Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797.

by Peter Hulme; Discursos Narrativos de la Conquista: Mitificacion y Emergencia. by Beatriz Pastor; Unfinished Conversations: Mayas and Foreigners between Two Wars. by Paul Sullivan; Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule. by Vicente Rafael; Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Phi ... Review by: Patricia Seed Latin American Research Review, Vol. 26, No. 3 (1991), pp. 181-200 Published by: The Latin American Studies Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2503670 . Accessed: 14/11/2013 11:28
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REVIEW ESSAYS

COLONIAL POSTCOLONIAL

AND DISCOURSE

Patricia Seed
Rice University

COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS: EUROPE AND THE NATIVE CARIBBEAN, 14921797. By Peter Hulme. (New York and London: Routledge, Chapman,

and Hall, 1986. Pp. 350. $35.00.)

DISCURSOS NARRATIVOSDE LA CONQUISTA: MITIFICACION Y EMERGENCIA. By Beatriz Pastor. Second edition. (Hanover, N.H.: Ediciones del

Norte, 1988. Pp. 465. $25.00 paper.)

UNFINISHED CONVERSATIONS: MAYAS AND FOREIGNERS BETWEEN TWO WARS.By Paul Sullivan. (New York:Knopf, 1989. Pp. 269. $22.95 cloth.

and Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Berkeley Press, 1991. Pp. 294. $12.95 paper.)

CONTRACTING COLONIALISM: TRANSLATION AND CHRISTIAN CONVERSION IN TAGALOG SOCIETY UNDER EARLY SPANISH RULE. By Vicente PASYON AND REVOLUTION: POPULAR MOVEMENTS IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1840-1910.By Reynaldo Ileto. (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila Univer-

Rafael. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988. Pp. 248. $26.95.) sityPress, 1979. Pp. 344.)

In the late 1980s, historiansand anthropologists became increasingly aware of how the ethnographiesand historiesthey have written have been imbued with rhetorical and literary devices. Simultaneously, criticshave become interestedin using anthropologicaltheory literary and historical oftextstraditionally factsto createdifferent interpretations regardedas "high culture."The resultis an extraordinarily interdisciplin181

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Review American Research Latin

Culcriticsare reading historyand anthropology. ary moment.Literary tural anthropologistsare developing sophisticated opinions of literary like MikhailBakhtin,Roland Barthes,and JacquesDerrida. And theorists even historianshave begun to move slowly toward what is being called a less-developed formof the culturalanalyses already "culturalhistory," and literary criticism.' being practicedin thefieldsofanthropology Withinthis ongoing set of conversations,one trendof increasing and Asianists is an emergent Africanists, interest to Latin Americanists, critique of colonialism known as colonial discourse. interdisciplinary of theintersection ofdissatisfaction from about thelimitations Originating existing critiques of colonial rule with the contemporaryintellectual studies of colonial discourse are movementknown as poststructuralism, undertakinga major reappraisal of the European colonial experiencein and anthropology. criticism, history, fieldsas diverseas literary ofcolonialismarose from Dissatisfaction withtraditional criticisms many a growing awareness of the distressingsameness characterizing historicaland anthropologicalworks on colonial empires and theirpostcolonial successors. Regardless of whetherthe subject was Africa,Latin the colonizingpower was Asia and whether America,or (less frequently) Great Britain, Spain, France, Germany,Portugal, the Netherlands, or Belgium, anthropologists' and historians' versions of what happened heroicresistancein whichnativesdramatically were usually tales ofeither defendedtheir homelands or accounts ofmanipulativeaccommodationin which colonial goals were maneuvered to serve theinterests ofthenative communityor some combinationof those two story lines.2 In the late 1980s, these tales ofresistanceand accommodationwere being perceived increasinglyas mechanical, homogenizing,and inadequate versions of the encountersbetween the colonizers and the colonized.3 As narratives a major new of resistance and accommodation were losing credibility, loosely intellectual movementwas emergingin association with thinkers Lyotard,RorangingfromJean-Francois grouped as poststructuralists, land Barthes,JacquesDerrida, Giles Deleuze, and FelixGuttarito Michel One compellingtheme advanced by these Foucault and Richard Rorty.4
1. See Roger Chartier,CulturalHistory, translatedby Lydia G. Cochrane (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988). 2. The saga ofthe"weapons oftheweak" continuesin James and theA rts Scott,Domination ofResistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990). See also ZygmuntBauman's review ofthis work, "How the Defeated Answer Back," New York Times 11 Jan.1991, p. 7. Literary Supplement, 3. Johnand JeanComaroff call these kinds of accounts "challenge and riposte."See their

(Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press). 4. JeanFrancoisLyotard,ThePost-Modern Condition, translated by GeoffBenningtonand BrianMassumi (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1984); Roland Barthes,Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath (New York:Hill and Wang, 1977); JacquesDerrida,

forthcoming work, OfRevelation andRevolution: Christianity andColonialism inSouth Africa

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diversewriters is a critiqueofthetransparency oflanguages as vehiclesof communication. Words, sentences, and phrases can have more than one meaning and more than one interpretation simultaneously. How words are interpretedand understood depends on a determinationof their context, yetan understandingof thatcontextdepends on the interpretation or translationof the words or phrases in question. Within this of framework, recognitionof what theoristscall the polysemiccharacter language (the possibilityof a word having multipleand even contradictory meanings) has opened the door to a wider range of interpretive In thisarena, knowland anthropology. possibilitiesin history, literature, edge oftheculturalpracticesofa societyhas come to play an increasingly focal role in establishing broader interpretive possibilities for words, sentences,and phrases in a given timeor culture. Colonial discoursehas therefore undertakento redirect contemporary criticalreflectionson colonialism (and its aftermath)toward the and language used by theconquerors,imperialadministrators, travelers, missionaries.For itwas through ofspeech, language-the rhetoric, figures and discursive formations-thatEuropeans have understood and governed themselvesand the peoples theysubjected overseas. In reflecting on thelinguistic in whichthepoliticsofcolonialrulehave been framework elaborated, writershave observed the limitationsof European political discoursesas well as theway in whichthepolysemiccharacter oflanguage has enabled natives of colonized territories to appropriateand transform the colonizers' discourses. A relatedcritiqueof thelanguage of independence movements and postcolonial nationalism, referredto as postcolonial discourse, has been examining how popular discourses, high and politicalpamphleteeringhave all constructedanticolonial literature, and nationalist vocabularies. But whetherthe focus has been on the colonial or postcolonialsituation,the centralconcernofthese studies has been the linguisticscreen throughwhich all politicallanguage of colofrom nialism,includingreactionsto it and liberation it,need to be read.
Of Grammatology, translatedby GayatriSpivak (Baltimore,Md.: JohnsHopkins University by Alan Bass (Chicago, Ill.: Univerand Difference, translated Press, 1976); Derrida, Writing a MinorLiterature, Kafka:Toward sityofChicago Press, 1978); Giles Deleuze and FelixGuttari, ofMinnesotaPress, 1986);MichelFoucault, translated by Dana Polan (Minneapolis:University and the Philosophy TheOrderofThings(New York:Random House, 1970); and RichardRorty, introducPress, 1979). For a historical Mirror ofNature(Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversity Arac's introduction to his edited collection to the issues in the United States, see Jonathan and Politics(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). Useful tion,Postmodernism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UniverCuller,On Deconstruction secondaryworks include Jonathan Arac and ChristopherNorris, Derrida(Cambridge, Mass.: HarsityPress, 1982); Jonathan ofPhilosophy vard University Press, 1987); JohnRaichman, Michel Foucault:The Freedom Press, 1985); HerbertDreyfusand Paul Rabinow,Michel (New York: Columbia University ofChicago Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2d ed. (Chicago, Ill.: University Foucault:Beyond (Baltimore, Criticism ofDiscourse:Essaysin Cultural Press, 1983); and Hayden White, Tropics Md.: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1978).

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Review Latin American Research

ofpoststructuralist The centralattractions critiquesoflanguage for is poststructuralism's critics of colonialismare two. The first questioning humanism "by exposing its hero-the sovereignsubject as of traditional and power."5 The affinity author,the subject of authority, legitimacy, between exposingthehero ofWesternEuropean humanismand exposing the hero of imperialismhas been noted by some commentatorsas a second major attraction lies in its common thread.6Poststructuralism's dislodging the author's"intention"or "originalmeaning" froma central critics and othersto considertheways in which the role,allowingliterary textual communities.7This text is appropriated and used by different The first has been to underdevelopment has had two relevanteffects. mine the tendencyto pass normative judgmentsbased on an interpretation'scloseness to whatthecritics thinktheoriginalauthorsofthecolonial ofthiscriticism documentintended.The corollary effect has been to open the door to examiningthe ways in which a colonized people's reception and appropriationof a texthas been shaped by a different social and politicalexperiencefrom thatoftheauthorsofa textor itsorthodox"highIf critics culture"interpreters. or historianswere to continueto insiston the primacy of what high-cultureor imperial criticsthink the author fromcolonized cultureshave originally intended,thenwhat interpreters made of it would stillbe lost or dismissed as merelynaive, unimportant, or a "misreading." Both poststructuralism and colonial discourse share an affinity witha thirdset ofcritical All contemporary discourses,thoseoffeminism. three criticizethe traditional subject of humanism, with feminist critics it as a gendered form-patriarchaldiscourse. Furthermore, attacking the demand by proponentsofcolonial discourseto allow thenativesto speak in their own voices has resonatedwithfeminist demands to allow women their own voices. As a result, the fields of colonial and postcolonial discourse have attracteda number of prominentwomen, most notably Gayatri Spivak.8 Beyond this common demand to "let the woman or
5. See Barthes's"The Death oftheAuthor,"in Image,Music, Text, 142-48; MichelFoucault, TheArchaeology ofKnowledge, translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York:Harper and Row, 1962), chap. 2, especially pp. 38, 221-23; and "Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?" Bulletin de la de Philosophie SocieteFranpaise 63, no. 3 (1969):75-95, published in English as "What Is an Author?" in TextualStrategies, edited by Josue V. Harari (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979). 6. Gayatri Spivak, "Deconstructing Historiography," Subaltern Studies IV, editedby Ranajit Guha (Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press, 1985),330-63, especially337. 7. A criticaldifference exists between the reception of literary textsby communitiesof readersand thatby thesubjectsofimperialpower.As Homi Bhabha has pointedout,colonial discourseis notsimplyappropriatedby textual communities butis addressed to someone (or a specific community). ToBhabha's proposition,I would add thatthisdiscourseis maintained by theexerciseofforcethrougharmies,inquisitions,secretpolice, and jails, all ofwhichgive it an entirelydifferent inflection.The addressee does not have the freedomto ignore the discourse,and ifhe or she does so, itcan be only as a gestureofresistance. 8. The best recentdiscussion oftherelationship between feminism and poststructuralism

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and postcolonialdiscourseshave developed nativespeak," both feminist offeminist or nationalistvoices a critical perspectiveon naive celebration below."9 thatrepresentthemselvesas coming"from The beginningsofthefieldofcolonial discourseare usually identibut (1978), a repetitive fiedwithpublicationof Edward Said's Orientalism and colonial officials had attackon theways thatWesternwriters effective theirknowledge of the Middle East and Orient since been constructing 10Said's denunciationoftheexoticizing, century. theend oftheeighteenth and romanticizing of remoteMiddle Eastern "others"and his eroticizing, of peoples who critiqueof the narrowness of European representations ofthemselvesforcenturiesprovoked had been producingrepresentations impact a considerablestir.As mightbe expected, his book had a definite three from generalinterest on Middle Easternstudies,but italso attracted and more academic disciplines-literarytheory, anthropology, traditional led further to a revival of recently, history.Publication of Orientalism in FrantzFanon's powerful indictment ofcolonialismin BlackSkin, interest White Masks (1952), which has since been reissued with a new introducofcolonial discourse.11 tionby Homi Bhabha, a leading theoretician Said's book and therevivalofFanon's ideas have had Untilrecently, theoLiterary theirgreatestimpacton literary theoryand anthropology. been concernedwithissues of rists(ofwhomSaid is one) have historically and theyconsequentlyfound Said's textually oritextualrepresentation,
edited by Linda Nicholson (London: Routledge,1990). See also is Feminism/Postmodernism, (London: Methuen, 1987); Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Spivak, In OtherWorlds edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg ofCulture, Marxismand theInterpretation of IllinoisPress, 1988), 271-94; Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, (Urbana: University 2, 12 (1984): "UnderWestern Eyes: FeministScholarshipand Colonial Discourses," Boundary The Debate on Sati in Colonial India," Cultural 3-13; Lata Mani, "Contentious Traditions: in theThirdWorld Feminism and Nationalism 7 (1987):119-56; Kumari Jayawardena, Critique nos. 3-4 (1987-88) (London: Zed Books, 1986); and also the thematicissues of Inscriptions, Postcoloniality and Native, Other: Writing and 5 (1989). See also TrinhT. Minh-ha, Woman, Press, 1989). Feminism (Bloomington:Indiana University 9. For example, Lelia Ahmed, "Feminismand Cross-CulturalInquiry: The Termsof the edited by ElizabethWeed Politics, toTerms: Feminism, Theory, Discourse in Islam," in Comning (London: Routledge, Chapman, Hall, 1989), 143-51. See also Homi K. Bhabha, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative,and the Margins of the Modern Nation," in his edited collection, (London: Routledge,1990),291-322. Nationand Narration Frederic Jameson (New York:RandomHouse, 1978).Although 10. Edward Said, Orientalism of Calibanand OtherEssays thatRoberto claims in his forewordto the English translation their Fernandez Retamar'swork was the Latin American equivalent of Said's Orientalism, positions. UnlikeSaid, Fernandez Retamardoes not similarities inhereonly in theircritical Jameson, by Frederic deal with discursivepractices.See Calibanand OtherEssays,foreword ofMinnesota Press, 1989),viii. translated by Edward Baker(Minneapolis: University 11. Frantz Fanon, Peau noire,masques blancs(Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1952), originally Masks(New York:Grove, intoEnglishby Charles L. Markhamas BlackSkin,White translated was published in 1986 in London in Pluto Press's edition 1967). Homi Bahbha's introduction than under same title.The view thatthe fieldof colonial discoursebegins withFanon rather Said has been argued most recentlyby Benita Parryin "Problems in CurrentTheories of Literary Review9 (1987):27-57. Colonial Discourse," Oxford

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ented approach familiar despite the noveltyof his subject. In anthropolotherpeoples, concernedwithrepresenting ogy,thedisciplinehistorically of understandings the subject matterwas well-known-the construction of cross-cultural others-but the textualapproach was soon accepted as a Said's approach issues.12In history, fruitful new angle on anthropological has been adopted mainlyby Middle Eastern and South Asian historians, his approach he explicitly addressed.'3 More recently, whose subjectmatter in in African as well. The emerginginterest history has become important colonial discourse writingsamong Latin Americanistsappears to be foltheotrends,appearing first among literary lowing the same disciplinary and mostrecently among historians. rists,nextamong anthropologists,
LITERATURE

In the Latin American arena, the liveliest and most extensive in colonial discourse studies is occurringin literary studies. One interest ofthefirst excellentstudiesoftheterrain is PeterHulme's Colonial Encountwo chaptersexamine the categoryof "cannibal," which ters.'4The first was inventedin Spanish discoursesabout theNew Worldat theend ofthe fifteenth centuryand was highly problematicin terms of the societies actually encountered. "Cannibal" became an ideological markerof the boundary separatingnative "savages" from"civilized" Europeans, one thatprovided a rationaleforrule by the same Europeans whose religious The ritual of communion carefullyavoided use of the termcannibalism. theme of cannibalism appears in Robinson Crusoe's anxious fantasies about being devoured whole and in Caliban's anagram in The Tempest. paradoxoftheearlyencounHulme's nextthreechaptersexplorea central tersbetween Englishmenand Indians: theEnglishmen'stechnicalsuperi12. George E. Marcus and Michael Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural (Chicago, Ill.: Critique of Chicago Press, 1986); JamesClifford and George E. Marcus, Writing Culture: University The Poeticsand PoliticsofEthnography (Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), published in Spanish as Ret6ricas de antropologia (Madrid: Ediciones Juicar, 1991); and JamesClifford, ThePredicament ofCulture (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1988). 13. Timothy Mitchell,Colonizing Egypt:Orientalism Reconsidered (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Many of the important articlesand reviews in this fieldhave been publishedin thejournalMiddleEastern Research and Information Project. Fora summaryofthe impactof Orientalism on Middle Easternstudies overthepast decade, see Khamsin (1988). 14. See also Rolena Adorno's excellentpioneering work on Spanish America, Guaman and Resistance Poma: Writing (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1986); Adorno, "Discourses on Colonialism: Bernal Diaz, Las Casas, and the Twentieth-Century Reader," ModernLanguageNotes103 (1988):239-58; Adorno, "Nuevas perspectivasen los estudios literarios coloniales hispanoamericanos," Revistade CriticaLiteraria Latinoamericana 14 (1988):11-28; and Tzvetan Todorov,TheConquest ofAmerica, translated by RichardHoward (New York:Harper and Row, 1984). For recentwork on Brazil, see RobertoReis, "Hei de Convencer: Autoritarismono Discurso Colonial Brasileiro,"paper read at the meetingsof the Latin American Studies Association,4-6 Apr. 1991, CrystalCity, Virginia.

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orityin weapons but inabilityto feed themselvesand theirconsequent relianceon nativehospitality forfood. Three different renderings of this paradox of technicalsuperiority and physical dependence appear in The Tempest, JohnSmith'saccounts ofPocahontas, and Robinson Crusoe.In the Tempest, Prospero's magic, like that of European guns and compasses, operates only in the colonial setting.Prospero, like Crusoe and the Virginia settlers,uses his magic (or Westerntechnical superiority)not to produce food but to change his relationshipto the nativesfromguest to master.By turningthemselvesinto the lords of the land throughmagic, theseEuropeans also turn(or imagine theyturn)thenativesintolabor to produce theirfood supply (pp. 131-32). When faced with withdrawalof the hospitalityon which theirlives depended in Virginia,English narratorsuniformly characterizedthis loss as "Indian treachery." Hulme, however,suggests thatitrepresentedan "eventual loss ofpatiencewitha hostiledrainupon the economy" (p. 130), given thatthe English demonstratedlittleinclinationeitherto reciprocatethe hospitality or to learn to feed themselves.In analyzing the once popular eighteenth-century English folknarrative of Inkle and Yarico,Hulme shows how a sentimental view of the Caribs was neverthelessdeployed to justify Britishexile and extermination of the native Caribs of St. Vincent.In Britishnarratives of theirwars with these raciallymixed Caribs, the "original"Caribs became thepacificvictimsofblack usurpation,a rationaleforBritish intervention But theBritish against the defrauders. had no intention of restoring these lands to theirrightful Carib owners. Afterbeing defeatedby an expeditionary force of seventeen thousand, St. Vincent's black Caribs were removedto an island off forcibly the coast ofHonduras, and theland was taken over by Britishsettlers.Hulme demonstrates how use of the term cannibal as a rationaleforEuropean conquest changed fromgrounds of "barbarity"into a sentimentaleighteenth-century concept of (extinct) is a model work on colonial original owners. His ColonialEncounters discoursethatcombinestextualanalysiswitha sophisticatedunderstandand history. ing ofcultural anthropology A less theoretically sophisticated critique of the political dimensions of conquest stories is Beatriz Pastor's Discursosnarrativos de la conPastor on focuses five well-known sixmitificacion y emergencia. quista: texts: ChristopherColumbus's Diario, Hernan Cortes's teenth-century Cartasde relacion, Alvar Nunfiez Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios, several versions of the expeditionof Lope de Aguirre,and Alonso de Ercilla'sepic poem La araucana. For each work (and several less-known texts), she characterizesthe position of the narrator, his descriptionof nature and the heroic relationshipto it, and his view of the natives. By contrasting and epic narratives of Cortes and Columbus with the trials,failures,and rebellionsofCabeza de Vaca, FrayMarcos de Nizza, Lope de Aguirre,and Alonso de Ercilla,Pastorattempts to locate critical discourseswithintales 187

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offailure,themain enemyis not offailureand rebellion.In thenarratives and thesearchforgold is replaced by the thenativesbut theenvironment, search for more quotidian goals of food, clothing, and water. Pastor argues that the narrativesof failure begin to criticizeideological and models followingthe explorers' inabilityto find the marvelous literary objectivestheysought. Narrativesof rebellion,as she categorizesthatof of Lope de Aguirre,begin withfailureand end by denouncing"thereality violence, rivalries,injustice and corruption"in the expeditions of conquest (pp. 294, 298). Pastorviews this model as radicallyopposed to the of rebellion,chaoticterror heroicmodel (p. 307) because in thenarratives disassociates himself replaces epic order (p. 309) and the rebel explicitly representedby the king and his represenfromthe formsof authority tatives (p. 312). Pastor argues that Ercilla's account of the expedition against the Araucanians, in which native warriorsare endowed with the qualities of Spanish knightsand native women are viewed as chivalric of all because it condemns theloss of narrative ladies, is the most critical of the conquerors into the greedy heroic values and the transformation heroic values is envisioned as encomenderos. Only a returnto traditional bringingvictoryover the natives (p. 413). The problem with all of the formsof critiqueidentified by Pastoris thattheyclearlyreside withinthe The Spanish politicalorthodoxy. limitsestablished by sixteenth-century critique of the grasping encomendero plays on a traditionalHispanic critique of motives of "interest" typical of a lament for an imagined less materialistic his own rebellionin world. Even Aguirrejustifies earlier, Spanish political termsofthedecadence ofvassalage and othertraditional These critiquesare thusimbued witha nostalgic, values and institutions. medieval Hispanic even reactionarydesire for the returnof traditional values, which are creditedwith the successful early expeditionsof conthese narrativesas those of failureand request. But in characterizing remainswhollyEuropean: theyfailor rebelagainst bellion,theperspective European ambitions.As in all Orientalistdiscourse, the natives in these remain a blank slate on which are inscribedthefrustrations as narratives well as thelongings of theEuropeans fortheimaginarylost Eden oftheir own past. Hulme's and Pastor's works share a concern for the historical textsof the conquest were produced. Both period in which the literary differ froman earlier generationof "New Critics"who denied the existence of politicalor historicalcontext.Pastor and Hulme further demonstrate a commitment to developingliterary critiquesofthecolonialcontext in which thesetextswere created. Two of the texts that Hulme analyzes, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and William Shakespeare's The Tempest, have since come to be viewed as part of theliterary canon. Attackson theliterary canon usually base themselves on the gender, ethnic, and racial characteristics of the 188

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ofbooksinthecanon.Hulme,following readers of authors Said, reminds ineachwork inthecanon,which subtext a political emanates notfrom the ofrace,class,and gender) author's butfrom biography (thecurrent litany and historical thepolitical positionof thestatein whichthetexts were in thecanonmaybe said to Thustheliterary tastes enshrined composed. reflect a desirefora certain imageof empire.Not all of thecanonical ofEnglish from theseventeenth works literature andeighteenth centuries reflect thoseimperial concerns, buta fair number do, suggesting a close link between relations ofcultural and political authority.
ANTHROPOLOGY

Said's critique oftheprocessby whichAsia and theMiddleEast wererepresented have pointedout,rested by theWest,as manycritics ofworksoftheWest,continental and solelyon his reading philosophy, theEuropean canon.15 thevoiceofthe literary DespiteSaid's demandfor he failedto analyzeor even citeanytext "Other," actually composed by MiddleEasterners or Asians. Nor did he takethenecessary additional how or whysuchtexts differed from in thoseproduced stepofshowing theWest.'6 In other toexplain howdifferent words,hefailed perspectives or worldviews functioned betweencultures, and hencehe provided no basisfor thedynamics ofcross-cultural Within understanding. anthropolmostconcerned withthepolitics ogy,thediscipline and ethics ofreprefrom other the challenge of providing a senting perspectives cultures, modelor strategy forcross-cultural translation or representing culturally different others was already beingpursuedwhenSaid's book was published.A partoftheseefforts appearedas a seriesofexperimental ethsomewritten nographies, as dialoguesand others produced under collaborative authorship.'7 Different ofrepresenting strategies another culture are thecruxof of recentworksin LatinAmerican a number anthropology, including andthe Wild Man. Michael Taussig's pathbreaking Shamanism, Colonialism, This studyattacks the"objectivist fiction" ofhistorical required writing whileproducing an accountof theterror thataccompanied therubber boomin thePutamayo ofColombia. withAndeanbreaks region Taussig ism (thelocal anthropological of Orientalism),'8 variant whichhas in15. JamesClifford,The Predicament of Culture(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988),255-76. 16. Ibid. Said's defenseagainst his critics in anthropology can be foundin "Representing theColonized," Critical 15 (1989):205-25. Inquiry 17. For multipleexamples of these experimental ethnographies,see Marcus and Fischer's 18. Orin Starn, "Missing the Revolution:Anthropologists and the Warin Peru," Cultural Anthropology 6 (1991):63-91.

Anthropology as Cultural Critique.

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sisted on the stabilityand coherence of societies (and theirforms of in theAndean regionby describinga fragmented culture representation) and healing (shamanism) are mutuallyconin which colonialism(terror) locales. In tradictory, fractured discoursesthatare spread among multiple this fashion, Taussig goes beyond requiringthe voice of the Other by thevoices of theWest (colonialism)nor thevoices of showingthatneither the natives can be represented as monolithic,regionallylocalized, or stable systemsofmeaning. This trend in anthropologyhas also intersectedwith a greatly politicalcontext heightenedconsciousness of the local and international concern is customarily in whichfieldwork done, an awareness paralleling canon based on the politicalconditions about the designationof a literary prevailingin the metropolis.George Stocking'smost recentvolume on compiles some of the the history of anthropology,Colonial Situations, importantrecent reappraisals of the imperial political contextof earlyOne such account is Paul Sullivan's twentieth-century ethnographies.19 a criticalreevaluationof the politicalcontextof Unfinished Conversations, work on the Maya in the 1930s. He archaeologicaldigs and ethnographic one ofthefirst describeshow Sylvanus Morley, archaeologiststo workon the Maya ruins of Chichen Itza, undertookwartimereconnaissance for U.S. Naval Intelligencewhile continuingto work as an anthropologist. forpolitical When Franz Boas condemned Morley'suse of anthropology purposes, Boas, not Morley,was censured by the American Anthropological Association (pp. 131-36). With the advent of World War II and and Mayan leaders over land growingtension between Mexican officials reform,Morley and his institutionalbacker, the Carnegie Institution, withdrewfrom Chichen Itza (pp. 152-53). Sullivan outlines for the Maya the argument already developed theLooking more fullyby Michael Herzfeldin Anthropology Glass: through Westernvision of Greece has been shaped by a kind of Orientalismin which the focus on ancient ruins like the Parthenonhas obscured the contemporary political plight of modern-dayGreeks. Westernersinterested in creatinga mythicpast have ignored or slighted the present. Similartendencieshave operated in recovering archaeologicalsites in the Mayan peninsula. The directorof the archaeological plan to uncover Chichen Itza describedit in the1930s as an aestheticprojectto restorethe beauty of the original buildings but to leave them partiallyin ruins to
19. George Stocking, Colonial Situations, vol. 7 of the History of Anthropologyseries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991). An early statementis Talal Assad's collecand theColonialEncounter tion,Anthropology (New York:Humanities Press, 1973). MarginsofEurope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

in theMargins Herzfeld Critical arguedthatthe ofEurope.20 Ethnography

20. Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology through theLooking Glass:Critical Ethnography inthe

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the temporaldistance between the present and the past (p. 83). signify The half-finished effectwould remind viewers that they were to symthan with the contemporary descenpathize with the remotepast rather dants, thusmakingit an exoticOrientalistmonument. A second consequence of this Orientalizing tendency was the to contemporary poconscious or unconscious eliminationof references accounts.Sullivanechoes liticalconflicts in archaeologicalor ethnographic familiar community-based studies like those ofRobert critiquesof strictly Redfield in his comment that these Maya communities"were not the untroubled,family-oriented social small, homogeneous, meaning-filled, isolatesofa morepleasant human past thatRedfieldimagined, . . . rather laborersin the thedisinherited offspring ofcolonialempiresand part-time capitalistworld economy" (p. 158). More precisely,these communities were engaged in a continuingmilitary battleforindependence fromthe in Mexico City. central government Anthropologistsand archaeologistswho worked in the region in the 1930s omittedany account of the demand for arms made by local Mayan leaders in exchange foraccess to sacred archaeologicalsites. Sullivan describes how Morley arrived in the Yucatan during a Mayan rebellion against dominationby the national government.The local transa latorwho read thefirst letter from theMaya rebelcommandercontrolling key site translatedthe rebel request for guns as a request for written communication.A second letter asking for arms was translatedas a request forthemuch vaguer categoryof "contraband."The subsequently clarified demand forguns became an ongoing themeof communications as 1971, explorersin As recently between theMaya and anthropologists. were asked to provide arms in exchange search of "ancient" manuscripts forthe opportunityto view old books (p. 194). Unfortunately, Sullivan failsto explorethepoliticaldynamicsofmistranslation, himself restricting could have been possito a mechanicalexplanationofhow mistranslation ble in citing"reciprocalignorance"(p. 111). Two otheranthropologists who worked in the region,RobertRedfieldand his fieldassistantAlfonsoVilla, also excised any mentionofthe Maya demands forarms in theirethnographiesand omitteddescriptions of the politicalconflict occurringall around theirfieldwork.Put simply, wanted theMaya to write theMaya wanted guns, and theanthropologists autobiographies(p. 75). the ethWhile belaboring Redfieldand Morley forromanticizing nographic present, Sullivan himselfromanticizesthe past, presenting of the relanostalgic accounts about the time before commodification tionship between anthropologistsand native informants(pp. 172-78, 197-99). Morley (who apparentlydid not learn Maya) required a translator, and the latter translatedMorley's "wants" and "wishes" into a YucatecMaya word meaning"desire,"whichhas sexualovertones(p. 110). 191

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Research Review American Latin

AlthoughMorley was probably unaware of the sexual overtones of the to sway anthropolofhis words, Mayan leaders trying Mayan translation ogists employed a rhetoricof courtship and love (p. 118). Sullivan describes the modern monetarynexus between fieldworkand informants (prepaymentforinterviews,wages per storyor per hour) and how the and Maya are now aware of theirown presence in foreignethnographies have abandoned courtlyrhetoric forthe salesman's pitch,hawkingtheir bidder(pp. 197-99). own storiesto thehighestforeign

HISTORY

In thefieldofhistory, colonial and postcolonialdiscoursehas been forSubaltern Studies, inspiredby a group ofEast Indian historianswriting a publicationfounded and edited forseven years by Ranajit Guha.21 As problems thenew approach expanded intoyetanotherdiscipline,further rather withSaid's angle on colonial discourseemerged. Said had affirmed than demonstratedany mechanism by which knowledge about another intotheexerciseofpower overthem.22 The culturewas actuallytranslated has produced a variety of group conductingsubalternstudies,in contrast, forIndia themechanismsby whichBritish rhetorical analyses thatspecify ofIndia's past, were implemented in the practices, includingtherewriting Even moresignificant forthis colonial Indian legal and politicalsystem.23 and fieldhas been thecritiquecreatedby subalternstudies oftherhetoric practicesof independence and contemporarynationalistmovements.24 Aspects ofPeasant Insurgency Beginningwith Guha's pioneeringElementary
StudiesI, edited by RanajitGuha (Delhi: OxfordUniversity 21. Subaltern Press, 1982).The last volume under Guha's editorshipwas Subaltern StudiesVI (1989). See also my review of in PostcolonialHispoststructuralism's impacton Third World history, "Poststructuralism in TheMaryland tory," forthcoming Historian. 22. The confusionbetween literary and social practices ofpower is commonto manypoststructuralists, among them Derrida in his chapter of "violence of the letter"in Of Grammatology. See also JacquesLacan's similarconcepts in Ecrits:A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan(New York:Norton,1977) and even MichelFoucault's"I, PierreRivere,"translated by FrankJellinek (Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1982). 23. See Ranajit Guha, A Rule ofProperty forBengal(Delhi: OrientLongman, 1981) and his recent influentialarticle, "Dominance withoutHegemony" in SubalternStudies VI (New York:OxfordUniversity Press, 1989). Literary critics Homi Bhabha and GayatriSpivak also in therepresentation sharean interest (and understanding) ofthevoiceoftheOtherinhistorical aboutIndia duringtheperiodofBritish writing ruleas well as a commongoal ofreinterpreting in lightofcontemporary thathistory poststructuralism. Bhabha is partialto Lacan, Derrida, Foucault,and Freud (includingthediscourseofpsychoanalysis).Spivak mainlyfavors Derridean deconstruction. in Selected.Subaltern 24. See Ranajit Guha, "The Prose of Counter-Insurgency," Studies, editedby Guha and Gayatri Spivak (New York:OxfordUniversity Press, 1988); Guha's forthcomingbiographyof Mahatma Ghandi; and ParthaChatterjee,Nationalist Thought and the ColonialWorld (London: Zed, 1986).

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(1983), membersofthesubalternstudies movementhave been theleaders ofthepostcolonialdiscourse movement.25 Among historiansof Africaand Latin America,colonial and postcolonial discourse have generated a host of recent articles and professional presentationsbut few book-length studies as yet. Africanhistorians have reevaluated the language of health and labor in colonial documentationand have generatedan intriguing discussion ofthepolitical struggleover constructionof the past and the writingof historyin Latin Americanhistorianshave recently postcolonialstates.26 developed two interests: theconceptual and rhetorical biases (including reexamining theOrientalism)ofEuropean and Americantravel on LatinAmerwriting ica; and reevaluatingthecolonial and postcolonialconcepts oforder.27 Latin Americanistswill be interested in yet another significant historicalarena forcolonial and postcolonial discourses, namely the reof the historyof the Philippines developed by a group of graduthinking Ateneo University in Manila, among themReynaldoIleto ates oftheJesuit and VicenteRafael. Theirbooks under review here demonstrate different approaches to independence and Spanish colonialism. Tagalog grammars, confessionals, and catechisms written mostly by Spanish missionaries in the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturies. His purpose is to contrast the manner in which the Spaniards imposed religionwith the ways it was appropriatedby Tagalog society.Beginning with the observationthattranslation meant conversion,Rafael examines

Rafael's Contracting Colonialism: Translation andChristian Conversion in Tagalog under Rule examineseighteencolonial Society EarlySpanish

25. The startof thiscollectionwas inspiredby Guha's Elementary AspectsofPeasantInsurgency(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). Other postcolonialbooks include Nationand edited by Homi K. Bhabha and GayatriSpivak, ThePost-Colonial Critic, edited by Narration, Sarah Harasym(London: Routledge,1990). 26. Frederick Cooper, "FromFree Labor to FamilyAllowances: Labor and AfricanSociety in Colonial Discourse," American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989):745-65; Randall Packard,"'The HealthyReserve' and the'Dressed Native': Discourses on Black Health and theLanguage of Lonsdale, Legitimation in South Africa,"American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989):686-703;John Canadienne des "African Pasts in Africa'sFuture," CanadianJournal ofAfrican Studies/Revue in Rhodesia EtudesAfricaines 23 (1989):126-46; Preben Kaarsholm, "The Past as Battlefield Colonizationto and Zimbabwe: The StruggleofCompetingNationalismsoverHistoryfrom "The Othernessof Independence," Culture and History 6 (1989):85-106; and FritzW. Kramer, theEuropean," Culture and History 6 (1989):107-23. 27 Much of this work can be found in articles,presentations,and unpublished theses. and Betrayal: The Colonial Gaze in SeventeenthSee, forexample, PeterMason, "Portrayal and History "Mexico as Ori6 (1989):37-62. See also WilliamTaylor, CenturyBrazil,"Culture ent: Introductionto a History of American and BritishRepresentationssince 1821," and RicardoSalvatore,"YankeeMerchants'Narratives:Visions of Social Orderin Latin America " papers read at themeetingsoftheLatinAmericanStudies Associaand theU.S., 1800-1870, tion, 4-6 April 1991, CrystalCity,Virginia.Also Alexandra David, "The Quest forPublic Order,' paper read at the meetingof the SouthwesternHistoricalAssociation, 28-31 Mar. 1989, FortWorth;and Pamela Voekel, "Forgingthe Public: Bourbon Social Engineeringin Late Colonial Mexico," M.A. thesis,University ofTexasat Austin.

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American Research Review Latin He contrasts theLatinoflinguistic andreligious thetranslation concepts. thatSpaniardsconstructed for witha based grammars learning Tagalog book by a Tagalogforteaching instructional Casseventeenth-century tilian.The Tagalogauthorbypasses Castiliangrammatical categories a infavor ofcounting as thefirst (nouns, pronouns, verbs) stepinlearning he relates thanconjugating language.Rather verbs, Spanishverbforms tosay"we"or "she."TheTagalog instructoa Tagalog intention speaker's of attimes an exact translation ofthemeaning treatise subordinates tional and rhyme ofanywordsto theTagalog Castilian poeticmeter required translated thing (p. 62). Borrowing from a popularnineteenth-century Philippine novel, as a form describes theTagalog ofSpanishdiscourse Rafael appropriation of"fishing." Native treated untranslated Tagalog speakers Spanishwords but as untranslike"Cristo," "Dios," and "Iglesia"notas sacredterms intotheir own discourse words latable irruptions (p. 115).Theseforeign were"fished" outofSpanishdiscourse to produce a chainofassociation to theSpanishconstruction of theword's and interpretation unrelated to itsreferent. also relationship Spaniards'use ofuntranslated concepts retention ofwordsthat couldnotbe translated justified Tagalog speakers' intoCastilian exactly (pp. 111-15). Whentranslating wordsneededtoexplain Christian rituals, Spanish missionaries used Tagalogwordsthatcarried withthema rangeof other formeanings thanthoseintended other connotations, allowing by themissionaries. Forexample, theHost(viatico) of giveninthesacrament extreme unction becamein Tagalogthefood thatone takeson a long that a concept fit theideainwith ofthespirit journey, Tagalog experiences world(p. 118). The vocabulary chosenforconfession createdan even ofinterpretive wider range possibilities. Spanishmissionaries complained that confessions tendedto becomelabyrinthine discourses on a Tagalog ofunrelated thanthedirect issues rather variety responseto questions themissionaries that desired. Rafael thefrustration arguesthat voicedby overtheir tocontrol Spanishmissionaries inability confessional dialogue resulted from their na loob"to authoritatively using the phrase "utang describeman's debt to God. This phrase is employed to ask forforbutit also signifies giveness, bargaining, haggling, and usingevasions. Becausethemissionaries used theTagalogwordforforgiveness within ofutang theconcept na loob,Rafael suggests, Tagalogs viewed confession as a meansofbargaining with thepriest aboutthenature ofthedebtowed tothehigher Thisviewled tothekindoflabyrinthine authority. discourse themissionaries that ofbutfailed complained tounderstand (pp. 132-22). Missionaries viewed the natives'lack of comprehension of the ofconfession as evidence requirements oftheir lackofintelligence, childishness,or an insufficient grasp of doctrinal subtlety (p. 87). Rafael, however, suggeststhatTagalogshad theirown way of appropriating 194

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REVIEW ESSAYS

Christiansigns. The polysemiccharacterof language noted by the poststructuralists (the abilityofwords to have more than one meaning simultaneously)plays out in this instanceas having allowed Tagalog societyto appropriate Spanish religious discourse in ways other than those intendedby theconquerors. A similarilluminationof language's plasticity is provided by Rey-

naldo Ileto'sPasyon andRevolution: Popular Movements in thePhilippines,

1840-1910.Ileto'sbasic concernis to understandwhatthenineteenthand twentieth-century Tagalogpeasants' own categoriesofmeaningwere and how theyshaped Tagalog perceptionsof independence and theirparticipation in the anticolonialstruggle.This approach led him to use Tagalog materials rather than the traditional Spanish- and English-language sources. His choice of a noncolonial vocabularyreflects to the sensitivity way language carrieswith it the semanticand interpretive historyof its from a way ofrelatingto theworld different speakers and also constructs thatprovidedby thecolonial languages, whether Spanish or English. In explaining the enormous popular appeal of nationalistmovementsin thenineteenth and twentieth Ileto shows how Tagalogcenturies, speaking peasants' experienceof the Holy Week drama called the Pasyon of Christ(a recitative performance committedto memoryand repeated theyear) shaped their ofthe anticolonial throughout understanding struggle. Althoughthe Spanish colonizersused the play to inculcateloyalty to Spain and the Catholic Church, Tagalog Philippine societyfound in the its own popular versionof the passion play the language forarticulating values and ideals: forvoicingprotests and agents againstoppressivefriars ofthestateand fordemonstrating Christof leadershipby a poor,unlettered humbleoriginswhose lieutenantsare, in thewords of tlhe play,"poor and lowlypeople without worthon earth"(p. 23). The massivepopularity ofthe independencemovementamong the Tagalog peasants stemmedfromthe and independenceexpressedin theidiomofpasyon. ideas ofnationalism Ileto points out further thatthe independence movementwas not begun by Westernized,educated elites but sprang up in a Tagalog secret lower-middle-class clerknamed Andres societyfoundedby a self-educated Bonifacio.His widely circulatedmanifestoused language similarto that featuredin the familiarHoly Week pasyon play to describe the Spanish occupation of the Philippines (pp. 103-9). For example, a Tagalog poem by Bonifacio'sbrotheremployed the tone of a grown-up child's tearful crisis on leaving home in the pasyon's lengthydialogue between Christ and the VirginMary to talk about Philippine independence fromSpain (pp. 128-30). Bonifacio was eventually captured and executed by the leaderof a rivalindependence faction, but thelanguage ofindependencepasyon outlivedthose who had createdit (pp. 138-39). ofbrotherhood Ileto also shows how a Spanish religiousinstitution with its initiation ritesand emphasis on prayerbecame the (the cofradia) 195

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Latin American Research Review forthe popularnationalist movements thathave modelfororganizing inthe Thehymns U.S. power Philippines. contested first Spanishandthen and prayers ofthese later known as brotherhoods orKatipunan, cofradias, of by ideas oftransformation, control reveala worldoutlook dominated goal in thefaceofsuffering. Their or souls),and commitment loob (hearts paradise that wouldbring theend was an earthly rather thanotherworldly labor. ofworldly taxesandforced ofallforms including oppression, inthese ledtocontinugoalofindependence Belief aimsas thetrue toU.S. occupation insouthern Luzon.The ingTagalog peasantresistance States whocollaborated withtheUnited Hispanicized Philippine leaders thatwere in theegalitarianism and mass mobilization had little interest movement, the ideals of the Katipunan(brotherhood) independence about disruptions of their labor supply.Hence being moreconcerned oflow social and led by individuals resistance to U.S. rulewas initiated statusand minimal education whobelievedin theKatipunan wayas the trueessenceofthemother leader of (pp. 215-16). MacarioSakay, country one ofthesemovements, theseaffluent Filipinos as motivated portrayed thecompassion for and powerand lacking byloveofwealth, knowledge, to theemotional others central hearts dynamics ofthepasyonplay.Their hardness ofheart in thefamiliar (loob) werehard,an allusionto Judas's or of1902as "banditry" play(p. 222).Critics whohavelabeledtherevolts thesegroupswitha different religious fanaticism have failedto credit visionofwhatindependence was all about(pp. 225,227).Sakay political was eventually inducedto surrender withthepromise that he wouldnot of be harmed. He was promptly tried and executed. leaders "Nationalist" whocomprised werethen the1907assembly elected bythesame3 percent how peasant the nativeelite (p. 244). Pasyon and Revolution illustrates in communities textsand institutions appropriated Spanish religious a modeofunderstanding and action that was wholly distinct fashioning from whathad been intended by thecolonialauthorities. The book defrom theusual understanding nationalism as the tachesitself ofFilipino this that handiwork ofupper-class natives, arguing instead Hispanicized the image of elite groupmuffled peasant voices in orderto preserve national colonial rule.Postcolonial discourse studies suchas unity against thenative Ileto's havemoved Said'spointabout"letting speak"to beyond examination ofanticolonialism. a critical oftheinternal politics Ileto's critical is shared with on nationalist movements perspective discourse in African and SouthAsian studies. scholarship postcolonial of These worksfocuscritically on the rhetorical and political practices well-known nationalist leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharal andJomo howin opposition tocolonial Theyexamine Nehru, Kenyatta.28
28. See notes 21, 23, 25, and 26.

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socirule, nationalistleaders have inventedsomethingcalled "traditional ety" by theirpracticesof renaming towns, villages, and countriesand creatingnew public ritualsand ceremonies. These supposedly authentic national institutions, however,were actuallyunacknowledged pastiches of colonial and indigenous elements revamped for political purposes. of "speaking as a Nationalistleaders have thus claimed the authenticity below" to justify theirown politicalpositions, native"or "speaking from What the nationalistleaders systematically which are oftenexclusionary. is of considerableinterestto exclude (both politicallyand intellectually) exile. from political thesecritics, critiques manyofwhommustdevelop their postcolonialcritiquesare Related to these South Asian and African and political anthropologists' critiquesoftherhetorical LatinAmericanist construction of indigenous communitiesin the postcolonialera. Michael Taussig, for example, deconstructsfamiliarWestern mythologyabout Indian shamanism and healing by showing it to be not an "authentic" Indian discourse but one realized in reaction to colonialism. Brazilian stratAlcida Ramos casts a criticaleye on the rhetorical anthropologist egies employed by participantsin the Braziliandebate over the status of Amazonian Indians. She shows how indigenous leaders, anthropologists (native and foreign),and Brazilian politicianseach constructa rhetoric and semiology of "Indian" identityin a battle for political influence Thus the boundsometimesunrelated to the communitiesthemselves.29 arybetween colonial and postcolonial discourses is not always clear-cut. Both Taussig and Ramos analyze colonial dimensions of political discourse in a postcoloni;al era. Many anthropologists,historians, and literarycriticswritingof thosewho are lumped together as "ThirdWorldpeople" adopt a stance of advocacy for those they have been studyingand workingwith. Hence they are reluctantto criticizepostindependence formsof nationalism. Coming to grips with the colonial past of theirown countriesthrough colonial discoursehas proved morecongenial formanyscholarsborn and educated in theWest. Critiquesofpostcolonialnationalistdiscoursehave by scholarsbornin India, the consequentlybeen developed mostsaliently Philippines, and Africa. Only recentlyhave a few such critiquesbeen published by scholars in the FirstWorld, and theyhave tended to treat The earlytheoreticians of Westerndiscourses about postcolonial states.30
29. Alcida Ramos, "Indian Voices: Contact Experienced and Expressed," in Rethinking Hill, 214-34 (Urand Myth: Indigenous on thePast, edited by Jonathan Perspectives History of IllinoisPress, 1988); and Ramos, "Indigenismo de Resultados," Revista bana: University no. 100 (1990):133-50. Tempo Brasileiro, Culture and History 6 (1989):85-106; and 30. Preben Kaarsholm,"The Past as Battlefield," MexNancy Vogeley,"Colonial Discourse in a Postcolonial Context: Nineteenth-Century ico," paper presentedat themeetingof theLatin AmericanStudies Association,Miami, 4-6 Dec. 1989. See also note 27.

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American Latin Research Review thecolonialdiscourse field-Said, Spivak,and Bhabha-are themselves locatedbetween theFirst and Third Worlds: bornand eduambivalently catedin places likePalestine made and Bengal,theyhave nonetheless their academic reputations in theWest.Theyspeakfrom theWest butare in theWest, notofit. Yetby virtue ofreputation and lengthy residence to shapingthe theyare no longeroftheEast. Hence their contribution fieldhas arisenwithin thesame context oftheinternationalization that they areattempting to study. oftheWest's thoseoftheThird Theattraction poststructuralism for and Third worlds World and thoseon theboundaries betweentheFirst its has notbeen its statusin theWest,as manymight imagine. Rather, has comefrom ofits internationalization appropriation and manipulation ideas by textual communities outsidetheWest,communities thathave oftheplasfoundin itsattack on traditional humanism and recognition oflanguage resonances with ticity powerful critiques already beingdevelownpolitical and cultural contexts. oped intheir
CONCLUSION

Theinterdisciplinary movement associated with colonial andpostof other colonialdiscourse is havinga significant on a number impact Western withwhichit sharespoststructuralist criacademicdisciplines sharesa common either tiquesoflanguage.Themovement concentration on political contexts ofliterary languageoron thepolitical languagewith twoofthesefields, thenew literary historicism The and political theory. oldest ofthesetrends from (dating 1980)is the"newliterary historicism," literan effort to embedthestudy oflanguagewithin canonical English ature(Shakespeare, in eliteElizabethan and Marlowe, Johnson) politics shareswiththenewliterary historculture.31 Colonialdiscourse political
was first applied to themovementin the1950s and 1960s that 31. The termnewhistoricism defineddisciand literary criticism withintheconventionally history soughtto uniteliterary a New Historicism (Princeton,N.J.:Princeton See WesleyMorris, Toward pline of literature. Once More (Princeton, University Press, 1972), 14, 78; and Roy Harvey Pearce, Historicism Press, 1969),6-63. The more recentpopularityof thetermis usuN.J.:PrincetonUniversity to the collectionPowerand thePowerof ally attributed to Stephen Greenblatt'sintroduction in theRenaissance of Oklahoma Press, 1982). His essay criticizes Forms (Norman: University theearlierhistoricism forits failureto perceive the textin a complexrelationshipto theculon thenew historicism, statements turethatproduced it. Forotherimportant programmatic MateNew Essaysin Cultural Shakespeare: see Jonathan Dollimoreand Alan Sinfield,Political Press, 1985), especially Dollimore's"Inrialism(Manchester,Engl.: ManchesterUniversity troduction:Shakespeare, CulturalMaterialism,and the New Historicism."See also JonaA Review Essay," ELH: A Journal of than Goldberg, "The Politicsof Renaissance Literature: Studies History 49 (1982):514-42; Louis A. Montrose,"Renaissance Literary EnglishLiterary 10 (1980):153-82; Stephen Orgen, Renaissance and the Subject of History,"EnglishLiterary in theEnglishRenaissance (Berkeleyand Los Angeles: The IllusionofPower:PoliticalTheater CuriofCaliforniaPress, 1975); Steven Mullaney,"StrangeThings,Gross Terms, University 1 (1983): ous Customs: The Rehearsal of Cultures in the Late Renaissance," Representations I and thePolitics Donne, Shakespeare, ofLiterature: Johnson, Goldberg, James 40-67; Jonathan

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icism an interest in subsuming a greaternumberof discourses under the heading of politicallanguage-for example, religioustracts, politicaltreatises,even ordinarycorrespondence.The two fieldsalso share an interest in colonial discourses,withtwo ofthemostinfluential earlyessays in this fieldbeing written on colonial issues,32but theydivergein theirultimate historicism is ultimately aim. The new literary concerned with canonical whilecolonial discoursewriters literature, seek to understandthedynamics ofthecolonial situation. A related emergingphenomenon is the study of language use in here has been directedat a fieldthatcan politicalscience. Most attention be viewed as thetwentieth-century successorto colonialdiscourse,namely international relations.But the discussion of language use in contemporaryinternational relationsdiffers considerably, centering on such topics as thelanguage used in discussing nuclearwar,a discourseideallysuited forpoststructuralist analyses in thatithas no "reallyreal" referent.33 What distinguishescolonial and postcolonial discourse analyses fromthese emerging discussions in political science is the focus on a different historiccircumstance,that of imperial authority and its afterthe math,the "colonial" and "postcolonial" situations.Further separating fieldofcolonial discoursefrom thetwo otherpoststructuralist critiquesof politicallanguage is the need to consider the perspectives of different languages and cultures. Thus issues of translationand cross-cultural (mis)understandings complicatethe generalproblemsof linguistictransparency,renderingculturalanthropologymore centralto this interdisciplinary field. This cross-culturalaspect is also the most distinctive featureof colonial and postcolonial critiques of language.34 While the
Press, 1983); Green(Baltimore,Md.: JohnsHopkins tJniversity and TheirContemporaries blatt, "King Lear and Harsnett's Devil's Fiction," in The Formsof Power; and Greenblatt, (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago FromMore to Shakespeare RenaissanceSelf-Fashioning: approaches to colonial discourse is to broaden new historicist Press, 1980). A recenteffort Literature: edited by Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism, Macropolitics ofNineteenth-Century ofPennsylvaniaPress, 1991). Jonathan Aracand HarrietRitro(Philadelphia: University "InvisibleBullets:Renaissance Au32. See Mullaney,"StrangeThings"; and Greenblatt, ShakeIV and HenryV," in Dollimoreand Sinfield,Political thority and Its Subversion,Henry 18-47 speare, in theNuclearAge (Norman: University of 33. J.Fisher Solomon, Discourseand Reference from 1984to editorofthejournalPolitical Theory OklahomaPress, 1988); WilliamE. Connolly, in Biography, Practices PhotogWriting ofRepresentation: 1990; Michael J. Shapiro, ThePolitics and Policy ofWisconsinPress, 1988); and Shapiro, Lanraphy, Analysis(Madison: University Practices (New Haven, Conn.: Yale ThePolitics ofDiscursive guageand Political Understanding: University Press, 1981). A good collectionof recentwritingon the subject is International! Politics, edited by JamesDer Derian and Intertextual Postmodern Readings ofWorld Relations: Michael J.Shapiro (Lexington,Mass.: LexingtonBooks, 1989). see Louis Montrose, "The 34. For the influenceof anthropologyon the new historicists, Helios 7 (1980):51-74. on a Shakespearean Anthropology," Purpose of Playing: Reflections Rhettheoryin anthropological style,see Aijaz Ahman, "Jameson's For a critiqueofliterary no. 17 (1987):3-27 For a critique oricofOthernessand the 'National Allegory,'" Social Texts, theorists who have failedto incorporate such perspectives,see RichardRoth,"The ofliterary

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American Research Review Latin

in various disciplines, this focus on the language that emphasis differs has been used in representingotherpeoples in the politicalcontextof colonialismand postcolonialismhas produced powerfulnew critiquesof the ways in which political power over cultural others has been constituted and maintained. What all of these works do to varyingdegrees is to achieve one of the functionsof a critique: to posit an idea about the humanitiesdisciplines-history, literary criticism, culturalanthropology-as more than decorativeknowledge, as knowledge criticalof the relationsof authority within a society.The aim of the critiquein each of these disciplines is relationsof authority, culturalrelationsof authority different-economic But the basic (the canon), conventional political relations of authority. in colonial targetof critiqueremains the same-the relationsof authority of culturaland politiand postcolonialstates-and it is thus an enterprise cal criticism being carriedout in a resolutely postcolonialera. are Some disciplines, such as anthropologyand literary criticism, of the politicalagendas of their more willing to undertakeself-criticism critics attacktheidea and practice ofcanons while own discipline.Literary with respect to anthropologistsconsider the position of fieldworkers native subjects. Of the practitioners of these threedisciplines,historians have been relatively reluctant to considerany formofreflexivity or reflexive self-critique oftheir practices. Both the colonial and postcolonial discourse movementssignify a revivalof politicsand its returnto the centerof intellectualdebate after decades of being relegatedto a secondaryposition in the predominantly and literary social and culturalrealms of history, anthropology, theory. But this more recentbody of work does not signify a returnto the same or culturalanthropologythat political issues in history, literary theory, prevailed in the 1950s. Rather,the revivalof interestin the politicalthat in a different has permeatedthese threedisciplinesis occurring historical contextand consequentlyhas a different intellectual inflection. The concern with "voices frombelow," a legacy of the social historyand interpretive anthropologyof the 1960s and 1970s, remains. But the concern with language and rhetoric,the ethics and strategiesof representing distantculanthropologicalothers,or those of representing historically turalothersare crucialand unprecedentedquestions withwhichthisnew work on politicsmust contend. We do not repeat the past, as Santayana 35 itcontinually. claimed,we only reinvent

Colonial Experienceand Its PostmodernFate," Salmagundi, no. 85 (1989):248-65. 35. The idea that any repetition,no matterhow identical,always entails a difference is recognizablypoststructuralist. See Jacques Derrida, Limited, Inc. (Baltimore,Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).

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