Schwarz (1989) - Provocations Toward A Theory of Third World Literature

University of Southern Mississippi
Provocations toward a Theory of Third World Literature

Author(s): Henry Schwarz
Source: Mississippi Review, Vol. 17, No. 1/2 (1989), pp. 177-201
Published by: University of Southern Mississippi
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20134193
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Provocations Toward a Theory of

Third World Literature
Henry Schwarz
'The tmckis tofind outwhat thedepil they think theyare up to"

-Clfford Geerz
"Nobodyknowswhen theywiU comeout of thejunggkand strike"
-Birendra Kumar Bhattachatyya
The demands of the double question-"does theThirdWorld

speak, andwhat do we hearwhen it does?"-are among themost
pressing for a contemporary cultural criticism, and include
problems of identity and difference, self and other, hermeneutic
"reliability,"and themeta-critical issueof what itmeans to be
asking such questions in the first place. The current proliferation of
studies on "ThirdWorld literature"point to a general acceptance
by theU.S. academic community of a delineated "field"'on which
to carryout research,pass judgement, theorize and proselytize.
Despite the readyacceptance of ThirdWorld texts by theU.S.
177
Henry
Schwarz
literaryscene and their unprecedented acclaim by international

award agencies, itwould be well to remember that these texts,
once posed as a challenge to traditionalcanons by oppositional
movements in the sixties, have now become institutionalizedas a
"discipline"that celebrates a premature renaissancein the curricular
debates of theReagan years.While we may applaud the inclusion
of alternativecurricula into conservative institutions, the "profes
sionalization"of "ThirdWorld literature"in the academy undoub
tedly diminishes the potency of those originally radicalforces by
making an objectof ThirdWorld cultural production; it is one
more item added to the saladbar of English Department courses.
However, when we ask the question of how one reads 'Third
World literature,"or how one approaches theThirdWorld literary
text as subject, the issuebecomes more complicated (although
maybe not yet complicated enough). As with the related theory of
Postmodernism, 'Worlds" theory is impossiblybroad and general.
To offer even a tentativedefinition of 'ThirdWorld literature"is
to claim theoreticalmastery over a thirdof theworld's cultural
production, and by implication the other two; the violence and in
stabilityof suchmagisterial gestures have been amply demonstrated
by critical theory over the last twenty years and need no repeating.
What can be offered in themeantime, though, areprovocations
provisional and situational attempts to think through the immedi
ate contradictions presented by this literatureaswe now actively
read it, bracketing for themoment any full-blown systematic/scien
tific "theory."Such provocations can serve the interim function of
"calling forth" (L.pro + vocare)our reactions to ThirdWorld cul
turalproduction and to be uneased and irritatedby them. I use
this languageof annoyance to evokewhat I believe to be the in
evitablemethodological starting-point of any larger theory of
'ThirdWorldism": what would seem to be the objective fact that
the social and economic conditions of theThirdWorld today are
inescapablyrelated to the global mechanisms of late capitalism,
whose fruitswe enjoy largelyat the expense of the "under
developed" nations. This experienceof "unequal exchange," I
would argue, constitutes something likean absolute presupposition
of our engagementwith these texts; and our subsequent evalua
tions of them inevitablybecome meditations on this global situa
tion as much
as on the texts themselves.
Just as the theory of late
178
Provocations
Toward
a Theoy
of Third World
Literature
capitalismmakes it clear that FirstWorld economic prosperity is de

pendent on ThirdWorld underdevelopment, the success of the in
stitutionalizationof ThirdWorld literatureinU.S. academies is
dependent on suppressing the political challenges offered by these
texts to self-contained disciplines such as English Literature. Itmay
even prove to be the case that "TheChallenge of ThirdWorld Cul
ture" (title of a conference at Duke University, September, 1986)
to theU.S. academywill never be realizeduntil such economic im
balance has been corrected, and "WorldLiterature"becomes the
preeminent fieldof literarystudy.ThirdWorld literaturedoes not
necessarilyhave tomake us feel "bad";but I think it is possible to
show that the theoretical statements so faroffered about its
"status"provoke structuralconflicts that repeatedly takeus back to
what Iwill call this economic "fact,"and to our own position
within the global network that differentiatesU.S. institutional
"selves"fromThirdWorld "others"on the basis of economic
exchange.
Without too much reduction, the positions offered so far fallout
into two camps-the totalizing and the differential-seemingly ex
clusive perspectiveswhich accuse each other of being reductive, im
perialist,or impossible.On the one hand, we have "totalizing"
prescriptions for a split between a stable, FirstWorld, late capitalist
cultural production, as against some heterogeneous and contradic
tory form of pre- or nascent-capitalistaesthetic activitywith which
it competes. As an example of this position, I quote from the semi
nal articleof Fredric Jameson, 'ThirdWorld Literature in the Era
of Multinational Capitalism," at the point where themajor distinc
tions between so-called First and ThirdWorld cultures aremade:
none of these [ThirdWorld] cultures can be conceived as
anthropologically independentor autonomous, rather, they
are all in various distinctways locked in a life-and-death
strugglewith first-worldcultural imperialism-a cultural
struggle that is itself a reflexionof the economic situation of
such areas in theirpenetration by various stages of capital,
or as it is sometimes euphemistically termed,of
modernization ("ThirdWorld Literature," 68).
Jameson'sestimation seems extreme to proponents of difference
and local autonomy, not only "strong"Derrideans likeGayatri
179
Henry Schwarz
1
Spivak, but to ThirdWorld Marxist intellectuals likeAijaz Ahmad,

forwhom such binary distinctions reproduce the objectifying gaze
of "Orientalism."Ahmad will accept a "polemical"use of the
phrase "ThirdWorld," but objects to Jameson'sclaim that he has
"sketch[ed] a theory of the cognitive aesthetics of thirdworld litera
ture" ("ThirdWorld Literature,"88). On the definition of the
"ThirdWorld" as a coherent object of study then,Ahmad counters
Jameson's "over-zealous totalization":
[Jameson's]"cognitive aesthetics" rests upon a suppression
of significantdifference among andwithin both advanced
capitalist countries and imperializedformations.We have,
instead,a binary opposition of the first and thirdworlds ...
to lift the phrase from the registerof polemics and claim it
as a basis for producing theoreticalknowledge, which
presumes a certain rigour in constructing the objects of
one's knowledge, is tomisconstrue not only the phrase itself
but even theworld towhich it refers. I shall argue,
therefore, that there isno such thing as a "thirdworld
literature,"which can be constructed as an internally
coherent object of theoreticalknowledge. There are
issues-of periodisation, social and linguistic formations,
political and ideological struggleswithin the field of literary
production, and so on-which simply cannot be resolved at
this levelof generalitywithout an altogether positivistic
reductionism (Ahmad, 4).
Ahmad's objections are strengthened by evidence frommany
quarters. In deciding exactlywhere the "ThirdWorld" is, for ex
ample, each cultural discipline seems to have itsown geopolitical
or spatial preference: "nativists"(cultural anthropologists) look
primarily to the "cold" tribal societies of Africa or Indonesia;
studies of literaryand cinemagraphic stylistics focus on Latin and
South American "magic realism";"anti-colonialists"(political scien
tists) scrutinize India, Pakistan and the post-colonial literarysucces
ses of Salmon Rushdie andV.S. Naipaul.2 How could one hope to
unify these various artifactsand locales?
Less widely noticed but no less important,ourWestern fascina
tionwith theThirdWorld has internaldeterminants that seem to
prompt the study of exotic cultures fromwithin. PerryAnderson,
180
Provocatms
Toward
a Theory of Third World
Literature
for one, has observed that such fascinationsstem from a crisis

within the aesthetic ideologies ofWestern Modernism itself: the
ThirdWorld isnot so much "out there,"aswe have discovered a
need for it "in here."3Boredom and dissatisfactionamong artists
and criticswith "postmodernist"aesthetics leads in some cases
toward a search for new
inspiration.4
In the face of such challen
ges, semioticiansadvance new schemasof "heterological"practice

and tactics, and find "ThirdWorld" cultures existing inside the
FirstWorld.5
Perhaps themost convincing definitions of where theThird
World might be found come from economics, particularlyamong
the various theoriesof imperialism.6Yet here, too, aswith the dis
agreements over the causes for and solutions to the problems of
mounting capital imbalance,food shortages and relatedpolitical
turmoil in the so-called "underdevelopedworld," we must still
agreewith Ahmad that the argument for amore or less
homogeneous "peripheralculture" corresponding fromVietnam to
Peru to the levelof economic development in these countries is
not only a new form of cultural imperialismbut historicallyun
tenable: "these countrieswere never so closely tied together (as
were Europe and theU.S.) . . .not even the singular 'experienceof
colonialism and imperialism'has been in specificways the same or
similar in, say, India andNamibia. These various countries ...
have been assimilated into the global structureof capitalism ...
highly differentially,each establishing itsown circuitsof (unequal)
exchange ... each acquiring itsown very distinct class formations"
(Ahmad, 10). Unless we are ready to leap into the hyperreal space
of the Village Voie Structuralistswhere "everythingalways hap
pens everywherebut it's all the same,"Ahmad's position seems to
make perfect sense ("GreatMoments," 12).
We shareAhmad's exhilaration in restoringheterogeneity to
world culture until we come to a paradoxicalmoment in his text
where the operation seems to run awry. Suddenly, from our accep
tanceof a "multiplicityof significant difference among andwithin
both the advanced capitalist countries and the imperialisedforma
tions,"we come to this statement: "The point isnot to construct a
typology that is simply the obverse of Jameson's,but rather to
deflne thematerial basisfor a fair degreeof cultural homogenization
among the advancedcapitalist countriesand the lackof that kind of
181
Hen7y Schwarz
homogenization in the rest of the capitalistworld" (emphasis

added;Ahmad, 11). Ahmad has been reacting to Jameson's
totalitariangesture of lumping allThirdWorld narratives together
as "national allegory"; his account of the history of Urdu literature
attempts to de-allegorize and de-politicize thatwriting in a specific
denial of Jameson's claim.But inwhat sense is his new proposal
not "obverse"?From a relativized"general economy" of multiple,
"'significantdifference,"which would presumably set the stage for
discrete, situational analysesof strongly different cultural forms,we
are once again offered a "restrictedeconomy" of cultural sameness,
"a fairdegree of cultural homogenization among the advanced
capitalist countries" that all but recuperates the "binaryopposition"
dismantled on the previous page. By its own internal logic,
Ahmad's argument says that ifwe are to "believe" in strong cul
turaldifference (a genuine leapof faith according to some contem
porary theorizationsof the postmodern), thenwe must have "all
World" cultural difference. In his effort to propose a differential
status forThirdWorld literature,he seems to attack the "binaryop
position" from the opposite (blind?) angle-not dismantling it al
together, but merely standing it on its head: 'The ThirdWorld
is ... /The ThirdWorld isn't...."
Through this counter-logic itmay be possible to adduce a hidden
itineraryin Jameson'sarticle.The "point"of the "rhetoricof Other
ness," distasteful to so many, now seems not somuch to scientifi
cally "theorize"a culturally homogeneous ThirdWorld as to
deplore the homogeneity of the FirstWorld. This strategy,which
is essentially ethical and political rather than "'scientific,"attempts
to produce an institutional status forThirdWorld culture as an an
tidote or corrective towhat is seen as the repressivehomogeneity
ofWestern postmodernist culture, or what7ameson has elsewhere
called the "affectless,postmodern present." The "field"of Third
World literaturethus becomes the political ground for an opposi
tionalmovement againstwhat is seen as an encroaching,
hegemonic postmodernism. The "polemicalvalue" of the phrase is
adhered to and enhanced:ThirdWorld literature is that literature
which challengesWestern postmodernism, both as aesthetic ideol
ogy and as the larger,more ominous sounding "cultural
dominant." By a peculiar theoretical "coup," perhaps endemic to
the institutionalbattles in theU.S. betweenMarxism and
182
ProvocaionsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature
deconstruction, the argument for "difference"ends up looking very

like the "totalizing"'one.
Yet there is anotherway of conceptualizing "difference"within a
more recognizablyMarxian paradigm.When we examine certain
descriptions of the contemporary economic system, inErnest
Mandel's Late Capitalism, for example, or in Immanuel
Wallerstein'sModern World System,we find that certain conceptual
preconditions arise that help locate the "ThirdWorld" on our map,
suggestwhy it seems so "different,"and how, despite its difference,
we are able to read its literatureat all.The concept of "late
capitalism"offers the theoretical advantageof proposing a unifying
framework inwhich to think all of production, cultural no less
than economic, in 'World" terms.Marxist economists tend to
agree that "development"produces "underdevelopment";disagree
ments ariseover the ultimate derivation of "unequaldevelopment."
Ahmad's seemingly self-evident contention that the so-calledThird
World countries "havebeen assimilated into the global structureof
capitalismnot as a single cultural ensemble but highly differential
ly, each establishing its own circuitsof (unequal) exchange" is ac
tually the subjectof a considerablywider debate that stretches back
to the early history of western Marxism. Suffice it to say that the ef
forts of Luxemburg, Hilferding, Bauer, Bukharin, andGrossmann
to apply the reproduction schemes of the second volume of Capi
tal to the successive phases of capitalistdevelopment are projects
which continue into the present and have not been definitively
resolved.Ambiguities in key passages of Marx's texts are only part
of the problem.Among contemporary economists, in fact, the
causes and extent of capitalistdevelopment in the underdeveloped
world turn precisely on this question of historical "assimilation,"or
in a related sense, the question of "transition":that is,were these
"backward"cultures absorbed "differentially"into a capitalistworld
system that had previously ignored them, or rathermust we
rethink the definition of capitalism itself as being that verymoment
when aworld-economy first took shape, effectively divided into suc
cessive spheres and degrees of relation to capital, but nonetheless a
global form inwhich it no longer became possible to conceive of
radicalsocio-economic difference?Marxists likeMandel, Arghiri
Emmanuel and SamirAmin, who hold to amore orthodox view of
gradual and uneven assimilation into the capitalistworld, stress the
183
Henry
Schwarz
determining influenceof the indigenous social structuresof the un

developed countries at the timeof capitalist entry.Mandel argues
that social relationsof production, originally different in the pre
and semi-capitalizedcountries, have historically dictated the speed
and extent of subsequent capitalization. In relation to Ahmad's ar
gument for cultural diversity, this is seemingly an economic corol
lary that bears out an historically discernableperiod inwhich Third
World social and economic structureswould have been "assimi
lated ... highly differentially."SinceWorld War II and the rapid
decolonizations of the fifties and sixties, however,Mandel's vision
of the totalityof economic relations approachesmore nearly the
"world systems"view of Wallerstein andAndre'Gunder Frank.The
range and power of global capital has exponentially increased in
the post-war period: capitalism itself secures the continued "back
wardness" of the former colonies, it "block[s]the disintegration of
pre-capitalistand semi-capitalistrelationsof production precisely by
the specific form of their integration into theworld market" (em
phasis in original;Mandel, 366). Whatever its origins, either in dif
ferential social structuresor the totalized conception of aworld
system, the possibility of any radicaleconomic difference has
passed, and now all capitalist states compete within the same
"unified field"of global or multinational economics.
Thus countries thatmay once have been differentially capitalized
because of their social structuresare now differentiallycapitalized
by the global economic system itself.Late capitalism in fact
produces difference in order to function: "Inter-zonaldifferences of
development, industrializationand productivity are steadily increas
ing" (Mandel, 376). ForMandel, capitalism in the late twentieth
century has achieved the form of a gigantic, global combine, in the
gears of which no cultural form can anymore be said to possess
that radicaldifference or Otherness defined so strikinglyby Sartre
as an "internalhemorrhage": "The appearanceof theOther in the
world corresponds therefore to a fixed sliding of thewhole
universe, to a decentralizationof theworld . .. it appears that the
world has a kind of drain hole in themiddle of its being and that it
is perpetually flowing off through this hole."8Within the larger
unifying logic of late capitalour relationship to theThirdWorld
can no longer be radicallysimilarnor radicallydifferent, neither
heterogeneous nor homogeneous, but instead thoroughly over
184
ProvocationsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature
determined by theworld-system that implicates"allWorlds" in its

machinery.Mandel's postmodernist prophecy can compete with
the various nightmare visions currentlyon themarket:
The entire capitalist system thus appears as a hierarchical
structureof different levelsof productivity, and as the
outcome of the uneven and combined development of
states, regions, branchesof industryand firms,unleashed by
the quest for surplus-profit.It formsan integratedunity, but
parts, and it is
it isan integratedunity of non-homogeneous
preciselytheunity that here determines the lackof homogeneity.
In thiswhole system development and underdevelopment
reciprocallydetermine each other, forwhile the quest for
surplus-profitsconstitutes the primemotive power behind
themechanisms of growth, surplus-profitcan only be
achieved at the expense of less productive countries, regions
and branches of production. Hence development takesplace
only in juxtapositionwith underdevelopment; it perpetuates
the latterand itself develops thanks to this perpetuation
(emphasisadded;Mandel, 102).
In this context we must name another attempt to theorize and in

tervene in the relatedquestions of nationalism, ethnic and linguistic
identity, the production of culture, and the ability to fit these situa
tional problematics into a general typology of First/ThirdWorld.
The work of the Subaltern Studies Group in India has been in
strumental in rewriting the history of Independence "from below,"
from the position of the "subalternsubject."9Both Marxist and
bourgeois accounts of nationalism and anti-colonialismwrite the
story of rebellion "from above." 'The history of Indian nationalism
is thuswritten up as a sort of spiritualbiography of the Indian
elite.... What, however, historicalwriting of this kind cannot do
is to explain
. . . the contribution
made
by the people
on their own,
that is, independentlyof the elite to themaking and development of

nationalism."This popular "contribution," in fact,when examined
in detail, appears to overwhelm the great achievementof Inde
pendence by the Indian State. Gandhi andNehru representnot the
185
Henry Schwarz
foundersof national consciousness, but mark instead the 'failureof

the Indian bourgeoisieto speakfor the
This critique of In
nation."'10
dian Independence as a "bourgeois" and "reactionary"
movement al
lows the Subalternists to find other currentswithin the population
which did not participate in building the political apparatus as it
now stands. For all themillions who attended political rallies,who
defied colonial decrees,who "nonviolently" resisted theBritish ad
ministrators and paralyzed the country by strike,how many more
millions opposed the formation of a unified, politicalmega-struc
ture?
Subaltern politics, the tacticsof the innumerablesub-caste, il
literate,unrepresentedmasses is largelyunknowable. The history of
these peoples has not been written; elite historiography, that of the
colonialist, comprador, and native bourgeoisie explains them away
andwrites them out of existence.However, the pressureof the
mass is felt formallywhenever social "science" turns its gaze on the
common object. For something like a European equivalent to this
insight, one thinksof Michel de Certeau's "heterological"studies of
"everyday life," inwhich the "commonman" exerts significant
force on "scientific"discourse as its "realityprinciple,"undermining
its claims to truth.De Certeau shows how, in Freud's Civilization
and Its Discontents,
"the ordinary man
renders a service
. . . , that
of figuring in it as a principle of totalization and as a principle of

plausibility.This principle permits Freud to say, 'It is trueof all'
and 'It is the realityof history.' The ordinaryman functions here in
the same way
as the God
of former
times....
In that way,
he
makes explicit an overturning of knowledge" (deCerteau, 3-4).

For de Certeau, when it confronts "the oceanic rumble of the or
dinary," theoreticalor scientific inquiryessentially becomes a
theological parable about the death of scientificknowledge. It be
comes ameditation on its own work: "In Freud the trivial isno
longer the other (which is supposed to ground the exemption of
the one who dramatizes it); it is the productive experience of the
text" (deCerteau, 5). This debordement("overflowing")of "the
common" into established scientific fields erodes their specificity,
and reveals their inadequacy towards theirobject; when such dis
courses attempt to analyze the banal, they end up uttering
banalities. "Far from arbitrarilyassuming the privilege of speaking
in the name of the ordinary.
. . , it [becomes]
a matter
of
186
Provocaims Thvard a Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature
restoring historicity to themovement which leadsanalytical

procedures
back to their frontiers
. . . it introduces
itself into our
techniques ... and reorganize[s] the place fromwhich discourse is

produced" (deCerteau, 5). For Guha and the other Subalternists,
the tacticsof subalternpolitics "reorganize"discourse in thisway,
revealing themselves in the documents of the colonial and
nationalist administrationschargedwith their suppression, but nega
tively, as a force to be conquered and silenced. Since both colonial
administratorsand bourgeois nationalists defending the state could
never reallyknow the consciousness of the "hooligans" theywere
shooting at, their texts ascribingmotives to insurgentuprisings
reveal the ethical subtexts of "colonialistdiscourse.""1Narratives
that legitimatecolonial tyrannymake interpretivechoices that trans
form seemingly objective chronicles of events intomeaningful fic
tions.Thus protagonists of an incidentbecome "Insurgents,"
Muslims become "fanatics,"resistance to tyrannybecomes "the
most daring andwanton atrocities on the inhabitants,"revolt
against a corrupt landlordbecomes "defying the authority of the
State," and the search for an alternativeorder is recorded as "dis
turbing the public tranquility"("Counter-Insurgency,"13).
The corrective readingproposed by the Subaltern Studies Group
is brilliantly, suspiciously simple: not merely amatter of replacing
every colonial "terrible"with a subaltern "fine," their strategyof
readingobserves themargins of discourse, now seen in reverse,of
subalternor micro-political insurgency.The recordsof elite ad
ministration become the negative identityof the positive force they
are designed to dispel:
The experienceof exploitation and labour endowed
[subaltern]politicswith many idioms, norms and values
which put it in a category apart from elite politics....
There were vast areas in the life and consciousness of the
people which were never integrated into theirhegemony.
The structuraldichotomythat arose from this is a datum of
Indian history of the colonial period,which no one who
sets out to interpret it can ignorewithout falling into error
("SomeAspects," 5-6).
This radicalhistoriography stands and fallson its commitment to
include "the rebel as the conscious subjectof his own history."The
187
Henry Schwarz
subject thus unearthed is not in any sense to be considered as essen

tialor solid, however; having never been narrativized in the discour
ses of anti-colonialism or nationalism, it ratherappears as a smudge
on themargin of such narratives,a point of negative valuewithin
the signifying practicesof native politics. Since it has not had ac
cess to the symbolic discourse of Indian nation-forming, however,
we must ask how the subaltern subject could ever be knowable to
the historian, or indeedhow such a subject could be conceived as
"a conscious
subject of
. . .
history."
It would
be impossible
to en
tirely eliminate the necessary distortion of historywriting toward

this subject.What Guha asks us to do instead is "to acknowledge
such distortion as parametric.... The gap as it stands at themo
ment is indeed so wide that there ismuch more than an irreducible
degree of error.... a close approximation is the best one could
hope for" ("Counter-Insurgency,"33-34). At all costs this history
must resist idealizationwhile paradoxicallyvalorizing the un
spoken. The three typesof histories analyzed by here-primary
colonialist, secondary "memoir,"and tertiarynationalist/Marxist
allmake themistake of ascribing to the insurgent a type of
"transcendentalconsciousness," expressed as readingsof causality,
temporality,or "pure spontaneity": "when the proverbial clod of
earth turns, this is amatter to be explained in termsof natural his
tory"'(Elementary
Aspects, 3). The specificityof rebel consciousness
has eluded even "radical"historiographers.Thus, the call for a
truly "political"history of the subaltern subject as a political sub
ject, a historywriting which would not merely repeat the imperial
gestures of what Michel de Certeau calls "the scripturaleconomy"
with a new twist of otherness, but which would set the political
agenda for empowering those silent voices its researcheshope to
uncover, despite the impossibilityof ever fully knowing "what the
devil they think they are up to."
If 'ThirdWorld literature"as it has been conceived in theWest
is necessarily a challenge to postmodernism (or ifwe desire it to
maintain that force), then the historiographical theory of subalter
nity could prove to be one of itsmost significant forms, and the
reconstructionof subaltern consciousness ("parametric,""fictional,"
or "tactical")amost significantproject for literarytheory. Finding
and empowering the subject-position of the subaltern can bring to
light vast areasof tacticalmovements against assimilationist
188
ProvocaumsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature
politics. "Does theThirdWorld speak, andwhat do we hearwhen

it does?"We could rephrase the question: are these textswe call
ThirdWorld literatureawareof the individualimpulses that riseup
fromwithin the national entity to fight strategicmodels of
colonialism and repressivenationalisms?Do they have any sense of
the specificity and self-directionof the subaltern subject as the
determinant of his own history?Apart from the inherentbrutality
of colonialism, can these texts register the challenges that havemet
it, not fromwithin the capitalogic of bourgeois nationalism (we
know that story verywell), but from the "heterological"position
of capital'sOther?
"Modern literature"of the post-colonial ThirdWorld nation is

typicallycreditedwith the following periodization: 1) contact of a
native traditionwith European canons (usually resulting in a
"renaissance"of experimentation, abstraction, or subjectivitynot
previously known to the "target"culture, like theMay 4thMove
ment inChina, or the "BengalRenaissance"); 2) the rejectionof
Western influence,now seen as pernicious, and the riseof an ex
plicitly "nationalist"literature;and 3) a "New Literature"of
decolonization, the explicit attempt to break away fromWestern
aestheticmodels after independence,either into renovated forms of
ancient or tribalculture, or into avant-gardeexperimentation.
Some of these forms, as in contemporaryChina, stress "depoliticiza
tion" in reaction to periods of high political tension (Xiaobing, 17
23).
Of course, to see these three phases in this traditionalway is to
rehearse the notion thatThirdWorld "culture" isdependent on
colonialist/imperialistadvances: the three stages exist as reactive
strategies to the period of European "entry,"active exploitation,
forced "withdrawal,"and the attempt to cover up or neutralize the
tracesof European influence. Iwould like to concentrate in this
last section on a very brief attempt to locate the break between
these localmodernisms andwhat we might call a 'ThirdWorld
literature."
Strands of 'New Literature" in India, as inChina, have tried to
distance themselves from both Western mimicry and nationalist
189
Henry
Schwarz
realism.The mark of Western influence, however, seems indelible.

In characterizing the recent Indian short story, S. Balu Rao (in
1986) cites "new" inspiration fromMarx and Freud, aswell as ele
ments of "postmodernism,""pastiche"and anti-narrative,absurdity,
"ennui and alienation" (Anand, xii). The short story especially has
profited by being explicitlywritten forTV and cinema, achieving a
form in the Bombay film that is as glossy and circulatory as any
American TV serial. It would seem thatwhile popular culture in
India is characterizedby a double enslavement to both
neocolonialist postmodernism as aesthetic form and traditional
moral tale as content, the "avant-gardistbreak" in recent narrative
has consistently tried to distance itself from both local tradition
andwhat it perceives to be an increasinglydominant international
style.
In theThirdWorld of the sixties, as inmany of the "advanced"
countries, the attempt to create a radicalpolitical culture took in
spiration from the Sino-Soviet split.The state government of West
Bengal, for example, had been led since 1967 by aUnited Front
Coalition dominated by the pro-Moscow Communist Party of
India (CPI) and the nominally pro-Peking Communist Party of
India (Marxist) (CPI(M)). Beginning around 1965, non-electoral
factions brokewith the CPI(M). The political situation became
somewhatmore volatile here thanwas the casewith similarMaoist
splits in France and Italy.Rebel armies formed around amixture of
city intellectualsand tribalpopulations in the tea-planting areasof
the north. In the spring of 1967, nearNaxalbari, insurgents seized
land and executed a number of landowners. In the popular imagina
tion, the new factions took theirorders directly fromMao himself
Daily actually published editorials supporting themove
(People's
ment). A remarkableliteraturesprang up around this rebellion,
producing stories, novels, plays, songs and street theaternot only
within the political territoryof West Bengal proper, but in the
neighboring areasof East Pakistan (Bangladesh),Nepal, Bihar, and
Assam. "Naxalite"activitywas soon reported in distant regions
throughout India. "Naxalbari, 'Naxalism'and its supporters-the
Naxalites," soon became "household names throughout India."13
Naxalite literature, like the politicalmovement, was characterized
by a double perspective: a radicalunderstandingof the late
190
ProvocaionsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Litterature
capitalistworld economy, and vital interest in themyths and cus

toms of the peasantry that constituted the rebels'mass support.
Of the various progressive Indianwriters,Mahasweta Devi has
recentlybegun to attract attention in theWest.14 Her stories
reflect a direct involvementwith theNaxalite movement, particular
ly in her attention to this double perspective: the terminology of
radicalMarxism mingles with the dialect of the Santal tribalswho
made up its insurgentbase.Mahasweta's writing attempts to speak
from the subject-position of the subalternwhile recognizing the dif
ficulty of knowing this subject completely:with an acute apprecia
tion of the problematicGuha sets inmotion, her fictional
reconstructionsof subaltern consciousness acknowledge the "distor
tion as parametric."The anciently poor migrant workers and
peasantswho populate these stories are not fully knowable in litera
ture (indeed, they are for themost part illiteratethemselves); and
yet, like the city intellectuals turnedNaxalite insurgents in
Mahasweta shows how writers themselvescan begin
"Draupadi,"
"orienting theirbook learning to the soil they liveon and learning
new combat and survival skills" (191). This writing is far from the
indigenous (and exemplary) social realist tradition.Mahasweta has
in effect invented a new literaryform that attempts to symbolically
solve the problems of unintelligibility presented by this new sub
ject. Inmoments of confrontation, landownersand government of
ficials face for the first time the terrorof confronting theOther,
experienced as an epistemic violence that shatters self-masteryand
distinctions of caste and class.The primordialbattles over
economic exploitation are transformedhere into linguisticor semi
otic ones that again raiseproblems of knowledge andmeaning.
Yet, within this radicaldevaluation of hierarchyand social dif
ference,we repeatedlyconfront the inexorablesystematicityof
these relations, as they become revealed to us as permutations or
epiphenomena of somemuch largerand profoundly unknowable
order thatmust remainunspoken. The readerwill excuseme if I
summarize.
In the story "Seeds," a peasant has been ordered to guard a small
plot of landwhere the landlorddumps the corpses of laboror
ganizers.Their efforts symbolically invest this "barrenand arid
stretch of land"with a growth of "thorny swordlike leaves."The
"lush greenery of the land almost strikesone hard in the eye. Incon
191
Henry Schwarz
gruous, almostweird" (20). Dulan, the guard, is "theweirdest

sight of them all."He isprohibited to cultivate the land;but after
the landlordkills his son, Dulan defies themalik (landlord) and
plants it in rice.Enraged, themalik attacks him.Now the ethical
battle is fought on Dulan's reclaimed territory.As a lowcaste
Ganju, the position of mastery isunthinkable for him. Yet this in
significant subject erupts, overturning hierarchiesand violating
traditionalsocial distinctions: "Lachmanwas shocked to discover
he was crying. Pain and fear.He, the almighty Lachman on the
ground, andDulan aGanju standing before him" (40)! Lachman's
economic and caste capital-as Rajput and landlord-becomes radi
cally devalued as the objectified laborof theGanju and the dead in
surgents violently "decommodifies"; the unleashed energy is
unquantifiable and unchallengeable.Having never before been
rangedwithin the dominant systems of exchange, the eruption of
this new space breaks the form of the old order and inverts sym
bolic relationsof power and territory:"Lachmanknew he was to
tally inDulan's hands and he could smell death. It terrified
him.... Lachman was a professional, knew the exact cost of a bul
let.Killing did not disturb his inner self.Dulan was not a profes
sional.The rock cost nothing. He was killing Lachman because
only thus could he purify himself' (41). The languageof ritual and
religion, so vital to the consciousness of the insurgent, ishere tell
ingly recoded byMahasweta into the universal languageof
economics, revealing the central ambiguity and unintelligibility of
the insurgent'smotives to those in power. Simultaneously, the sub
altern is shown enmeshedwithin the largermatrix of international
capital relations.He is the "weirdest sight of them all," the un
counted variable that yet possesses unknown potentials of force
and direction.
Dulan slips through the net of informationand control, evading
the police and the recordkeepersas an uncountable element, mere
ly another body on the crowded land.He defies corrupt State
power by remaining silent.He never organized or worked, and
remainsa blank spacewithin the grid of surveillance that stretches
across the land from government outpost tomanor house. His ac
tion simply cannot be measured within the "insignificance"of the
subaltern space. In an ironic twist to the theme of surveillance that
recurs in these stories ("in this Indiaof ours, even aworm isunder
192
Propocatums
Toward
IAterature
a police station" [187]), Dulan's position is twice transformed:

from that of a passive link in the landlord'spower structure, to
that of the deadlyOther, and then back into untraceable insig
nificance: "He wiped off the dragmark and the blood with leafy
branches
of the lantana and went
to sleep as soon as he lay on the
platform" (41).With literally"nothing" at his disposalDulan can

not be counted by the system of exchange that prices bullets. The
subject position he inhabits is dynamic, resistingentrapment by
avoiding semiotic (exchange) and ideological (partypolitics)
closure.He leavesno tracks.
In the story "Salt,"a local landlordandmoney-lender refuses to
sell salt to the tribalswho work for him when they become or
ganized and demand higher wages. In his anger, the landlord
refuses to partwith "one of the cheapest commodities in India":
"I'll kill themwith salt" (21)! The peasants eatmore grain, but
don't like itwithout salt; and as a village doctor explains,without
salt the body metabolism will graduallymalfunction, resulting in
slow death. One of the tribals takes to stealing the salt-licksput
out for jungle animals by the Forest Department. The theft is com
plicated by themalevolence of an old elephant, a "loner"whose
motives are as inscrutableas those of the tribals to the Forest
Department. The thematicsof this story revolve around two sys
tems of unintelligibility.On the one hand, we are presentedwith
the consciousness of both the tribalsand the elephant, entities
whose motives and actions are unknown to the landowners,Forest
Department, and city intellectuals.These two "natural"conscious
nesses are forced into antagonism by the inherentviolence and im
measurable complexity of the economic order, figured here
ironically in the petty andmalicious behavior of the landlord,and
in the visceral, systemicmetaphor of the tribal'sbody as described
by the village doctor: "Salt controls the fluid in the body and the
blood. Denied salt, blood coagulation increases.The heartwill find
it hard to pump that thickblood and breathingwill become more
difficult. There'll be muscle cramps.... In fact, therewill be a
general decay of thewhole body" (28). Like themystery of the
body, the economic order that binds these peasants to timeless ex
ploitation seems unknowable. Only its symptoms are felt. These
two systems-the "natural"consciousness, and the rationalizedcir
cuits of exchange-are like separateuniverses.As in "Seeds," the
193
Henry
Schwarz
violent confrontation between these two systems ismetaphorized

by territory,not merely the vast geography of Indiabut now a
galactic immensity."The tea shop of Daltonganj was not amillion
miles from Jhoojhar,yet theywere in two different starsof this
universe.... And the dark space between them, stretching across
millions of miles, separateangrywhirling stars from each other"
(27-8).
The elephant finally kills three tribals for stealing the salt licks.
The Village Elder senses differently, however: "Had they been able
to buy salt, the threemen and the elephantwould not have to die.
Someone elsewas guilty, something else.How about theman who
did not sell them salt?Or how about the laws?Or the system?The
law and the system underwhose protection [the landlord] could
with impunity refuse to sell salt.His mind was unsettled and his
language limited, so he could not explain anything to anybody"
(38). But to the police officerswho "close" the case, the salt
stealers "Must have been drunk, poor bastards.... The matter of
stealing salt is so incomprehensible.Cheap stuff like salt" (37)! The
act goes into the records as "Diedwhile stealing the elephant's
salt," a classic example of the administrator's"proseof counter-in
surgency."Mahasweta depicts the tribalsas inscrutablesigns fading
off into awhite background, out of the scene of their
misunderstanding: "A long dark line,walking across thewhite
sands to Jhoojhar.Salt was something one could give one's life for,
this he knew. The babuswould never understand, andwhat hap
pened would always remainunreal to them.And because he knew
this, he did not once look back.Gradually their figures grew
smaller against the sand" (38). The inspectors (babus) have lost
the opportunity for comprehending that "other universe"of mean
ing that is the subaltern consciousness. It does not registerwithin
their limited signifying practices,which can only notice criminal
acts, a number of deaths, and the insignificantprice of salt; they
reduce the tribals' intuitiveknowledge of largersystems to a form
of drunkenness.The tribals return to theirmeaningful, complicated
world, leavingonly that one line in the police register: "Theywalk
quickly.Only when they return to their familiarworld would their
minds
be at ease. The world in which there was no disbelief, no

for the death of Purti and his friends, or of the ob
easy explanation
194
ProvocationsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature
jective truth of their existence.That was theworld they hurried

back to" (38).
Can we callMahasweta's stories "national allegories"?Yes, in that
they dealwith the failuresand frustrationsof life in India;no, in
that they dealwith these failures in an internationalistframe.The
explicit content of these stories in some sense can be seen to
manifest one of the theoreticalcoordinates of Jameson's "Third
World literature,"a structuraldisjunction symbolically expressing
the competition between conflictingmodes of production that
occur in the country, "the overlap or the coexistence of
precapitalistwith nascent capitalistor technological features"
("MagicRealism," 311). But on the other hand, the narrative
framehas been extended, and cannot exclude the restof theworld
aswell; not only are capitalistpractices clashingwith older tribal
structures in theseworks, but tribaland postcolonial capitalist
economies are directly confronting the full force of global late
capitalism itself.As in another story of the period by Siddhartha
Ghosh, inwhich police bullets are counted on U.S. and Soviet
registers, the systemicmetaphors ofMahasweta's fiction link back
to "allWorld" structures (Gosh, 20). The stylistic and generic fea
turesof her style,mingling high and low Bengali, international
English and textbook scientific languages, interspersedwith il
literate tribaldialect and songs, referring to recent historical events
(Naxalbariand Gandhi) and ancient narrative forms, constellate a
universe of polysemic codes drawn from various discourses.The
form of this discourse, in its fragmentsand bizarre combinations, is
perhaps not so far from the "hyper-aesthetics"of FirstWorld
postmodernism; yet, paradoxically, it speaks from the position of
the anciently poor, the "alwaysalready"unrepresented, in a curious
combinationwith the recently theorized "simulacral"aesthetics of
the "hyperreal"as the always already represented.15
The story "Draupadi"registerseach of these levels. It is a story
of the arrestof a tribal revolutionarywanted for incitement to
violence. The rebels, among themDraupadi (nicknamedDopdi)
and her husband, hide in the jungle. Like the jungle's blackness,
the insurgentmind is impenetrableby the rationalityof theArmy
Handbook followed by the police. The conflict between these two
systems of consciousness revealsan essential duplicitywithin the na
tional order: 'The Special Forces, attempting to pierce that dark
195
Henry
Schwarz
by an armed search, compelled quite a few Santals [tribals] in the

various districtsof West Bengal tomeet theirMaker against their
will. By the IndianConstitution, all human beings, regardlessof
caste or creed, are sacred.Still, accidents like this do happen" (187).
The Police call in an "expert"on rebel behavior, Senanayak,of
whom Spivak comments, "in Senanayak I find the closest ap
proximation to the First-World scholar in searchof theThird
World" (179). Indeed, the figureof this expert articulatesour own
ambivalent position in passing aesthetic judgments on theThird
World narrative:at the capture of Draupadi, he experiencesboth
"sorrow (theory) and joy (practice)."He "respects them because
they could neither be understood nor demolished if theywere
treatedwith the attitude, 'It'snothing but a bit of impertinent
game-playingwith guns"' (189). Senanayak is able to "change
color fromworld toworld" (we recallhere the territorializationof
the subaltern consciousness from our previous examples, and ironi
cally, the ability of certain intellectuals to successfully "learnnew
skills") in order to "represent"the other world, to make it intel
ligible and therefore conquerable.
Senanayak is enlisted to crack themysterious language used by
Draupadi and her husband, a "savage tongue, incomprehensible
even to the Santals" (188). This is the song of joy andwarning
given at the capturing of arms, and later towarn her comrades that
she has been arrested: "Now Dopdi spreadsher arms, raisesher
face to the sky, turns toward the forest, and ululateswith the force
of her entire being. Once, twice, three times.At the thirdburst the
birds in the trees at the outskirts of the forest awake and flap their
wings. The echo of the call travelsfar" (195). The primitive voice
isnot valorized here as some unalterable presence or self-sufficient
sign. The opposite is in fact true.The rebels devise theirown ar
bitrary code of transmissionwhich changeswith the situation, an
informationalstructurenot fixed by the rulesof theArmy Hand
bookbut adaptive to contingency. It is the very contingency and
transformationalnature of this system that is unintelligible to
police rationality:"If anyone is caught, the others must catch the
timing and change theirbideout.... The clue will be such that the
opposition won't see it,won't understand it even if they do" (194,
italicizedwords inEnglish in the original).
196
ProvocationsTowarda Theoryof ThnrdWorld Literature
The word counterbecomes the locus of this transformative

capacity. "Tellme, how many times can I run away?What will
they do if they catch me? They will counterme. Let them ... killed
by police in an encounter
. . ." (192).
Counter
is the mispronuncia
tion of police language, transformednow into the realityof the

"encounter"with the subaltern,which invariablyresults in
violence. Dopdi mispronounces, yet understands fully themultiple
registersof theword. The face-to-face "police encounter" depends
on a strategy for the erasureof difference: "counter-insurgency,"
the decoding into intelligible language.The sign is the unit
(counter) of this violence. Dopdi, as an allegory of the in
scrutabilityof the sign, is reduced and constrained to rational sig
nification by her capture, interrogation,and representationat the
hands of the expert. In the vital disjunction of the expert's
knowledge-between theory and practice, sympathy and control
the sign (or subaltern) erupts and demands to be confronted again
in its inscrutability,strippedof themaster code of systematicity,
the counter-violence by which it can register its presence for the
master.
The bodily extension of this logic is rape.Draupadi refuses to be
clothed when she is brought before the expert, remainsnaked as a
challenge to his ability to penetrate and reinscribe the rebelmind:
"What's the use of clothes?You can stripme, but how can you
clothe me again?Are you aman" (196)? In the disjunction central
ly presentwithin the process of reinscriptionand now made
manifest by the "encounter," the expert shudders.Draupadi challen
ges: 'There isn't aman here that I should be ashamed. I will not
let you put my cloth on me. What
more
can you do? Come
on,
counterme-come on, counterme-?

Draupadi pushes Senanayakwith her twomangled breasts, and
for the first time Senanayak is afraid to stand before an unarmed
target, terriblyafraid"(196).
If it can be said that a 'ThirdWorld literature"exists (I have
hoped to show that this question is still verymuch open), Iwould
like to suggest that it exists in this awareness (if not necessarily in
its politics), an awareness that isnot confined to particular
geographical regions or stages of economic development, though it
is sometimes experienced therewith extreme urgency. ThirdWorld
literatureopposes the culturally homogenizing tendenciesof
197
Henry
Schwarz
neocolonialism and postmodernism, not by remaining "backward"

or by glorifying village life,but rather through the technologically
advanced practice of inventing tactics.Such local tactics function as
moments of cultural resistance to the organized anarchyof the
global economic order. Capital attempts its cultural homogeniza
tion by a dual, seemingly contradictory strategy: creating both
similarityand difference, so that separate locales operate at levels
either above or below the "averagerateof profit," insuringglobal
disequilibriumwithin the largerunified logic of capital production.
These tactics, as the very condition of their empowerment, are
properly "unintelligible"within this system.They propose new
methods of destructuration.ThirdWorld literatureaswe under
stand it here is thus the inventionof western postmodernism,
which finds itsmost pressing task to be to chart the operations and
tendenciesof the "cultural logic of late capitalism" itself.As Guha
remarkson the impossibilityof fully knowing the consciousness of
theOther, the distance between these two perspectives can never
be reconciled, but rather itmust be acknowledged that the "distor
tion isparametric";readingThirdWorld literaturecan only be a
political practice of reflectionon our own situation, a reflection
thatmakes us awareof the gaps and blind spotswithin the
strategicmodel we have developed, and of what we are doing
about them.
are various statements
There
are various
statements
Notes
throughout
In Other Worlds:
Essays in Cultural
iticism (New York:Methuen, 1987), esp. "ScatteredSpeculations on theQues

tion of Value," pp. 154-175, and the reason for translating"Draupadi,"pp. 179
185.
2
With qualified enthusiasm: see Rob Nixon, "London Calling: V. S. Naipaul
and the License of Exile" SAQ, Vol. 87, No. 1,Winter 1987, pp. 1-38.
3 "Modernity and Revolution,' New Left Reiew 146, July-August 1984. But see
also Jameson, "Periodizing the Sixties," in The SixtiesWithoutApology (Min
neapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1985), pp. 178-209.
4 As Laura Kipnis points out, George Steiner's praises of Eastern European dissi
dent writers, not unlikeNorman Mailer's infatuationwith murderers and thugs, can
be seen as a nostalgic longing for trulyoppositional heroes in a culture that has
banished those forms from its intellectual scene. "Aesthetics and Foreign Policy," So
cial Text 15, Fall 1986, pp. 89-98.
198
Provocatwns
Toward
Literature
5Michel de Certeau, L'Inventiondu quotidienLArts de faire (Paris: Inedit,

1975), trans.by Stephen Rendall as The Practice ofEverydayLife (Berkeley:Univer
sity of California Press, 1986). Related to this are the growing number of studies
on marginal cultures in theU. S. and Europe: for one example, seeHenry Louis
Gates, Jr., ed., 'Race,"Writing and Difference (Chicago:University of Chicago
Press, 1985).
6
We
should
note
here
that in its "classical"
sense,
as it appears
inMarx
and
Lenin for example, imperialismdesignates primarily a relationshipbetween the

metropolitan centers themselves rather thanour more recent notion, developed
specifically afterWWI, of the relationshipof metropolis to colony. SeeWolfgang
Mommsen, Theoriesof Imperialism,trans.P. S. Falla (Chicago:University of
Chicago Press, 1980). The collection by SamirAmin, Dynamics ofGlobal Crisis
(New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1982), discusses some of these
conflicts inmore depth.
7
Vital to this argument is Jameson's earlier essay, 'Postmodernism, or, the Cul
turalLogic of Late Capitalism,"New LeftReview 146, July-August 1984, pp. 53-92,
"towhich the present essay forms a pendant."Within the current debates on
postmodernism, perhaps best invoked by the fin-de-millennial prophesies of Jean
Baudrillard andArthur Kroker, such tacticshavemore contextualweight. The pos
sibility that the "cultural logic of late capitalism"has not yet absorbed and
reinscribedsome small pockets of resistance serves as the basis for a counter-tenden
cy that restoresdifference
within the global circuit, a difference that preserves vertical
hierarchiesof culturewhere the "smooth horizontal register"of commodity ex
change seems to be erasing them. I am grateful toMichael Speaks formany
animated discussions on this point.
8
Jean-PaulSartre,Being andNothingness, trans.Hazel Barnes (New York: Pock
et Books, 1956), p. 343. On the contrary, our relation to theThirdWorld Other in
the contemporary period would rather resemble the institutionalitydefined inCriti
que ofDialectical Reason, trans.Alan Sheridan-Smith (London:Verso, 1976), pp.
576-663.
9 Five volumes of essays have so farbeen published under the editorship of
Ranajit Guha, SubalternStudies:Writings on SouthAsian History and Society (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1982-). An anthology is currendy being prepared: Selected
SubalternStudies, eds. Gayatri Spivak andRanajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1986).
10
Ranajit Guha, "On Some Aspects of theHistoriography of Colonial India,"
Subaltern Studies I, (1982), p. 5. Emphasis in original. See also ParthaChatterjee,
Nationalist Thought in theColonialWorl-A
Deivative Discourse? (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1986).
11 For some suggestions on the transpositionof this historywriting into literary
criticism, although quite independent of the Subaltern Studies project, seeAbdul
JanMohammed, "TheEconomy ofManichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Dif
ference inColonialist Literature," inHenry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., 'Race,"Writing,
and Difference (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1986), andHomi K. Bhab
ha, "SignsTaken forWonders: Questions of Ambivalence andAuthority Under a
199
Henry
Schwarz
Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817," inGates; and also his "TheOther Question-The
Stereotype and Colonial Discourse,' in Scretn,Vol. 24, No. 2, 1983. We will dis
cuss a fictional account of such an administratorbelow. The most convincing
recoveryof the subalternposition in historywriting I know of isRanajit Guha,
"Chandra'sDeath," SubalternStudis V, 1987, pp. 135-165.
12 For a
convincing turn that allows a "polemical"value to this subject,while
resisting a "non-strategic essentialism," seeGayatri Spivak, "SubalternStudies:
Deconstructing Historiography' Subalten Studies IV, 1985.
13 Edward Duyker, Tribal
Gueaillas: The Santals ofWest Bengal and theNaxalite
Movement (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 1. For more on theNaxalites,
see Sumanta Banerjee, India'sSimmeringRevolution: TheNaxalite Uprising (Lon
don: Zed Press, 1984); J. C. Johari,Naxalite Politics in India (Delhi: Research Pub
lications, 1972); S. Sen, D. Panda, andA. Lahiri, eds., Naxalbari andAfter: A Fron
tierAnthology, 2 Vols. (Calcutta:Zed Press, 1978).
14
Gayatri Spivakmust take the credit for bringing our attention to this remark
able literature.She has translated two stories, "Draupadi"pp. 179-196, and "Breast
Giver? pp. 222-240, printed in In Other Worlds: Essaysin Cultural Criticism (New
York:Methuen, 1987). I understand she is currently atwork on more. The only
other available stories byMahasweta are "Salt," trans.TapanMitra in Protest:An
Anthology ofBengali ShortStoriesof the70s, ed. ParthaChatterjee (Calcutta:Achin
tyaCupa, 1981), and "Seeds," trans.by the author, inMulk Raj Anand and S. Balu
Rao, eds., Panorama:An AnthologyfModMernIndian ShortStoies (Delhi: Sterling
Publishers Private Ltd., 1986), pp. 20-43. Samik BanerJee has translatedFive Plays
(Calcutta:Seagull Press, 1987). All referenceswill be given in the text by page
number.
15
See JeanBaudrillard, Simulations, trans.Paul Foss, et al. (New York: Semi
otext(e), 1983), andArthur Kroker and David Cook, The PostmodernScene:Ex
crementalCultural andHyper-Aesthetics(New York: St.Martin's Press, 1986).
Baudrillard'sconception of the "mass" in In The Shadowof theSikntMajorities,
trans.Foss, et al. (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983) as the 'implosion"of sociology
can be read as a confirmation, somewhatmore nihilistic, of these points.
List ofWorks Cited

Aijaz Ahmad. "Jameson'sRhetoric of Otherness and the 'NationalAllegory'." Social
Text 17 (Fall, 1987), 3-25.
Mulk Raj Anand and S. Balu Rao, eds. Panorama:An Anthology ofModen Indian
Short Stories.New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 1986.
Michel de Certeau. The Practice ofEvryday Life. Trans. Stephen Randall. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1986.
SiddharthaGosh. "Reportage:One." Trans. KalyanMaity. In ParthaChatterjee,
ed. Protest:An Antholgy ofBengali Short Stoies of the70s. Calcutta: Achintya
Gupe, 1981, 1-28.
Ranajit Guha. ElementaryAspects of Peasant Insurgencyin Colonial India. Delhi: Ox
fordUniversity Press, 1983.
200
ProvocatonsToward a Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature

. The Prose of Counter-Insurgency."SubalternStuies II (1983), 1-42.
"On Some Aspects of theHistoriography of Colonial India." Subaltern
Stdies I (1982), 1-38.
Fredric Jameson. "OnMagic Realism in Film." Critical Inquity 12 (Winter, 1985),
301-325.
. "hird World Literature in the Era ofMultinational Capitalism." SocialText
15 (Fall, 1986), 65-88.
ErnestMandel. Late Capitaism. Trans. JorisDe Bres. London: Verso, 1975.
VoiceLiterary SuppkmentEditors. "GreatMoments inLit. Crit." VoiceLiterary Sup
plment, October, 1988, 9-12.
Tang Xiaobing. "Quiet Revolution in theChinese Scene." PolygraphI (1987), 10
26.
201

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University of Southern Mississippi

Provocations toward a Theory of Third World Literature

Provocations Toward a Theory of

'The tmckis tofind outwhat thedepil they think theyare up to"

The demands of the double question-"does theThirdWorld

literaryscene and their unprecedented acclaim by international

as on the texts themselves.

Just as the theory of late

capitalismmakes it clear that FirstWorld economic prosperity is de

Spivak, but to ThirdWorld Marxist intellectuals likeAijaz Ahmad,

a Theory of Third World

for one, has observed that such fascinationsstem from a crisis

In the face of such challen

ges, semioticiansadvance new schemasof "heterological"practice

homogenization in the rest of the capitalistworld" (emphasis

ProvocaionsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature

deconstruction, the argument for "difference"ends up looking very

determining influenceof the indigenous social structuresof the un

ProvocationsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature

determined by theworld-system that implicates"allWorlds" in its

In this context we must name another attempt to theorize and in

that is, independentlyof the elite to themaking and development of

foundersof national consciousness, but mark instead the 'failureof

"the ordinary man

of figuring in it as a principle of totalization and as a principle of

makes explicit an overturning of knowledge" (deCerteau, 3-4).

Provocaims Thvard a Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature

restoring historicity to themovement which leadsanalytical

back to their frontiers

itself into our

techniques ... and reorganize[s] the place fromwhich discourse is

subject thus unearthed is not in any sense to be considered as essen

tirely eliminate the necessary distortion of historywriting toward

ProvocaumsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature

politics. "Does theThirdWorld speak, andwhat do we hearwhen

"Modern literature"of the post-colonial ThirdWorld nation is

realism.The mark of Western influence, however, seems indelible.

ProvocaionsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Litterature

capitalistworld economy, and vital interest in themyths and cus

gruous, almostweird" (20). Dulan, the guard, is "theweirdest

a Theory of Third World

a police station" [187]), Dulan's position is twice transformed:

of the lantana and went

to sleep as soon as he lay on the

platform" (41).With literally"nothing" at his disposalDulan can

violent confrontation between these two systems ismetaphorized

be at ease. The world in which there was no disbelief, no

ProvocationsTowarda Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature

jective truth of their existence.That was theworld they hurried

by an armed search, compelled quite a few Santals [tribals] in the

ProvocationsTowarda Theoryof ThnrdWorld Literature

The word counterbecomes the locus of this transformative

tion of police language, transformednow into the realityof the

can you do? Come

counterme-come on, counterme-?

neocolonialism and postmodernism, not by remaining "backward"

iticism (New York:Methuen, 1987), esp. "ScatteredSpeculations on theQues

a Theory of Third World

5Michel de Certeau, L'Inventiondu quotidienLArts de faire (Paris: Inedit,

that in its "classical"

Lenin for example, imperialismdesignates primarily a relationshipbetween the

List ofWorks Cited

ProvocatonsToward a Theoryof ThirdWorld Literature