 1995: 13). Further, under the driving and binding force of capitalism and international economics, hybridization becomes an orchestrated programme designed to hybridize to a certain extent only: to be ‘almost the same but not quite’ [my emphasis] (Bhabha, 1994: 122). Identity in the hybridized market scenario is packaged to suit the economic system and consumption is prompted by advertising and parameters of social status. Bhabha’s theory of the hybridized identity and the interstitial being offers the dictum of universal hybridity which serves as the foundation upon which the discourses of capitalism and consumerist market dynamic rest. Bhabha’s hybridized identity provides capitalism with the definitive interstitial ‘self’ that is offered to the consumer for enhancing 268 Identity Politics and the Third World profit quotients and market shares for the actors of first-world capitalist order. It is a simulation of the euphoric vision of world culture and global identities claimed by the hybridity thesis in the capitalist free-market system. The homogenously and comfortably hybridized ‘self’ proposed by the capitalist system not only appeals to the consumer but also creates a constant demand in the market for hyphenation or a trendy mix-and-match. The capitalist insistence upon fusion results in a parallel demand for the maintenance of individuality. It is noteworthy however that this individuality is to be preserved on universally acceptable patterns only. This points towards a paradoxical creation of an identity that is at once hybridized and culturally unique. Identity simultaneously occupies the space of manipulation and imposition, and that of statement and response: oppositional and/or otherwise. It becomes the site of political manipulation through global representation systems ranging from the likes of the ‘United Colours of Benetton’ directly derived from the celebratory model of unity in diversity (refer to the following image), to the seemingly individuating temptations of brands like Reebok confidently claiming: ‘I am what I am’; and in counterpoint, it also marks the site of power and self-definition through response to the attempts at aligning the world with the likes of Fab India, Chokhi Dhaani, Ainu markets of Japan and Han Chinese Globalization and Identity 269 markets and their claims towards the maintenance of cultural and traditional identity. That they take on capitalist systems for such an expression can be debated as a matter of irony or adept political response. United Colors of Benetton posters depicting unity in diversity Images taken from www.benetton.com/press 270 Identity Politics and the Third World While on the one hand these attempts display a total failure of purpose of conserving cultural identity and tradition from the threats of global market systems and capitalist internationalism by founding their structures of operation on the systems of competitive consumerism itself, on the other hand they can also be observed as advanced in their warring response by adopting the methods of the system against itself, by writing back to the empire, as Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin might put it. Either way, identity in the current scenario suffers from the syndrome of mass production and consumption for the expression of the so called liberation of fusion as well as the ostentation of uniqueness. The ironic bulk production of identity points to a simulation of identity and not a practice of it. The mass production of identity with the apparent avowal of maintaining individuality refers to the creation of synthesized products that carry with them the local as well as the global; individual as well as what is supposed to be common. The anxiety of this blending, which can also be terrorizing at times, is shrouded under the garb of productivity and inevitability related with hybridization and globalization. The identity marketed through such a system of orchestrated hyphenation is depictive of a universal hybridization mechanism pervading all from hyper malls to hyper real identities. Fredric Jameson points towards the lack of Globalization and Identity 271 capability to cognitively map an identity in the commodified hyper-space. With respect to the mall, he says that it represents: [A] postmodern hyperspace [that] has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world. (1984: 83) From bringing the objects of consumption into forced and at times jarring fusion under one roof (Bryman 67), to diluting the use value and sign value of these into a single consumptive factor of meaningless consumption for conspicuousness (Veblen 68) or mythically created needs, the mall represents the postmodern space of nothingness which is full of objects but emptied of meaning (Ritzer). The consumption of synthetic products which are robbed of meaning and significance through the sublation of ‘use value’ by sign value’ and the ‘metaconsumption’ of goods for superficial and impassionate ends (Baudrillard, 1998: 90) reflect upon the identity of the consumer. It is here that the fractures of the consumptive goods permeate the identity of the consumer to create a fractured and empty identity: the hyper-identity. The simulation of identity in terms of consumption points to the absence of content in identity. As the postcolonial theories regarding third-world identity reflect an empty sign 272 Identity Politics and the Third World that signifies everything that the west is not, and is nothing more concrete than the imagination of the colonizer, in the capitalist world, with the complete internalization of the ‘other’ in the ‘self’, the identity of the third world is that of a consumer based on the simulated products that he/she consumes. Through the hegemonic tool of marketing and advertising, capitalism creates perceptions of ideal consumers and places them in a state of preference as the seemingly empowered and controlling factors of the system. This myth of empowerment, better known as consumerism, is directed towards the practice of perceptions to create profits based on the consumption of illusive products which have ‘no objective reality’ and represent the nothingness that underlines the current market dynamic (Ritzer 180; Trout, 2001: 6-7). Based on the active practice of nothingness, identity is an empty sign in the world of consumerism which can be informed with any meaning. This disposable identity can be created and changed at will and can be modified as per need. An identity which is fit for all occasions and all consumers is offered through mass produced goods with various perceptions adapting them to need and appropriateness. George Ritzer marks the example of ‘Mecca Cola’ within this context (181) as a symbol of apparent localization of capitalist ventures even in the most adverse scenarios, to underline the flexibility of capitalist perception systems. Inadvertently, perhaps, Ritzer Globalization and Identity 273 also points towards the creation of local somethings as an attempt towards cashing on the traditional perceptions of the masses rather than the professed purpose of keeping culture alive. It can be remarked here that such cultural markets profiting by selling cultural ‘knick-knacks’, or ‘kitsch objects’ (Baudrillard, 1998: 12) are perhaps examples of grobalizing the local. Further the glocalization of extra local objects to local tastes is also a means of promoting profit margins by creating pseudo-global consumable identities ostensibly pointing to a sense of cultural intermix. To repeat Robertson’s views: The idea of glocalization in its business sense is closely related to . . . micromarketing: the tailoring and advertising of goods and services on a global or near-global basis to increasingly differentiated local and particular markets. . . . [But it also] involves the construction of increasingly differentiated consumers, the ‘invention’ of ‘consumer traditions’. . . . From the consumer’s point of view it can be a significant basis of cultural capital formation. (28-9) In this context identity under the influence of local capitalist ventures is another form of hyper reality and points to the allencompassing sway of simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1994) in the current system of identity and its practice. 274 Identity Politics and the Third World What further accentuates the hyper reality of identity is its dependence upon the objects that are consumed from the capitalist market. The culture of capitalism rests upon the destruction of ‘use values’ of objects and the imposition of ‘exchange values’ on them instead. The substitution of demand as ‘a mysterious emanation of human needs . . . [to] a mechanical response to social manipulation’ leads to the consumption of goods merely by popular availability and not by choice (Appadurai, 2006: 419). This consumption is also not for its own sake but rather to establish a political value through commodities. This ‘commodity fetishism’ provides the hegemonic means with which objects can be raised to becoming determiners of identity and factors of controlling cultural imperialism (Ahmad, 1996: 413). Due to this, the consumer has been transformed, through commodity flows . . . into a sign, both in Baudrillard’s sense of a simulacrum which only asymptomatically approaches the form of a real social agent, and in the sense of a mask for the real seat of agency, which is not the consumer but the producer and the many forces that constitute production. [my emphasis] (Appadurai, 1995: 307) The myth that consumption leads to the creation of agency points towards the simulated sense and practice of identity and its lack of reality. It also highlights the blinding exaggeration Globalization and Identity 275 of the simulated identity and its significance in the current scenario. Through active advertising methods and marketing strategies, the discursive relation between consumption and the practice of identity is so far informed in the collective psyche that consumers are forced to ‘conform’ (Baudrillard, 1998: 92) to the principle of consumption for assertion of individuality. The system of consumption is seen as a means to emphasize one’s identity and a sense of difference from the others. The ironic universal ‘conformism’ so as to achieve a sense of ‘distinction or difference’ (Baudrillard, 1998: 92) is similar to Durkheim’s social thesis regarding ‘collective consumption’ (qtd. in Baudrillard, 1998: 4-5). The general attempt towards preserving individuality by following the same pattern is depictive of a sense of homogeneity in hybridization in terms of methodology but the variety of objects consumed by each individual being different, identity remains heterogeneous in nature. However, it can be argued that in the space of simulation and ‘metaconsumption’, hyper identity all consumption achieved pertains through to the embodiment of empty signs or nothingness. In such a scenario, any combination of emptiness or nothingness would only point to a sense of empty identity which can be homogenous in its lack of content and uniqueness. 276 Identity Politics and the Third World What is more, in the current scenario, consumption is carried out through the mode of capital transactions. Capitalism has the tendency of quantifying everything and converting all to the denominations of trade and exchange. This homogenization of the units of observation to a single system results in a basic dilution of heterogeneity and difference (Yurick, 1997: 211). Such a state of affairs leads to the creation of what Yurick calls the ‘Metastate’, that is, the space of transnationalism where it is necessary to ‘render all borders and cultures porous’ (212). The idea of the Metastate develops in a state of polarity against the nation-state which is defined by its compactness and cultural fixity: the traditional parameters of ascertaining identity. The Metastate then becomes a space where there is no cultural or national loyalty or identity to observe. The culture of capitalism and the Metastate rests on power and wealth. Given the fact that those who inhabit the realm of the Metastate derive from diverse nationalities, what they have in common is the culture of wealth and power, which has its own mode of behavior and discourse. (Yurick 216) Further, much like ethnic cultures and their persistence towards the maintenance of their individual characterizing codes, capitalism also insists upon the international boiling down of differences in capital culture to resort to one global free-market Globalization and Identity 277 dynamic. This international market space with its free-flow behavioural pattern and supervision by actors of trade develops a state of virtual existence, which seems to represent a numbing of the geopolitical system where everything is capitalized irrespective of borders and boundaries. The culture of capitalism demands a loyalty and conformism towards a state without any affiliations and flexible cultural codes. The discourse of capitalism and free trade necessitates the creation of a consumer identity which is alterable and compatible with change. The community of capitalism then points to an essentially empty space of identification which is virtually designed upon the lack of definition. To add to this virtual behaviour of space, capital is also expressed in virtual codes in the Metastate. Capital transactions are carried on a virtual plane of credit cards and e-cash. This ‘fictional’ capital with its ‘veritable financial bubble-economic cyberspaces’ (Yurick 218) percolates into the identity of those consuming in the Metastate and creates a universal pseudoidentity expressed in terms of what Ritzer identifies as the ‘non-person’ (10). Ironically this ‘hyperbolic capital moving through relative hyperspace’ has its effects in the real world despite its fictional status (Yurick 218), and influences the imaginaries of identity through a process of denomination in the virtual codes of IP addresses, e-mail ids and credit card numbers, all exhibiting a homogeneity in nomenclature and a 278 Identity Politics and the Third World universal capitalization of identity in a state of virtual existence leading to a state of ‘metastasis in the Metastate’ (220). The hybridization of identity in the hyperspace does not restrict itself to spatial referents alone but extends to the temporality of existence as well. Identity is not only hybridized across borders and nationalities to a state of metaexistence, but also across the temporal space of experience. The multiplicity of inhabiting various time frames simultaneously, leads to the absolute breakdown of location and causes the development of ‘schizo-culture’ where [the] logic of meaning in the succession of signifiers is disrupted by an unrelated synchronity of signs [leading to the] scrambling of signifiers and images. (McGuigan 72) The mall as a symbol of cultural market displays objects for consumption from the traditional past of uniqueness and specific community codes, the global free market of internationalism and consumer demand, and the future imaginaries of the virtual place of the Internet and its unchecked reach across every geo-political border and boundary. The schizo-identity created in this manner is imaginative about the past, the present and the future, unconscious or at best semi-conscious of reality and inhabits a Globalization and Identity 279 commodified space of experience where temporality has lost all signification and ‘use value’. At a more individual level, as Rekha Borgohain Dixit observes, the ‘Gen V’, that is a parallel population of virtual personae, live their lives on a plane that is quite different from the real life in the manner of its courtesies, its etiquettes, behaviors and rules, but similar in the manner of its expressions and responses: criminal as well as philanthropic (2008). It is noteworthy that the virtual universe is borderless and more liberating as it allows its populace to lead various lives at one time and to vent out all those desires (harmless, most of the times) which their real life persona denies to them. Further, the title of ‘Gen’, does not suggest a generation by virtue of people born in the same time in the real world, but people inhabiting the virtual world at the same time. That makes the virtual world ageless in its criterion of inclusion. But this agelessness also causes a disruption in the temporal flow of experience and leads to multiple splits in the identity of an individual in being various entities at various times. Each of these identities, whether cultural, or virtual, or capital or consumer, carries with it the anxiety of possibly paradoxical existence and contradictory experience. This ‘crack[ing]’ identity, much too similar to Rushdie’s description of Saleem Sinai’s disintegration symbolizes the alienation of 280 Identity Politics and the Third World ‘self’ after an immense attempt at ‘pickling’ (1980: 550) in the era of capitalist globalization. What begins with the ambivalence of identity in its simultaneous evocation of ‘presence’ and ‘difference’ (Bhabha, 1994: 73; Easthope 344-345; Rutherford, 1990b: 21) and its ostensible productivity through devices of magic realism, pastiche, enigmatic and inscrutable experiences of extra local cultures, turns inwards in the era of globalization and capitalism and becomes a source of alienation. Stories of ‘the horror’ that Conrad fails to resolve (106) and the echo in the cave that is significant due to the opportunity it creates for interpretation (Forster), give way to application in the life and times of the consumer today who is not in the state of academic ambivalence to produce counter-narratives, but is forced by essentialist hybridization and liminality into a state of being ‘alienated’ (Pieterse 56). Identity in the culture of globalization reaches a point where signification is not only impossible, but also not desired to quite an extent. Notes i. The forces of globalization create a culture of hybridization which is not all inclusive, but celebrates certain privileged cultures, excluding, and at times even condemning others. Together, the systems of globalization create a standard form of acceptable hybridization, while other forms of hybridization are termed deviant. Globalization and Identity ii. 281 In his ‘The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality,’ Ahmad explains that in the current context, the term ‘postcolonial’ does not refer only to erstwhile colonized spaces but any part of the ‘Rest’ of the world, ‘whether or not any. . .[of it] was actually colonized’ (9), the term thirdworld has also magnified its scope to include whatever can be called the rest of the world vis-à-vis the west. Whose Line is it Anyway? Chapter 5 Whose Line is it Anyway? Into whose culture is one to be hybridized and on whose terms? The willful relegation of this question reveals nevertheless that the underlying logic of this celebratory mode is that of the limitless freedom of a globalized marketplace which pretends that all consumers are equally resourceful and in which all cultures are equally available for consumption, in any combination that the consumer desires. Only to the extent that all cultures are encountered in commodified forms does it become possible to claim that none commands more power than any other or that the consumer alone is the sovereign of all hybridization. This playful ‘hybridity’ conceals that fact that commodified cultures are equal only to the extent of their commodification. − Ahmad, 1995a: 17 283 284 Identity Politics and the Third World The new global cultural system promotes difference instead of suppressing it, but selects the dimension of difference. . . . [We] are not all becoming the same, but we are portraying, dramatizing and communicating our differences to each other in ways that are more widely intelligible . . . which celebrate particular kinds of diversity while submerging, deflating or suppressing others. − Wilk, 1995: 124 People are not in charge of globalization; markets and technology are. Certain human actions might accelerate or retard globalization, but in the last instance . . . the invisible hand of the market will always assert its superior wisdom. − Steger, 2004: 61 What is it in third-world identity that despite rigorous debates on issues related to it the term still manages to remain a fertile subject of research? What forces scholars to discuss this issue constantly? Why is there only one conclusion about identity that there can be no conclusion? And if every study of identity comes to the same conclusion, why is the subject still researched upon? There is only one answer to all these questions. Identity is of immense significance to all human beings individually as well as socially. It is not a dated concept Whose Line is it Anyway? 285 which loses its relevance with time. As the world changes in its economy, politics, technology, social structure and culture, identity reflects those changes and this makes the concept an organic and evolving category which cannot be relegated to discussions of a certain age alone. Similarly, the term ‘thirdworld’ may be considered obsolete, but what it signifies cannot be dismissed as unimportant. As elaborated before, the term ‘third-world’ not only denotes erstwhile colonies, but also the contemporary developing nations. On a different tangent, ‘third-world’ can also be read as ‘third space’ denoting the space of cultural interface and hybridization which is far more inclusive and global. Together, third-world identity may always be defined as an inconclusive subject. The method and reasons for arriving at that conclusion may be different, but productive in lending some understanding of the concept. As illustrated in the chapters before, third-world identity has always been a category of manipulative representation. This study begins with an assertion that the act of naming is a means of hegemonic intervention. Identity is a mode of executing power and of perpetuating authority. The construction of identity, in both polarized and hybridized forms, is informed by the hegemony of a power group. Through the investigation of identity and representational politics, one can assess that identity is not only an expression of being for itself but for the express purpose of establishing 286 Identity Politics and the Third World certain relations of hierarchy and authority. The study of identity through Said and Bhabha leads us to the question of the indubitable significance of power structures. The inevitable question then is: Whose line is it anyway? In 1988, BBC and Channel 4 aired a game show Whose Line is it Anyway? which was a tremendous success and is still a chart-topping comedy on prime-time television. The show format involves a random simulation of situations by four comedians. Prompted by the demands of a live audience, the host selects situations which are to be performed and provides them to a supposedly unprepared group of artists, who portray different parts impromptu, in a mimicking/mocking style and create humour for the audiences. They are given points by the host simply on his whim as the catch-line suggests that it is a show in which ‘everything is made up and the points don’t matter’. In the absence of a conclusion to the competition, the game may be seen as a superficial contest progressing on popular demand and co-operative effort. But beneath its pretense of a non-hierarchical format, the show exhibits the working of a complex power structure. The live audience is given an ostensible position of authority as they demand the situations to be performed and the humour is generated for their entertainment. But neither is their demand unrestricted, nor is the humour rated by them, so their authority is not Whose Line is it Anyway? 287 absolute even though it may seem so. Much like a Shakespearean fool, the comedian has the authority to represent situations and people with ingenuity without being challenged by those being mocked. With an enormous talent for changing personalities and imitating/mocking them with utmost ease, the comedian, or the fool is a competing participant on the one hand and the ruling centre-stage-holding narrative authority on the other. But subject to the judgment of the host, the comedian’s authority is challenged. Further, since the competition never ends, the comedian is constantly maintained in the position of a competitor. The host who maintains the pretense of a facilitator between the audience and the comedians holds the most powerful position. It is the host who selects the situations prompted by the audience and rates the performance of the comedians, maintaining his unchallenged authority in every show. Like the show, the conclusion for this book is titled ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ The show can be seen as a molecular caricature of the systems of globalization. The consumer, like the audience, is given the illusion of control even though the first world, as a host in the game of globalization, controls the demand and supply. The third world, as a competitor, takes on various roles, only to be rated by the first world on its whim in a format that never allows the competition to end or the power structure to change. The third 288 Identity Politics and the Third World world as a licensed fool is given the illusive authority to mock/imitate, but the real authority rests with the first-world host who controls the consumer demand, the third-world performance and the hierarchy of the system. The first world constantly maintains an illusion of authority for the audience as well as the third world, which is pertinent to run the show in a certain manner. In this seemingly symbiotic structure however, the questions remain: Whose line is it anyway? Is the line or authority that of the directing first world, the competing third world, or the consumer? What is the identity of the third world as a constant competitor and imitator? What is the identity of the first world whose authority is disguised under the garb of a go-between host? What is the dynamic of the power structure which allows partial authority to others but never enough to subvert the format of the show? Hierarchies and power structures have lost the clarity and strength they held in colonial times. The polar categories of master and slave were unchallenged then and could be populated without inviting much debate. The construction of identity was the sole prerogative of the colonizer. With the anti-colonial movements taking shape, third-world identity as a discursive colonial artefact came to be challenged and alternative accounts of native identity came to the fore. With colonial interaction and its many outcomes ranging from outright antagonism to steadfast devotion, from mimicry to Whose Line is it Anyway? 289 mockery, an ambivalent attitude towards western constructs developed and resulted in various representations of thirdworld identity. With the crumbling of the space-time construct and the simultaneous development of the experiential tangent, the invasion of virtual lives and parallel existence systems, the economic boomerang effect of shifting binaries and the forever migrating peoples and cultures, third-world identity has acquired a complex structure which can also lead some to suggest that no one is in charge anymore. But a system of sustained hybridization cannot function without a directing power no matter how layered or multiple it may be. On the surface, the most visible and the popular effect on identity is that of consumption. Consumption is often identified as one of the primary factors affecting identity and with the global availability of consumer products the world over, it is often construed that global capitalism and consumerism design the identity for the third world. Multinational and transnational corporations manufacture an identity for the consumer and popularize it through advertising strategies and marketing systems. With these corporations supplying their products to all corners of the world, one can be forced to assume that the third space is becoming “homogenously hybridized” with the same set of brands from various locations available for a buyer who is being transformed into a standard hybridized consumer irrespective 290 Identity Politics and the Third World of his/her location. The visibility effects of the mall or the sign boards in the cosmopolitan cities can lead one to simplistically understand that the identity of the third world is that of a “homogenously hybridized” consumer created in the picture of the first world. This ostensible replication of the first-world market in the third world can be seen as a capitalistic form of the hegemony of colonialism and the effort to create an inbetween class, as Macaulay once intended, which can forward the culture of the neocolonial master and reinforce its inevitability. However one must consider whether the presence of the same brands everywhere necessarily translates into a homogenizing identity effect. Firstly, this worldwide visibility of brands and their popularity is primarily depictive of global consumerism. One may find a Coca Cola banner everywhere in the world and a McDonalds at the end of the street in most cosmopolitan cities, but enormous disparities still divide nations from each other. From political borders to the formalities of international travel, from culture to language, great differences can be observed in seemingly similar parts of the world. The presence of the same international brands all over the world only signifies a well ordered and managed distribution system of the multinational corporate and only superficially informs identity (Gopinath, 2008: 49). This is not to suggest that identity or culture remain unchanged under the impact of globalization, but that Whose Line is it Anyway? 291 hybridization of identity is not a function of consumption alone. Secondly, most multinational companies adapt themselves to suit international clientele. The brand and the advertising equipment remaining constant, the same companies provide localized products to increase international sales and profit. So McDonalds serves ‘Aloo Tikki Burgers’ in India and Hamburgers in USA. From using local heroes and models to advertise their product to changing the design, products and services of their brand, the multinational companies themselves become hybridized rather than hybridizing the local culture as much. Once again, one must clarify that the very presence of a McDonalds may be a symbol of hybridization, but the fact that it has to evolve its own strategies and products substantiates that the corporate cannot survive globally without acknowledging deep-rooted cultural differences. If identity were to be observed vis-à-vis consumption, globalization would not imply homogenization but rather glocalization and cultural intermingling. Thirdly, and most importantly, if consumption of a transnational or multinational brand such as Coca Cola has a direct bearing on the identity of the consumer and creates a homogenizing effect, consumption of all brands and products acquired as a result of global trade should be observed similarly. The post 9/11 image of Osama bin Laden on Al Jazeera channel (refer: image below), telecast worldwide through tie-ups with international corporations such as AOL- 292 Identity Politics and the Third World Warner, CNN, CNBC, Reuters and ABC, should be read as an example of homogeneity and not aggressive measures of a terrorist protesting against capitalism. Laden himself, sporting a microphone, a stylish Timex sports watch, a Russian combat dress and an AK-47 that must have travelled half the world to reach the regresses of a cave in Afghanistan (Steger, 2003: 46), should belong to the same third-world identity of a “homogenized consumer” and not be categorized as a terrorist. It seems unfair to cast Coca Cola as an agent of homogenization and AK-47 as that of fanaticism, when they are both attained through the system of global “trade”. The example given may sound too incongruent but products and brands can only be observed as factors affecting life-style and not as codes of identity. It may also be mentioned here that the image of Laden as both a consumer of diverse goods which can be read as symbols of globalization and a terroristic force against the tyrannies of American capitalism, bears testimony to the fact that identity is not a manifestation of consumption alone. It would be too simplistic to assume that Laden would be naïve enough to be sporting articles acquired through global trade, when making a statement against international capitalism perpetrated by America, without a specific agenda. Whose Line is it Anyway? 293 Osama bin Laden on Al Jazeera Channel after 9/11 Image taken from http://www.personal.psu.edu/lab5100/blogs/OneWorld/Osama. jpg A deconstruction of Laden’s image brings out a duality in the identity of the terrorist as both a consumer of goods of international trade, as well as a force of resistance against capitalism. One may also read Laden’s image as a symbol of resistance by the employment of the means of the colonizer. The multiple interpretations of the image suggest that the identity of the third world, even in a fanatic/terroristic form, is hybridized but not by a global standard of hybridity. Like global capitalism, America is also perceived as an important player in writing third-world identity. The politics of representation is somehow always linked with the west and its hegemonic practices. Where colonial occupation is seen as a direct form of imperialism, the development of multinational capitalism and hybridization are seen as indirect forms of Americanization. It is no surprise then that third-world identity 294 Identity Politics and the Third World and culture are generally perceived to be threatened under the impact of ‘westernization’ or ‘Americanization’ through hybridization, movement or capitalistic liaison in the world today. Can it be concluded then, that it is America or the west that holds the reins? Is identity America’s line? In the current context and the jargon of neocolonialism, America is perceived as a colonizer and the third world as the colonized. In a Saidean manner it can be said that third-world identity is facing the same orientalism at the hands of America as the colonized other did under European control. The othering of the east as an inferior is done to discursively create an unshakeable position of superiority for the western self. The American system of othering as a discursive practice can be observed in its literature. Through its films and media, America reinforces a strong international belief in eastern ignorance and western knowledge in contrast with it. Whether it is the projection of the bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan as a difficult but important task in international interest that America has to undertake as part of the ‘White Man’s burden’ (Kipling 280), or the Hollywood films demonstrating the east as the inferior other: illiterate, primitive, violent and aimless, America does it all. On the cultural front, America creates its self through narcissistic accounts of prowess compared to a world of the doomed other. Like the European colonizer, America seems to be out to subjugate the world with the sword (military power) Whose Line is it Anyway? 295 in one hand and the book (media) in the other. Interestingly, rather than resisting the American discourse of eastern inferiority, the third-world intentionally or unintentionally reiterates it. Talking in terms of cinema alone, third world countries re-exoticize international profits. themselves Ang Lee’s in attempts Chinese to earn international blockbuster Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2003) once again ‘orientalize[s]’ Chinese culture and history to suit the American sensibilities (Ritzer 86). Similarly Indian entries to the Oscars continue to reflect a sense of mysticism with movies like Amol Palekar’s Paheli (2005). It is because of this discursive representation that America continues to locate ‘slumdog millionaires’ (Boyle, 2009) in India. By creating and strengthening a discourse of American superiority and indispensability in world systems, the USA seems to claim the sole rights to write the identity of the third world. Politically it may be right to observe that America holds a position of enviable superiority today. With its stronghold in the area of creating and disseminating knowledge, America claims a powerful position by Foucauldian principles. Along with a strong political position in the international space, America also commands a ruling position in areas of economy and technology. With its claims to superiority in these spheres one may hastily deduce that third-world identity is an American design. In terms of economy, America seemingly 296 Identity Politics and the Third World controls the functioning of the international market scenario. With the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF in America, the dynamics of international economy are ostensibly in the hands of the American entrepreneur. With the largest number of transnational corporations (TNCs) based in North America (Steger, 2003: 103), it is evident that world economy is controlled largely by the U.S.A. It has been demonstrated before that economy bears a direct effect on identity and that supply dominates demand in the world today. In such a scenario, American economic policy is one that creates demand by overflowing third-world markets first with loans from the World Bank and then with supplies that can be bought with them. Based on such a supply-demand function, one may erroneously conclude that the third world is the sedated consumer of American production, demanding only what has been offered and playing the part of an unobtrusive object at the hands of American whims. The inversion of the economic principle of demand and supply and increasing significance of production can be read as a means of creating passive identity. One may conclude that third-world identity is a direct consequence of third-world consumption which is controlled and manipulated by the American corporate dynamic. But a patient observation of the parameters of American supremacy contest the absolute authority granted to it. Whose Line is it Anyway? 297 The American corporate system is dependent on the third world for cheap intellectual labour. The third-world slave working in the coffee plantations could be cast as an essentialist symbol of colonial subjugation but the white collared third-world employee in the first world holds an ambivalent position in the hierarchical order. On the one hand he/she is the agent of forwarding first-world profit, but on the other hand he/she is also the ‘job snatcher’ in the first-world employee market who is taking away the means of first-world sustenance (Chanda, 2007: 291). On the one hand, the third world is the developing world trying to catch up with the firstworld progress while on the other hand it is the intellectual labour reaping the benefits of the system of outsourcing and predating on the western employee. The ambivalence of the self and the other could never be as complete. The first-world is both the controller of trade and capitalism in the position of entrepreneurship and also the victim in the game of outsourcing. Similarly the third world is both the labour/slave but also the base of western development. These ambivalent hierarchies make the concept of third-world identity all the more slippery and hard to pin. However, it must be stated that globalization only affects hierarchies to the extent of theoretical rhetoric. With the debt-trap strangulating third-world economies, the wealth gap widening between the rich and the poor and the imbalanced 298 Identity Politics and the Third World rates of development observed both internationally and intranationally, and contrastingly the growing fiscal reserves of transnational corporations, the audaciously dictatorial attitude of the USA in matters of international politics and economics and the inarguable discursive superiority of the west as opposed to the east, it is evident that globalization is a means to promote corporate growth which translates as American growth as the US commands a stronghold in the corporate sector. The empowerment of the third world is restricted to the extent of superficial participation alone, while the actual authority still rests undisputedly with the first world entrepreneur. Along with global capitalism and America, the Internet is observed as another designer of identity. The Internet provides a seemingly equal space to all “netizens” who can migrate from site to site and from time zone to time zone without any formalities or stipulations and can change as many identities as possible. From politics to religion, from education to love, from environment to crime, from trade to terrorism, the World Wide Web creates a virtual image of the world in imitation deleting all those restrictions which challenge the flow of globalization in the real space. However, it is interesting to note that the virtual world with its virtual dynamic manages to create reality effects in the real world. The Internet is the backbone of world development today and the Whose Line is it Anyway? 299 capital of the communication industry. With the Internet and its allied services the world runs its business today. From employing labour across the globe to selling products off the net, from delivering on lightning fast communication highways to facilitating execution of power: both governmental and terroristic, the Internet is the greatest tool of globalizing the world. The identity that the World Wide Web offers to all its users is neutral. All over the world, these users can code their identity as they please and can migrate across identity borders as and when they want. The euphoria of globalization can be seen realized only on the World Wide Web. But precisely because of this fluidity and the absolute lack of authority on the Internet, the identities remain virtual like the space on which they are created. The lack of tangibility in identity matters on the Internet makes it only a reflection of identity as it may aspire to be, but not a reality. Further, the Internet is a common platform of contesting authorities and only works as a medium of expression. To be able to create an identity it has to have a voice of its own too. If the discourse of American supremacy is spread through the World Wide Web, the greatest symbol of euphoric globalization, anti-globalizers also find a voice in the same medium. Like Achebe and Raja Rao appropriated English language and used it to create counter-narratives, antiAmericans and anti-globalizers also express their opinions through the Internet. The Internet only offers a compressed 300 Identity Politics and the Third World virtual image of what the world expresses in all its heterogeneity, but it does not express an ideology of its own. The World Wide Web truly exemplifies globalization and offers much freedom to the construction of identity in global terms, but its virtual nature is self-refuting and in the absence of a certain authority, identity is not entirely an Internet phenomenon either. In a world where everything from trade, culture, environment, education and media to terrorism, war, disease and crises are globalized, identity cannot be any different. A globalizing view may be suggestive of a global identity of “third-space dwellers” working towards symbiotic trade development and profit generation through methods which necessitate cultural homogenization and subscription to common consumptive ethics that determine a globally hybridized identity. Anything differing from that globally acceptable hybridized form may be seen as a polar opposite, a threat to development, an anti-establishment force: be it an agent of aggressive resistance or an expression of nativity. In the world of real interaction however, hybridization remains a heterogeneous global phenomenon. Third-world identity must not be defined as a “homogenously hybridized” category but as a fluid and ambivalent concept susceptible to influence and differing in reaction or response. Even if people consume the same products, wear the same kind of clothes, work with Whose Line is it Anyway? 301 international companies, maintain cosmopolitan linkages and live an array of lives on the virtual planes of the Internet, they remain different, at times even antagonistic. It can be said then, that third-world identity is not constructed by any one powergroup in isolation. It reflects an amalgamation of diverse influences including those of globalization and hybridization on the one hand and ethnification and nationalization on the other. Hybridity as well as ethnicity are at once homogenous and differentiated. Hybridity can be homogenous in microcosmic terms of the functioning of the mall culture and differentiated at the global level of appropriation of global consumerism. Similarly, ethnicity can be homogenous in terms of terrorist attempts at fanaticism and differentiated in terms of revival cultures that function through the appropriation of ethnicity to international tastes. The carnival of the world is such that identities are articulated on cue and the multiaffiliated personalities of the populace take on characters and hierarchical positions as per the shifting loci of the world order. The multiple ambivalences of situations and peoples allows for a diverse set of identities that can be taken on. Third-world identity is once again an inconclusive term and one cannot really ascertain whose line it is anyway. It is more layered and relative than ever before and resists any final definition or even a partial closure of the process that it is. Between the 302 Identity Politics and the Third World cosmopolitanism of the world markets and the active migration culture, the terrorist attempts at establishing unique ethnic identities and the jargon of global oneness and equality, thirdworld identity, in all possible meanings of the term, signifies a range of identities performed on call. The polarity of identities is visible in the interactions of various communities and so is their homogeneity. Meanwhile it must be mentioned that the classical discourses about the third world still hold strong. Despite the euphoric assertions of globalization, differences are still highlighted with a sense of discrimination and contempt. The discourse of globalization underlines the ostensible claim of inclusivity and dilution of differences to bring the world together. The forces of capitalism thrive on the promise of unity in diversity. But the following Benetton poster, titled ‘Angel and Devil’, with the standard thematic idea of ‘unity in diversity’ explodes the myth of equality. The image portrays the blue-eyed white child as a happy and magnanimous angel and the black child as a roguish devil with horns made out of his natural hair. The children are portrayed as hugging each other, which implies that the first world is generously accepting the third world but the irredeemable devilishness of the latter is nonetheless undeniable. The expression of the black child displays a sort of indifference and thanklessness while that of the white child is full of cheer and enthusiasm. This image Whose Line is it Anyway? 303 bares the discourse of globalization, which includes the erstwhile discourses of orientalism. The discursive construct ‘Angel and Devil’- United Colors of Benetton Image taken from www.benetton.com/press of third-world identity then becomes a paradoxical category of classical mysteriousness and predictable consumption, incorrigible ignorance and ‘job snatching’ intellect, fanatic terrorism and victimized subalternity. The image of globalization may be inclusive but it is evocative of discursive differences. Discourses about the third world are still rampant and voiced through Hollywood films, international news, blogs and even Play-Station games, especially after 9/11. Discursive images are still popular: Islamic terrorists, women as veiled and hence oppressed, Indian call-centre capability, Chinese 304 Identity Politics and the Third World markets selling cheap products and the Big Brother America watching all and controlling the actions of the inmates of his house of globalization. The world may have come to a point where difference is expected, but it is still discursively branded. Antiglobalization movements and anti-establishment efforts reflect a resistance to discursive categorization which is still prevalent in the era of globalization. We need to understand that we live in a world in which identity can never be singularly defined. The search for a defined and recognizable identity is a primordial urge in human beings. In a world that challenges any and all efforts at even a partial or temporal signification, this urge is heightened. It is important to understand that identity is not a homogenous and/or timeless construct, both for the self and the other. Identity is a loosely bound and constantly mutating space of recognition, affiliation and differentiation. It is further susceptible to influences of experience and constantly developing difference. 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Zabus, Chantal (1998) ‘Language, Orality, and Literature.’ New National and Postcolonial Literatures: An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon): 29-44. Index 9/11, 291, 293, 303 ABC, 292 AOL, 292 Arnold, M., 111, 113, 138 Averros, 46, 94 Avicenna, 46, 94 Austen, J., 120, 121, 126, 146-47 Bakhtin, M., 172-73 Baudrillard, J., 29, 250, 262, 271, 273-75 Benetton, 29, 268-69, 30203 bin Laden, O., 291-93 bourgeois, 111, 119, 151, 159 Bretton Woods, 256 Cabral, A., 107, 112, 159, 305 Camus, A., 126-27, 147 Cesàire, A., 78, 151, 193, 195, 221 CNBC, 292 CNN, 292 Coca Cola, 290-92 coeval, 244 Conrad, J., 78, 115-16, 125. 142, 144-45, 147-48, 199, 230, 280 contrapuntal, 117-18, 120, 121, 124, 127, 131, 145-49, 154, 156, 208, 230 cosmopolitan, 8, 31, 36, 243, 265, 267, 290, 301-02 counter-narrative, 4, 5, 10, 206, 209, 280, 299 cyberspace, 234, 243, 277 Dante, 46, 93-95 Darwin, C., 8, 76, 122 316 Identity Politics and the Third World defer, 12, 26, 34, 40, 175, 179, 184, 190, 199, 204-05, 208, 214, 222, 224, 233 Derrida, J., 9-10, 13, 26, 34, 41, 175, 199, 209, 21315, 217, 233, 249 dialectic, 96, 133, 139, 157,196, 209, 238, 244 dichotomy, 10-11, 15, 28, 39, 220 differànce, 13, 26, 34, 175, 214-15, 223, 226 Dickens, C., 146 disavowal, 25, 183, 186-88, 190, 192, 200, 221 Disraeli, 246 emergent and residual, 102, 105, 141, 206, 209 enunciation, 41, 67, 89, 175-79, 182, 185, 198, 204, 209, 211-12, 214 essentialist/ -ism, 4, 14, 15, 65, 66, 88, 95, 101, 107, 113, 122-23, 139, 141, 145, 149, 155, 162-63, 167, 169, 176, 207, 215, 222, 280, 297, 304 Eurocentric, 48, 95, 104 fetish, 35, 186-87, 189-91, 218, 220-21, 226, 274 Forster, E.M., 77, 129, 148, 193, 230, 280 Foucault, M., 31, 51, 67, 71, 82-84, 134, 138-39, 193, 213 Freud, S., 35, 135, 181, 187, 202, 213, 218, 220 GATT, 257 gaze, 68, 154, 180, 183, 193, 194, 200, 222 Giküyü, 140 global village, 239, 255 glocalization, 237-38, 273, 291 Gramsci, A. 8, 31, 54-55, 60, 67, 69-70, 82-83, 112, 138-39, 141 grobalization, 264, 273 hegemony, 6, 23, 55, 69, 76, 83, 137, 150, 236, 246, 285, 290 hermeneutic, 13, 28, 206 Homer, 45, 60, 72-73, 89 hyphenation/-ated, 211, 265, 268, 270 IBRD, 257 imagined, 18, 22, 56, 59, 87, 144, 164, 207, 235, 241, 254 IMF, 257-58, 296 in-betweenness, 25, 31, 34 interstices, 25, 39, 163, 174, 178, 214, 217, 234-35, 251, 254-55 Irwin, R., 45, 74, 84, 92-95, 101 Jameson, F., 111, 208, 270 Kipling, R., 8, 76, 124-25, 143, 147, 193, 294 Index Kristeva, J., 207 latent, 56-57, 86-87, 185 Lewis, B., 91, 93 liminal, 182, 184, 206-07, 212, 225, 229, 266, 280 logocentric, 216-17 Manichean, 173, 180, 212, 223 McDonalds, 290-91 menace, 193-94, 196, 210, 222 meta-narrative, 7, 104 metropolitan, 66, 81, 114, 122, 148, 150-51, 156-58 metonymy, 121, 186, 18990, 195, 202, 220, 226 mimicry, 25, 34-35, 187, 191-96, 202-03, 218, 22223, 226, 228, 245, 288 mission civilisatrice, 16, 77, 115-16, 126, 143, 192 mockery, 202-03, 222-23, 289 Mohammad/Muhammad, 45, 94 multicultural, 17, 21-22, 28, 30, 37, 41, 103-04, 163, 169, 179-80, 233-34, 240, 243, 252, 261, 266 nativism, 24, 133, 151 Negritude, 23, 133, 140, 151, 221 Nerval, 97 NIC, 257 317 neither-nor, 26, 35, 36, 172, 205, 214, 224-25, 233, 265 netizen, 27, 242, 298 Nietzsche, F., 8, 13, 32, 56, 64, 81, 99-100, 135 occidental, 50, 67, 88-89, 93-94, 96, 146, 149, 168, 203 ontological, 14, 50, 67, 8990, 92, 95 Orientalism-in-reverse, 2324, 32 pedagogic, 205-09, 212, 231 performance/ performative, 10, 177, 205-09, 211-12, 231, 250, 261, 265, 287-88 plural, 11, 162, 180 politics of identity, 3-4,8, 11-13, 16, 80, 84, 102 power-knowledge, 139, 201 Rastafarianism, 133 Rushdie, S., 152, 157, 165, 265, 279 Saladin, 94 sameness and difference, 45, 9, 12, 14, 19-20, 176, 183, 186, 188-89, 200, 239, 248 Sardar, Z., 46-47, 51, 63, 65-66, 68, 71, 73, 81-82, 88, 91, 98 self and other, 37, 168-69, 185, 193, 206, 219-20 Soyinka, W., 135, 151, 159 318 Identity Politics and the Third World Swadeshi, 140, 221 subaltern, 17, 141, 225, 265, 303 suprapolitical, 71, 92 synchronic, 171, 179 systems of identification, 9, 14, 22 third space, 17, 26, 34, 178, 285, 289 third-world identity, 2-3, 14, 25, 32-33, 37-38, 40, 44, 48, 53, 66-67, 83, 8788, 101, 108-10, 114, 117, 120, 127, 130, 137, 158, 161, 165, 170, 231, 234-35, 240, 271, 284-85, 288-89, 292-97, 300-03 time and space, 3, 5, 11-12, 28, 102, 180, 205-06, 225, 243-44, 278-79 TNC, 259-60, 296 trace, 9, 12, 33, 41, 44, 60, 212, 215 Verdi, 123, 147 voyage in, 134, 157-58, 162 Warraq, I., 81, 86, 88-89, 93, 98-99 will to power, 8, 13, 56, 135, 162, 185 World Wide Web, 27-28, 37, 298-300 writing-as-action, 141 WTO, 259-60, 296 xenophobia, 24, 96, 113, 136-37, 152