Out of Africa

Post-Structuralism's Colonial Roots

Pal Ahluwalia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135161781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

At the heart of this book is the argument that the fact that so many post-structuralist French intellectuals have a strong 'colonial' connection, usually with Algeria, cannot be a coincidence. The 'biographical' fact that so many French intellectuals were born in or otherwise connected with French Algeria has often been noted, but it has never been theorised. Ahluwalia makes a convincing case that post-structuralism in fact has colonial and postcolonial roots. This is an important argument, and one that 'connects' two theoretical currents that continue to be of great interest, post-structuralism and postcolonialism.

The re-reading of what is now familiar material against the background of de-colonial struggles demonstrates the extent to which it is this new condition that prompted theory to question long-held assumptions inscribed in the European colonial enterprise. The wide-ranging discussion, ranging across authors as different as Foucault, Derrida, Fanon, Althusser, Cixous, Bourdieu and Lyotard, enables the reader to make connections that have remained unnoticed or been neglected. It also brings back into view a history of struggles, both political and theoretical, that has shaped the landscape of critique in the social sciences and humanities.

This clear and lucid discussion of important and often difficult thinkers will be widely read and widely debated by students and academics alike.

Chapter 1
Introduction

I have been working to change the way I speak and write, to incorporate in the manner of telling a sense of place, of not just who I am in the present but where I am coming from, the multiple voices within me.

(bell hooks)

The juxtaposition of the experience of Salman Rushdie, a Mumbai-born writer who now lives in Britain, with Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous, two French post-structuralists, is an important one when reflecting on their respective postcolonial identities. Rushdie writes that the ‘formulation “Indian-born British writer” has been invented to explain me. But my new book deals with Pakistan. So what now? British-resident-Indo-Pakistani writer?’ (cited in Welsh 1997: 56). In contrast, the identity of Cixous and Derrida has not been subjected to such scrutiny despite the fact that they were both born in Algeria. Their identity is not seen to be central to their respective projects; they are not thought of as Algerian-born French post-structuralists.

Is the difference between Cixous, Derrida and Rushdie traceable merely to race, or is there something unique about the manner in which the settler population from Algeria has been accepted in France and has had a profound influence on contemporary French theory and culture?¹ The impact of colonial Africa on French theory is pervasive, and its influence can be discerned in such diverse theorists as Louis Althusser, Hélène Cixous and Jacques Derrida, who were born in Algeria; Michel Foucault, who considered his time at the University of Tunis and its student movements as formative (Macey 1993; Miller 1993: 171; Young 2001a) as well as Michel Leiris, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean Francois Lyotard and Jean-Paul Sartre, amongst others. As Robert Young has pointed out, ‘If “so-called post-structuralism” is the product of a single historical moment, then that moment is probably not May 1968 but rather the Algerian War of Independence’ (cited in Young 1990: 1).

This may well go to the heart of the differences between French and British colonialism and, in particular, the manner in which the former thought of its colonies as mere extensions of France itself and therefore proceeded to propound the attractive notion that all members of French territories were equal. Aimé Césaire described the impact of this illusion: ‘associated in our minds the word France and the word liberty … bound us to France by every fibre of our hearts and every power of our minds’ (cited in Hall 1995: 10). Yet, there are far too many examples of French colonial subjects, from the negritude writers to Frantz Fanon, who have illustrated the fictitious nature of this claim (cited in Ahluwalia 2001a).

The colonisation of Algeria represented perhaps the best example of the illusion of the possibility of ‘assimilation’, with the colony being seen as inseparable from France. Indeed, Algeria was regarded as the most important French colonial possession. It was not only the oldest and largest colony but was also an icon of French greatness. In addition, the territory served as a launching pad for the control of the Maghreb.

Is it merely coincidental, then, that some of the most profound contemporary French theorists who have challenged the very precepts of modernity, as defined by the Enlightenment tradition, have been deeply affected in some way by France’s African colonial project and their engagement with it as border intellectuals? Surely, it is more plausible that the questions that have become so much a part of the post-structuralist canon – otherness, difference, irony, mimicry, parody, the lamenting of modernity and the deconstruction of the grand narratives of European culture arising out of the Enlightenment tradition – are possible because of their postcolonial connection. As Azzedine Haddour points out, ‘the problem of modernity and postmodernity has less to do with the decentering of the Cartesian subject than with the political realities of postcolonial France’ (cited in 2001: 14).

Postcolonialism as a child of post-structuralism and postmodernism

There is now considerable agreement that Edward Said’s pioneering work, Orientalism (1978), inaugurated the field of colonial discourse analysis, which in turn ultimately led to the development of postcolonial theory. Although Said moved on theoretically and jettisoned Foucault’s methodology, postcolonialism remains beleaguered by charges that it is a by-product of post-structuralism and postmodernism (Ashcroft and Ahluwalia 2001). The debate surrounding the relationship between post-structuralism, postmodernism and postcolonialism is highly charged, with a considerable literature developed. There are a host of critics including Aijaz Ahmad (1992), Arif Dirlik (1994), Linda Hutcheon (1989; 1994) and E. San Juan (1998) who have a tendency to conflate these post-isms (see Ahluwalia 2001a). This conflation is made possible because of the many concerns that are shared by the different ‘posts’. These common concerns have meant also that the language of postcolonial theorists is similar to that of both post-structuralism and postmodernism. The confusion is caused because a key aspect of postmodernism is the deconstruction of the logocentric metanarratives of European culture, which is much like the postcolonial project of breaking down the binaries of imperial discourse.

This leaves postcolonialism open to the charge that it is essentially a discourse of Third World intellectuals who operate from within their privileged position in the First World. Arif Dirlik goes so far as to claim that postcolonialism is ‘a child of postmodernism’ (cited in Dirlik 1994: 348). He argues that this can be observed by the manner in which postcolonial critics acknowledge their debt to both postmodernist and post-structuralist thinking. This allows Dirlik to conclude that the most original contribution of postcolonial critics ‘would seem to lie in their rephrasing of older problems in the study of the Third World in the language of post-structuralism’ (cited in 352). By conflating the post-isms, Dirlik is able to argue that postcoloniality is appealing in the West primarily because postcoloniality ‘disguises the power relations that shape a seemingly shapeless world and contributes to a conceptualization of that world that both consolidates and subverts possibilities of resistance’ (cited in Dirlik 1994: 356).

Aijaz Ahmad shares Dirlik’s sentiments, declaring that the East ‘seems to have become, yet again, a career—even for the “Oriental” this time, and within the “Occident” too’ (cited in Ahmad 1992: 94).² Ahmad argues that postcolonial theory merely reinscribes the very forms of domination that it seeks to deconstruct. This is necessarily so because postcolonial critics have ‘themselves been influenced mainly by post-structuralism’ (cited in 68). Ahmad’s most trenchant criticism appears in an article in Race and Class, where he claims that postcolonialism is the progeny of postmodernism. He writes:

… the term ‘postcolonial’ also comes to us as the name of a discourse about the condition of ‘postcoloniality’, so that certain kinds of critics are ‘postcolonial’ and others not. … the rest of us who do not accept this apocalyptic anti-Marxism, are not postcolonial at all … so that only those intellectuals can be truly postcolonial who are also postmodern.

(cited in Ahmad 1995: 10)

Though I have written about the significant differences between postcolonialism, post-structuralism and postmodernism elsewhere, I am still struck by the manner in which this conflation continues to be dominant within postcolonial studies (Quayson 2000; Schwarz and Ray 2000; Goldberg and Quayson 2002). I have argued that postcolonialism is a counter-discourse that seeks to disrupt the cultural hegemony of the West, challenging imperialism in its various guises, whereas post-structuralism and postmodernism are counter discourses against modernism that have emerged within modernism itself (Ahluwalia 2001a). It is my contention that, in order to understand the project of French post-structuralism, it is imperative both to contextualise the African colonial experience and to highlight the Algerian locatedness, identity and heritage of its leading proponents. It is precisely the failure to confront or explicitly acknowledge the colonial experience that problematises the conflation of postcolonialism and post-structuralism.

There are important reasons for examining the centrality of Algeria to post-structuralist French theory. Algeria was the most significant and profitable of all French colonial possessions, being to France what India was to Britain. The importance of Algeria can be seen in the manner in which it was viewed as an extension of France. By the late nineteenth century, it had become both legally and constitutionally an important part of France. The settlers transformed the colony from an Arab and Berber country into Algérie Française.

It is important therefore to examine the relationship that most French post-structuralists have had with colonial Africa and, in particular, with Algeria. Why has there been a silence, suppression or, at best, a belated acknowledgement of the colonial roots and affiliations of these theorists? Is it because such an acknowledgement might well challenge the very belief in the superiority of the French on which the modern French nation has been constructed? For example, it is possible to simply read Derrida’s work without acknowledging his colonial roots – as Derrida himself has noted, ‘I do not believe that anyone can detect by reading, if I do not declare it, that I am a “French Algerian”’ (cited in 1998: 46). What happens when his Algerian locatedness is taken into account? What impact did his formative years have on his later work? What of deconstructive theory or Derridean logocentrism? Does his overall project reflect his colonial roots and the tensions that arise out of being relocated within a new culture? Is the fate of Derrida and Cixous as specular border intellectuals—of belonging and not belonging in both French and Algerian culture, of occupying that in-between space—part of their own alterity, which inevitably makes its way into their writings, and is it relevant to understanding their work? Does their profound influence on contemporary thought need to be contextualised against the backdrop of Algeria and the experience of colonisation? Is it their sense of exile, of being on the margins, that allows them to challenge Western theory?

It is surprising that postcolonial theory has often been characterised as being epistemologically indebted to both post-structuralism and postmodernism. Such a reading fails to acknowledge the centrality of the colonial encounter and its impact on producing the conditions necessary for the emergence of post-structuralism. This intervention seeks to challenge such assumptions and assertions. It strives to clarify and explain the colonial roots of post-structuralism in order to disrupt such readings of postcolonialism. The foregoing questions are explored in this book as it seeks to analyse the way in which the postcolony impacted upon the intellectual project of these border intellectuals.

Specular and syncretic border intellectuals

In order to understand the complexities that embody border intellectuals, Abdul JanMohamed makes an important differentiation between a ‘specular’ border intellectual and a ‘syncretic’ one. Both types of intellectuals are located in more than one culture, but the syncretic intellectual is generally more ‘at home’ in both cultures than his or her specular counterpart as a result of being able to combine the two cultures and articulate new syncretic experiences. The specular border intellectual, on the other hand, is either unwilling or unable to be at home in either culture. The specular intellectual questions both cultures and ‘utilizes his or her interstitial cultural space as a vantage point from which to define, implicitly or explicitly, other, utopian possibilities of group formation’ (cited in JanMohamed 1992: 97). Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie and Chinua Achebe typify the syncretic intellectual, whilst the specular intellectuals include Edward Said as well as African-American activists and writers W.E.B. Dubois, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston.

Although the idea of the specular border intellectual has limitations,³ it is nevertheless a useful tool. JanMohamed argues that in someone like Edward Said, who is neither quite an exile nor an immigrant, we see the elements of a specular border intellectual precisely because of the discomfort caused by this ambivalent status. Said’s work embodies the predicament of border intellectuals in that, ‘first, his criticism is a “reflection”, an indirect meditation, on the predicament; and, second, it occupies a specular position in relation to Western culture’ (cited in JanMohamed 1992: 101). He identifies four types of people who illustrate border crossings. These include the exile, the immigrant, the colonialist and the scholar who is typified by the anthropologist. The exile and the immigrant both cross borders between either a social group or a national one. The experience of the exile is generally a negative one, whilst that of the immigrant is usually positive. The immigrant often desires to discard the formative influences of his or her own culture in order to identify and merge with the new culture’s collective subjectivity. It is this process that Edward Said finds disturbing and calls ‘uncritical gregariousness’. For the colonialist and scholar, however, the host culture ‘ultimately remains an object of attention’. The gaze of the colonialist ‘is military, administrative and economic’ whilst that of the scholar ‘is epistemological and organizational’. These gazes differ from the perspectives of the exile and the immigrant in that they ‘are panoptic and thus dominating’ (cited in JanMohamed 1992: 102).

Intellectuals like Edward Said and Richard Wright do not neatly fit into any of these categories but share elements with all, except for the colonialist. Hence, in the case of Said, ‘he is able to provide in his writing a set of mirrors allowing Western cultures to see their own structures and functions’ (cited in JanMohamed 1992: 105). The position of border subjects such as Said and Wright is precarious, ambivalent, complicated and possibly even tenuous. Yet, when used productively as a site from which to reflect, ‘such an appropriation can transform the predicament of the border intellectual into a fruitful and powerful asset’ (cited in 118). It is precisely in this way that we can consider the examples of Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous as border intellectuals who, much like Said and Wright, do not fit neatly into these categories but are nonetheless able to reflect on the different worlds that they inhabit. The notion of the border intellectual is an important one when we think of the constellation of French theorists with an Algerian connection. The categories of the exile, the immigrant, the colonialist and the scholar all feature in the border crossings between France and Algeria, and these categories often overlap. Using a rather crude appropriation of JanMohamed’s typology of border intellectuals and applying it to the Algerian case, it is possible to speculate that those border intellectuals born in Algeria, such as Derrida, Cixous and Althusser, might well be seen as specular border intellectuals. In contrast, Bourdieu and Lyotard, both with an extensive Algerian connection that was formative, might be classified as syncretic border intellectuals.

The worldliness of theory

For Edward Said, the world from which the text originated, the world with which it was affiliated, is crucial. F...

Table of contents

• Postcolonial politics
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Algeria and colonisation
• Chapter 3 Sartre, Camus and Fanon
• Chapter 4 Derrida
• Chapter 5 Cixous
• Chapter 6 Althusser, Bourdieu, Foucault and Lyotard
• Chapter 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index