Afro-centric Solutions bad and A-to the Imperialism K

Aff Section Affirmative Frontline Backlines o Ext off #1 Permutation o Ext off #2 Leads to Conflict o Ext off #3 Precludes Political Action o Ext off #4 Material Focus Good o Ext off #5 Postcolonialists Wrong Specific answers o AT: Mbembe o They Feed Capitalism/Globalization o They stay Locked in Colonialism o They Make Revolution Impossible o The Double Bind of Violence o They Mask Neo-colonialism o Depoliticization Turn o Indigenous Solutions Fail Neg section Local Good Postcolonialism Good Outside Aid Bad AT: Dirlik p. 27-28 p. 29-30 p. 31-33 p. 34 p. 2-6 p. 7 p. 8 p. 9-11 p. 12 p. 13 p. 14-18 p. 19 p. 20 p. 21 p. 22 p. 23 p. 24 p. 25-26

Affirmative Frontline (1/5)

1. Permutation: do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alternative. This solves bestaccepting some forms of essentialized identity is key to creating a unified voice of resistance. Albert Paolini, lecturer in International Relations at LaTrobe University in Australia, 1999, Navigating Modernity: Postcolonialism, Identity, and International Relations, bjx In postcolonialism, this sensibility informs most attempts at carving out a subversive and radical space in opposition to Western dominance and hegemony. Yet its moral and intellectual force has come to unwind quickly in the late modern age, more so than the emphasis on resistance, with the increasing acceptance of nonessentialist and hybrid accounts of culture and history. The irony is that at the general, universal level, the focus on cultural difference has served an important empowering role whose coherence weakens considerably once the specific and particular aspects of most cultural positions are taken into account. Thus the retreat into difference and particularity makes sense only at a broad level; once the actual differences and particularities within and between various postcolonial cultures are acknowledged, there can be no one authentic or essential voice of opposition and resistance somehow untainted by the processes of colonialism and modernity. This seemingly innocuous point has been difficult to concede. Postmoderns such as Spivak have tried to overcome the problems inherent in attempting to establish an independent subaltern of postcolonial voice by utilizing a "strategic essentialism," that is, allowing for some form of essentialized identity sufficient strategically to fulfill the requirements of opposition and resistance and simultaneously accepting the impossibility of any authentic or "native" identity. This allows us, with proper acknowledgment of the necessary caveats, to move beyond a poststructural impasse. More modernist thinkers like Said have found it difficult, even within a postcolonial guise, to let go of essentialized constructions of subjectivity that lay the groundwork for a differentiated identity. The alternative fails- postcolonialism's hybridity empirically fails to stop wars such as the conflict in Somalia. Renouncing agency in the affairs of Africa has only allowed more violence and death to occur. Adebayo Williams, visiting fellow at Afrika-Studiecentrum, 1997, Third World Quarterly, Vol 18, No 5, pp 821-841, 1997, The postcolonial flaneur and other fellow-travellers: conceits for a narrative of redemption, bjx Lacanian psychoanalysis is a revisionist assault on the Freudian concept of a coherent subject. The concept of hybridity is a rethreading of a revisionism. Its crisis is thus underwritten by the conceptual impasse of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Derridean philosophy. Underlying the whole amalgam is the old empiricist problematic with its fragmented and fragmenting technique, its preference for scattered and isolated facts which spare the mind uncomfortable political conclusions. Hence the new critical preference of hybridity for the reading of isolated texts rather than the totality of literary production. There can be little doubt as to why this methodological monadism, this preference for mini-narratives as opposed to grand narratives and synthesis should and an ideal breeding ground in an academe still in thrall to new criticism and its benign mutations. Postcolonialism, as it is marked by the concept of hybridity, is a symptom pretending to be a diagnosis. The intellectual charms of contingency and the renunciation of agency have not stopped the agents of history. Hybridity did not stop three wars between India and Pakistan, despite the fact that the latter was hacked out of the former on the eve of independence. Indeed, neither has hybridity prevented the homogenous clans of Somalia from permanently waging war among themselves nor did it prevent the grotesque barbarity visited upon US soldiers in that unhappy land. Hybridity or even assimilation did not confuse a superpower like France as to the real object and objective of its forty three documented interventions in `postcolonial Africa, and neither did it dissuade the Nigerian military authorities from executing Kenule Saro-Wiwa, who was making legitimate demands for his distinct nationality within the realities of a multinational Nigeria. Thus it is that an initial beneficial insight into the schizophrenic nature of the self, the overdetermined instability of race, class, nationalities and their textualisations is turned into a premature arrival at the place of the golden truth.

2.

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3. Postcolonial criticism upholds the conditions that produced the need for criticism in the first place. Its focus solely on the local precludes collective action which is key to challenging domination. Arif Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology University of Oregon, 1998, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global
Capitalism, bjx Postcolonial criticism provides an example of how cultural criticism through an inflation of its claims or an unbridled expression of its scope, may dissipate its critical energies to end up in an uncritical, and narcissistic, celebration of its own novelty. Like its progenitor, postmodernsim, postcolonialism has its intellectual basis in the poststructuralist revolt against the very real limitations of Eurocentric modernity (in both its liberal and Marxist versions), and has answered a very real critical need; not only in calling into question the obliviousness to the local of generalized notions of modernity, but also in calling attention to problems of a novel nature that have emerged with recent transformation in global political and social relations. The former includes, in addition to the homogenizing claims of modernity, its oppositional by-products that reify collective identities of one kind or another, with consequences that are often divisive, at times genocidal. The latter entails both the structural transformations that have attended the globalization of capitalism, and the related reconfiguation of post-World War II economic and political boundaries with the emergence of new social forces that find in the scrambling of reified identities outlets for expressing their own desires for liberation. Postcolonial criticism has quickly spent its critical power, however, as its questioning of totalizing solutions has turned into exclusion from criticism of the historical and the structural contexts for the local, without reference to which criticism itself is deprived of critical self-consciousness and, as it celebrates itself, knowingly or unknowingly also celebrates the conditions that produced it. Whether postcolonial criticism has been appropriated by those who did not share its initial critical intentions is a moot question, as its methodological denial of structures and its methodological individualism has facilitated such appropriation. Rather than a critique of earlier radicalisms from the inside as initially intended, postcolonialism in its unfolding has turned into a repudiation of the possibility of radical challenges to the existing system of social and political relations. Its preoccupation with local encounters and the politics of identity rules out a thoroughgoing critique of the structures of capitalism, or of other structurally shaped modes of exploitation and oppression, while also legitimizing arguments against collective identities that are necessary to struggles against domination and hegemony. Ironically, the call for attention to "difference" has ended up rendering "difference" itself into a metahistorical principle, making it nearly impossible to distinguish one kind of "difference" from another politically. The repudiation of teleology in postcolonial criticism (and postmodernism in general) has created intellectual spaces for the voicing of alternatives to a Eurocentric modernity, allowing significant speech to those silenced earlier, or disdained as castaways from history. On the other hand, the same postcolonialism is quick to undermine such alternatives by denying the possibility of authenticity of claims to collective identity.

Affirmative Frontline (3/5)

4. Postcolonial thought locks itself into inaction through its ignorance of nondiscursive terms. Supposedly colonial actions such as aid must be adopted as a first step of decolonisation. Jasper Goss, University of New South Wales, 1996, Third World Quarterly, 17:2, 239 - 250,
Postcolonialism: subverting whose empire?, ellipses in original, bjx Yet in positing projects of postcolonialism , many writers, as I have argued, have sought to go beyond colonialism and have failed to address adequately which historical influences and conditions remain. The problem it seems is that in the rush to find postcolonial states, subjectivities and conditions, few people have set in process projects of decolonisation. 44 Decolonisation would come, according to postcolonialists, once postcolonialism had been enunciated and enacted. Yet this is simply question begging. There are some highly `colonial responses that would solve massive inequities (eg adequate distribution of resources, land, water, food) within the world. These projects of decolonisation, however achieved (though liberal and Marxist projects of nationalism have `failed ), would it seems be the first step in the realisation of some hoped for condition of postcolonialism. For instance, community action programmes and non-governmental sponsored projects (among others) are surely projects that lead to greater autonomy and independence, factors vital for decolonisation. That these forms have existed separately from the enunciation of postcolonialism should not be forgotten. I am also hesitant to accept that any process of decolonisation simply begins in the `text . Postcolonial critics, it seems, have guaranteed themselves the position of arm chair decolonisers, with the primacy of a textual role being the most prominent in anti-colonial struggles. Dirlik asks `not whether this [postcolonial] global intelligentsia can (or should) return to national loyalties but whether...it can generate a thorough-going criticism of its own ideology and formulate practices of resistance against the system of which it is a product.45 For such a project of radical decolonisation and anticolonialism I would emphasise the need for new sets of ideas to be developed about the relationships between discourses and social orders. These are of course not simply separable and their interrelationships are exceedingly complex. In some cases postcolonial theory has contributed to formulating new sets of ideas, but until there is a greater incorporation of the `material (whether real or hybrid) as a social force affected by and affecting discourses, rather than simply reducing all forms to textual discourses, much postcolonialism is doomed to an eternal present; a vicious circle that tells us `how something is, but contains deeply contradictory strategies of change since all dominating referents are self-determined. Perhaps it is better not simply to seek an either/or position in postcolonialism, but rather to work for projects of decolonisation that include selfreflexivity not based solely on discursive terms, but which occur with an acknowledgment that while, for example, colonialism can be a discursive form, discursive forms are also influenced by classes, genders and ethnicities, which despite their heterogeneous constructions and histories can still have force as structures and institutions. In this way postcolonialism can be read as a project of decolonisation that is informed by analyses of the relationships between discourses and social orders and thus acts as an anticolonial force rather than a potentially ambivalent conservative project.

Affirmative Frontline (4/5)

5. Postcolonialism is inextricably tied with Eurocentrism- postcolonialist intellectuals can't help but overlook the unique circumstances of third world populations and the potential attractiveness of modernity. Albert Paolini, lecturer in International Relations at LaTrobe University in Australia, 1999,
Navigating Modernity: Postcolonialism, Identity, and International Relations, bjx It is not so much that because of these origins the postmodern is not able to provide insights into non-Western societies but, as many critics have noted, that postmodernism proceeds from a peculiarly Western experience of disillusionment with modernity that may not be appropriate to societies that are still coming to terms with modernity and its challenge to traditions and the premodern. Thus, the politics that often accompanies this disillusionment (ranging from nihilism to a retreat from conventional political action) may not provide effective or relevant strategies to people and movements attempting to navigate a different set of demands and opportunities provided by modernity. The very Eurocentrism of Western bias of the postmodern turn may also, ironically, marginalize or even exclude the ostensible Third World focus of postcolonialism. Dirlik notes that this is a particular problem for the motif of hybridity. In highlighting the postcolonial intellectual's elevated status in the First World academy, Dirlik argues that these intellectuals' professions of hybridity and in-betweenness as a condition of postcoloniality are somewhat hollow: "The hybridity to which postcolonial criticism refers is uniformly between the postcolonial and the First World, never, to my knowledge, between one postcolonial intellectual and another." One could go beyond the intellectual and ask whether the condition of hybridity speaks to the intersubjective experience of people on the ground in the various Third World locations. If this is a valid observation of the postcolonial discourse, then it suggests a serious shortcoming in the relevance of the motif of hybridity for postcolonial societies. As it stands, I think Dirlik's criticism needs to be qualified. The First World and the postcolonial are not discrete realisms in the case of which, in the words of Kipling, "never the twain shall meet." The First World or the West is present in the postcolonial, both in the Western academy and in the Third World village or city, and the postcolonial, as Dirlik admits, is also present in the First World. The condition of hybridity is thus inevitably part of the intersubjective space. However, it may be that postcolonialism as discourse gives short shrift to the Third World. Dirlik is on surer ground in this respect. Indeed, he goes on to argue that postcolonialism tends to "exclude from its scope most of those who inhabit or hail from postcolonial societies. It does not account for the attractions of modernization and nationalism to vast numbers in Third World populations, let alone to those marginalized by national incorporation in the global economy." Dirlik has in mind the inability of postcolonial intellectuals in the West to see beyond their circumstance and postmodern lenses. One could go further and suggest that this failure to account for the attraction of modernity results from the postmodern disenchantment with modernity in the First World, a disenchantment that spills over in the postcolonial account of hybridity and ambivalence as a global condition that incorporates the Third World.

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( ) By insisting on radical change or mere condemnation, their alternative accomplishes nothing and only leaves the problems they critique in net-worse shape. Poole 01 (CHARLES POOLE -- Department of Epidemiology @ University of North Carolina School of Public Health Jrl of Epidemiol Community Health 2001;55:156-157 March available at: http://jech.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/55/3/156)

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) describes itself as "an independent federal agency that conducts foreign assistance and humanitarian aid to advance the political and economic interests of the United States" (http://www.usaid.gov). The explicit nationalism in this mission statement raises a problem that stretches far beyond any particular ideology: How should the public health community respond when any nation A

exerts an active interest in the public health of any nation B to further the economic and political interests of nation A? For Dr Avils, the answer is that when nation A is the United States and nation B is El Salvador, the response should be condemnation.1 He concludes from his case study of Ayalde's report on Salvadoran
public health2 and Omran's epidemiologic transition theory3 4 that both extol a harmful, Eurocentric colonialism; fail to consider the social, political and economic determinants of public health; and ignore health disparities.
In his critique of epidemiologic transition theory, Dr Avils disregards the fact that the causal response of "patterns of health and disease...to social and economic changes" is the theory's primary subject matter (page 3).4 He also overlooks the emphasis Omran placed from the start on examining transition disparities by socioeconomic measures such as gender and race: "The epidemiologic transition among the nonwhite population of the U.S. was slower than that among the whites. Whites have always been better off than nonwhites with regard to housing, education, living standards, social and economic levels, nutrition, access to medical care, and other cultural and demographic characteristics".(page 33)4 In his critique of Ayalde's report, Dr Avils overlooks much of that report's content. It goes to great lengths to attribute the current state of Salvadoran public health to widespread poverty. It links many public health problems, especially those of the rural poor, to the economic conditions of large scale coffee production. It draws dire public health implications from the fact that one fifth of the Salvadoran population lives in the United States. And it places great emphasis on the severe and acute public health needs of the thousands of Salvadoran refugees from the armed conflicts, some still in camps, and the thousands more internally displaced persons. (Specific points and page numbers available upon request.)2 Dr Avils imputes to epidemiologic transition theory a determinism it does not possess. This theory does not assert that any nation must undergo any specific transition. It merely provides general descriptions (models) of commonalities shared by populations after they are observed to undergo transitions that are similar in certain ways. Omran described three general transition models. In two of them, changing social, economic and political conditions are the only major determinants of changing public health. In the third, targeted public health interventions have major effects early on; then social, economic and political changes become the dominant forces, as in the other two models. Omran noted that the particularistic conditions of the populations that fit this third model, to a greater or lesser degree, are so heterogeneous as to indicate "...the utility of developing submodels, particularly with regard to the varying responses of fertility and socioeconomic conditions to national development programs" (page 536).2 Consequently, Ayalde does not merely apply to El Salvador epidemiologic transition theory as Omran first described it. Instead, given the country's "ambiguous" place among the models and stages (page 10),2 Ayalde follows Omran's advice and considers the particulars of the Salvadoran situation. Ayalde finds that much depends on the health measure, the data source, and the population subgroup examined. For example, he notes that one source lists "external causes" (homicide, suicide, accidents, etc) as the country's leading cause of death (page 10).2 Dr Avils repeats this information uncritically to score a debating point. If one reads Ayalde's report itself, however, one finds that it quite appropriately questions the validity of the original information source for not even including diarrhoea or acute respiratory infections as causes of death. One also finds Ayalde citing an alternative source that lists diarrhoea as the leading cause of death among Salvadoran children (page 10).2

The element of epidemiologic transition theory to which Dr Avils takes the strongest exception is that some aspects of public health, under some circumstances, can respond favourably to interventions that are not structural changes of social, political and economic conditions. He calls "futile and hopeless any
technical intervention in the health sector that ignores the social and political context of the country." He flatly asserts his "belief that better public health cannot be achieved without improving the social, economic, and political situation" and complains that epidemiological transition theory considers this belief " `unscientific.' "
By contrast, the theory treats Dr Avils' belief as an empirically testable, scientific hypothesis. Ayalde's relevant observations are that vector control in El Salvador greatly reduced malaria incidence (pages 27-29)2; that poliomyelitis, whooping cough, measles and neonatal tetanus incidence declined dramatically in response to immunisation programmes (pages 32-33)2; that improvements in potable water supplies, sewage treatment and solid waste disposal would produce major reductions in the incidence of acute diarrhoea, cholera and other diseases (pages 33-34, 40-41, 46-47)2; and that effective iodine fortification would greatly reduce goitre prevalence from its current level of one quarter of the Salvadoran population (page 38).2 Each of these measures improves public health. Some preferentially improve the health of the poor. None restructures social, political or economic conditions. Together, they refute Dr Avils' hypothesis. Dr Avils accurately discerns a favourable view of economic development in Omran's exposition of epidemiologic transition theory and in Ayalde's report. But not all economic development is exploitative development that hurts developing nation B and benefits the economic and political interests of developed nation A. It is hard to interpret Omran's analysis of epidemiologic transitions in Japan,3 4 for example, as propaganda for a Eurocentric ideology of neocolonialism. Unfortunately, Dr Avils does not describe the economic future he envisions for El Salvador. Is it a return to the subsistence agriculture of the mid-1800s? Or is it merely a different kind of economic development that somehow would avoid all interaction with the United States and the former colonial powers of Europe?

The answers to these questions would be interesting. But I

fear that if Dr Avils' proposal for ideological cleansing of public health discourse were to become fashionable, the views at greatest risk of eradication would not be those held by USAID or other institutions of the most powerful government on earth. More probably, the disappeared views would be minority views such as those of Dr Avils, which no less deserve exposure to the antiseptic light of day.

Ext off #1 Permutation

Perm solves- local struggles must acknowledge the global situation in order to change the political landscape. Arif Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology University of Oregon, 1998, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, bjx
I propose below, in ways that may have some kinship with postmodernity and postcolonialism, that a contemporary radicalism must take local struggles as its point of departure, and that indigenism as one type of identity formation may provide an appropriate model for such struggles. Local struggles are already part of the global political landscape, and not for fortuitous reasons. As I argue in several of the essays below (especially in "The Global in the Local"), the very operations of capital that have dislocated earlier divisions of the world, including national boundaries, have created new contradictions that have brought problems of the local and the global to the forefront of political consciousness. Likewise, a contemporary radicalism must take as its point of departure these very same contradictions. But there is more to what I advocate than mere recognition of political realities. The local is the site where action toward new community formations is the most plausible. This is also where indigenous ideals of social relationships and relationships to nature may have the most to offer, especially in their challenge to the voracious developmentalism of capitalism, which has also been assimilated to Marxism in its historical unfolding. As I explain below, what I have in mind is not indigenous ideals as they are reified in New Age consumptions of indigenism, but indigenous ideals as they have been reworked by a contemporary consciousness, where indigenism appears not merely as a reproduction of the past, but as a project to be realized. The difference of this idea of the local from that in postcolonial criticism should be evident in its insistence that, under the circumstances of global capitalism, the local is impossible to conceive without reference to the global. It is also lodged in a different kind of knowledge; not that of the exile or the traveling theorist, but in local knowledge informed by and directed at local community formation. That does not make exilic knowledge irrelevant, since that knowledge itself speaks directly to contemporary historical circumstances, but regrounds it in the intermediation of social lives conceived locally--an essential necessity, if local struggles are to have any chance of success against the seemingly insuperable forces of transnational structures of power.

Ext off #2 Leads to Conflict

Leaving Africa to fend for itself will only create internal conflicts that will spread over the entire region. Outside assistance is essential. Stephen F. Burgess, Associate Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of International Security Studies, U.S. Air War College, 1998, African Studies Review, Vol. 41, No. 2. (Sep., 1998), pp. 37-61., African
Security in the Twenty-First Century: The Challenges of Indigenization and Multilateralism, bjx As the twenty-first century approaches, African security has become the responsibility of Africans themselves. The withdrawal of outside powers in the wake of the Cold War and the retreat of the United Nations, starting with the 1993 setback of UNOSOM I1 in Somalia, confronted Africans with the dual demands of generating their own national security and organizing multilateral operations in an era of scarce resources and fragile governments. In the next century, the primary security problem will remain the same: internal conflict and its consequences, including "collapsed states," "spillover" into adjoining countries, and threats to entire regions (Copson 1994, Zartman 1995). In many cases, states that suffer internal conflicts lack the capacity to stabilize themselves and must be assisted by outside actors if security is to be restored.

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Turn: Collective action is key to ensuring the public health- the alternative leaves the benefits of public-health science in the hands of the already privileged. Robert Beaglehole (et al.), WHO Director, Ruth Bonita, Director of Surveillance and
Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health at WHO, Richard Horton, Orvill Adams, Martin McKee, 2004, The Lancet Volume 363, Public health in the new era: improving health through collective action, bjx Collaboration in partnership with a wide range of groups from many sectors has been the central feature of public-health practice since the mid 19th century. At first, collaborative action was justified as a way of keeping to a minimum the effect of poverty and its associated ill health on early welfare systems. Collaboration across sectors is even more crucial now. In the absence of strong and effective collaborative actions, the benefits of public-health science will continue to be more fully taken up by the already advantaged sections of society, as has happened with tobacco control.22 Governments are key to ensuring collaborative actions to promote population-wide health improvement because they are ultimately responsible for the health of their populations. When the state downplays this part in favour of individualism and market forces, the practice of public health is inevitably weakened, slowing progress towards health goals. The public-health workforce, because of its broad mandate and skills base, is uniquely placed to improve health through formation of policy-led strategies and delivery of interventions that embrace collective actions.23
Postcolonial criticism's misapplication of the label of essentialism serves to deny the possibility of meaningful politics. Arif Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology University of Oregon, 1998, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, bjx As if by some devilish design to mock the postcolonial argument, cultural politics in our day exhibits an abundance of such claims to cultural authenticity which, rather than disappear, would seem to be proliferating in proportion to the globalization of postmodernity -- with deadly consequences for millions. Cultural nationalism, ethnicism, indigenism have emerged as markers of cultural politics globally; over the last decade, ethnicity has moved to the center of politics, overshadowing earlier concerns with class and gender. Claims to cultural authenticity, moreover, have been accompanied by efforts to discover or restore authentic pasts as foundations for contemporary identity; most urgently among those who have suffered "the sentence of history." The most basic problem presented by this paradoxical situation is the disjuncture between cultural criticism and cultural politics. Even as cultural criticism renders the past into a plaything at the hands of the present, the burden of the pasta haunts contemporary politics in a reassertion of cultural identities. Postmodern/postcolonial criticism would have little to say on this situation, except to insist even more uncompromisingly on its on validity. where the postmodern/postcolonial intellectuals themselves are concerned, the repudiation of essentialized identities and authentic pasts seems to culminate in a libertarianism which asserts the possibility of constructing identities and histories almost at will in those "inbetween" spaces that are immune to the burden of the past (and the present, in its repudiation of "foundational" structures). Ironically, however, postmodern/postcolonial critics are unwilling to recognize a similar liberty those who seek to invoke the past in the assertion of cultural identities, labeling all such attempts as misguided (or ideological) essentialisms that ignore the constructedness of the past. That groups which have "suffered the sentence of history" are internally divided and differentiated is not a particularly novel insight; what seems to be new about the current historical situation is the erasure in the name of difference of differences among such groups in their efforts to cope with "the sentence of history," especially those efforts that contradict the new ideology of postmodernism/postcolonialism. "In-betweenneess," universalized as a human condition and extended over the past, is thus naturalized in the process, and becomes a new kind of determinism from which there is no escape. At the same time, the label of "essentialism," extended across the board without regard to its sources and goals, obviates the need to distinguish different modes of cultural identity formation that is subversive not only of critical but of any meaningful political judgment.

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Postcolonial thought reinforces dominant structures of power such as capitalism which makes it impossible to challenge domination. Arif Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology University of Oregon, 1998, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, bjx
The postcolonialist attacks on Eurocentrism, and especially the legacy of the Enlightenment, have ruffled feathers in those institutions, to be sure. Nevertheless, postcolonialism has been domesticated with relative ease (in a way, say, Marxism has not) into intra-elite conflicts within those institutions: between those who appreciate the utility of the postcolonialist argument under conditions of transnational capitalism, which can no longer be satisfied with Eurocentrism, and those who have refused to come to terms with recent transformations in global relations. The social and political solutions that have issued from the postcolonialist argument, namely arguments for multiculturalism and diversity against racial and patriarchal domination, resonate with the demands of a new social and political situation. At the same time, however, the postcolonialist focus on Eurocentrism to the exclusion of the structural connections between Eurocentric power and capitalism also provides an alibi against radical critiques of capitalism, shiftingg the debate over capitalism from the terrain of political economy to the terrain of culture. The postcolonialist fetishization of "difference," compelled by its logic to the level of the individual, moreover, delegitimizes collective oppositions that articulate significant differences at levels of collective experience that the postcolonialist argument rejects for their supposedly "homogenizing" or "essentializing" assumptions. In theoretically repudiating in the name of local subjectivities such historical phenomena as colonialism and imperialism (or nationalist oppositions to it), postcolonialism relegates to an ideological or cultural Eurocentrism the responsibility for past inequalities and oppressions, which shifts the ground from under movements that challenge the continued domination of the world by EuroAmerican corporate and political power, that nourish off not just memories of past inequalities, but their contemporary legacies.

A focus solely on local struggles allows capitalism to manipulate differences of interest and power to homogenize populations. Arif Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology University of Oregon, 1998, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, bjx
From the perspective of Global Capitalism, the local is a site not of liberation but manipulation; stated differently, it is a site the inhabitants of which must be liberated from themselves (stripped of their identity) to be homogenized into the global culture of capital (their identities reconstructed accordingly). Ironically, even as it seeks to homogenize populations globally, consuming their cultures, Global Capitalism enhances awareness of the local, pointing to it also as the site of resistance to capital. This is nevertheless the predicament of the local. A preoccupation with the local that leaves the global outside its line of vision is vulnerable to manipulation at the hands of global capital which of necessity commands a more comprehensive vision of global totality. Differences of interest and power on the site of the local, which are essential to its reconstruction along non-traditional, democratic, lines, render the local all the more vulnerable to such a manipulation as capital plays on these differences, and the advocates of different visions and interests seek to play capital against one another. The local in the process becomes the site upon which the multifaceted contradictions of contemporary society play out, where critique turns into ideology and ideology into critique, depending upon its location at any one fleeting moment.

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Postcolonialism has become such an amorphous term so as to erase revolutionary potential by encompassing multiple contradictory ideas. Arif Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology University of Oregon, 1998, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, bjx
In its conceptualization of modern history, the postcolonial argument erases the revolutionary alternatives in recent history by assimilating them to postcoloniality or, more frequently, by simply ignoring them. Even more profoundly, the epistemological premises of postcoloniality are such as to abolish revolutions as meaningful historical events. Indeed, rather than investigate the revolutionary past as a possible condition of its own emergence, the postcolonial argument seeks to project its own utopianized (and, therefore, dehistoricized) self-image upon the past. Perhaps, most tellingly, the emergence of an articulated consciousness of postcoloniality coincides historically not with the end of colonialism (which, after all, has taken place over a broad historical period covering two centuries and is not yet over), but with the apparent emergence of a new world situation over the last decade, of which the repudiation of revolution is a crucial moment. As my observations above suggest, the substitution of postrevolutionary for postcolonial also brings into relief the ways in which the postcolonial idea resonates with the claims concerning the past in contemporary culture, which may account for the almost immediate popularity it has acquired in institutions of cultural production over the last decade. I will say a few words on the latter below, following a brief elaboration of the problem of history in postcolonial criticism. Finally, a word of caution on the scope of the discussion. What I say below may not apply equally to all people who promote, subscribe to or are in symphathy with postcolonial criticism, and it may apply in some measure to intellectual positions that are not marked explicitly as postcolonial but are associated more generally with "postmodernism." In its rapid ascendancy as an intellectual phenomenon, postcolonial criticism has come to encompass diverse positions, with considerable confusion in the understanding and uses of the term. As the editors of a recently published reader observe, "the increasingly unfocused use of the term 'postcolonial' over the last ten years to describe an astonishing variety of cultural, economic and political practices has meant that there is a danger of losing its effective meaning altogether. Indeed the diffusion of the term is now so extreme that it is used to refer to not only vastly different but even opposed activities. In particular the tendency to employ the term 'postcolonial' to refer to any kind of marginality at all runs the risk of denying its basis in the historical process of colonialism."

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Ext off #4 Material Focus Good

The postcolonialist alternative ignores global agency to the point of danger- it risks domination by capital and shows an ignorance of material conditions. Ilan Kapoor, Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies York University, 2002, Third World
Quarterly, 23:4, 647 - 664, Capitalism, culture, agency: dependency versus postcolonial theory, bjx A similar problem arises with postcolonial agency and politics. The emphasis on local discourses and action tends to result in the neglect of broader influences and impacts (Joss, 1996: 245; see also Dirlik, 1994: 345; Hall, 1997). Global concerns may be central to the postcolonial analysis of cultural hegemony and orientalism, but it remains unclear how postcolonial interventions impinge, in turn, on global power. In fact, it is difficult to imagine how the micro-political scale of postcolonial agency, as well as the micro-size of its agents, can meaningfully affect macro-politics. The postcolonial suspicion and deconstruction of the nation-state does not help here either. Although not without its limitations, the state may sometimes have to take on an increasingly important role. As the dependentistas insist, the proliferation of multinational capital makes the establishment of a semi-autonomous state a must if dependency and imperialistic ties are to be minimised. In contrast, the sub-national and decentred character of postcolonial agency risks allowing corporate power to overshadow it, and may even end up aiding, not regulating or altering, corporate propagation. To conclude this section, I would like to draw attention to the way in which the dependentista critique brings out the limitations of the types of questions being asked by postcolonial theory. Postcolonialisms emphasis on cultural and representational issues leads it to ignore important material concerns (eg poverty, health, etc). To the extent that it does consider materialist and capitalist problems, it approaches them epistemologically, shying away from the important political task of prioritising or adjudicating among differing narratives (be they economic, cultural, social, environmental). Finally, although it examines globallocal questions, these tend to be one-sided: they illuminate well how global power is reproduced in the local, but when it comes to politics, they reveal only local agency, not global consequences.

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Ext off #5 Postcolonialists Wrong

Postcolonial understanding of Africa is lacking- the doctrine is more focused on India. The result is a new, far more devastating form of colonialism in Africa. Pal Ahluwalia, Research SA Chair and Professor of Post-Colonial Studies, Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia, 2001, Politics and Post-Colonial Theory: African Inflections, bjx
If, for Appiah, post-coloniality is about elites and their mediation in the trade of African cultural commodities, for Adebayo Williams a key problem with post-colonialism has been its failure to infuse 'an authentic and well sustained African input into the paradigm' (1997:831). Given that post-colonial theory has argued vigorously against the idea of authenticity on the grounds that there are no pure cultures, that cultures continually make and remake themselves, it is difficult to ascertain what an 'authentic' African input might include. Nevertheless, Williams correctly points out that a large slice of the post-colonial constituency Africa - has been rendered curiously silent in recent postcolonial formulations. He suggests there could be three reasons for this omission. The first could be that African scholars are not capable intellectually to deal with the theoretical formulations of postcolonial debates. The second possibility is that the general economic crisis within African universities means that they are at a considerable disadvantage. The third reason could be that the specific colonial experience of Africa has meant that the African condition has been theorised in a different manner (ibid. 831). Williams points out that the first two of his speculations are not sustainable given the crisis in tertiary education in Africa has 'created a diasporic intelligentsia' who have shown that they can hold their 'own in all the major institutions of learning in the Western world' (ibid. 831). To this, it is important to add that, despite the economic and political tribulations faced by African scholars, they have continued none the less to persevere and to produce some of the most important works on Africa. It is important, however, to reflect on the third possibility which Williams offers. For him, a different trajectory can be traced in the manner in which intellectual traditions in India and Africa developed. The implication of this suggestion is that post-colonialism is associated unequivocally with India. The intellectual tradition in India, he claims, grew out of the feudal aristocracy, whereas in the case of Africa, the new emerging elite had no 'blood ties to the tribal chieftains' (ibid. 831). The subaltern studies project is traced through such a trajectory, albeit that it is inflected with a 'nativised Marxism'. It is these differences which allow for the centrality of colonialism in the case of India and neo-colonialism in the case of Africa. He argues: "Thus, while the doctrine of postcolonialism is informed by a buoyant optimism that colonialism has, in the main, been supplanted, the credo of neo-colonialism is suffused with the profound pessimism that colonialism has merely been transformed into a new and potentially far more devastating form of colonisation. Postcolonialism is marked by a virtual decoupling of the original postcolonial critic from the parent nation-state. The irony does not end here. While the postcolonial state in the Indian subcontinent - at least in India - has created something new, a uniquely Indian political culture despite its foibles, the postcolonial state in Africa has, by and large, suffered serious reverses, often leading to the phenomenon of failed states." (Williams 1997. 833-4)

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AT: Mbembe (1/5)

Mbembe's alternative is horrible for Africa- his reliance on poststructuralism creates his thought as a textual cul-de-sac and his theoretical engagements ignore the activities and resistance of everyday micropolitical struggles. Jeremy Weate, philosopher, PhD from University of Warwick, 2003, Achille Mbembe and the Postcolony: Going beyond the Text, Research in African Literatures 34.4 (2003) 27-41, projectmuse, bjx There are three reasons Mbembe's theorization of African power ends up being negativist and thanatographic and rejects the possibility of resistance. First, as indicated, his continued debt to poststructuralist modes of [End Page 36] analysis and the textual paradigm drive his thinking away from thinking of an alternative site for the genesis of meaningthat of embodied agencyat the very moment when he is on the cusp of articulating it. His notion of baroque practice ends up being a theoretical cul-de-sac in the text, precisely because it would call for further theorization of embodiment and its role in resisting inscriptive forms of power. Instead, what we witness is an opening towards the incorporative away from the inscriptive, only to fall back into semiotic closure. This failure to think the body prevents Mbembe from fully engaging with the relation between embodiment and power from an existential phenomenological point of view. Despite his avowed intention in the introduction to think concretely about African lived experience, there is no fleshing out of the kind of theory that would help him out. On the Postcolony ends with some reflections on the thought of Merleau-Ponty; had it started with an appropriation of the French phenomenologist's account of embodiment, the corporeal schema, intersubjectivity and perhaps even invisibility, a different development of baroque practice might have occurred. Thinking through the body's relation to formal and informal, positive and negative forms of power, in relation to agency and resistance would have bolstered Mbembe's attempts to move away from privileging a textual approach to power. Here again, we are reminded of the necessity to have a more nuanced account of what is problematic with binarism. Distinctions between resistance and agency, formal and informal, incorporative and inscriptive in fact have strong analytical power in the face of existential complexity. The key point is not to attempt to reduce any form of analysis to a set of predetermined binaries, but rather to start with these distinctions in order to understand the complexities of the situation at a deeper level. For example, with the categories of resistance and domination as guides, it is possible to develop an account of complicity that is neither wholly negative nor wholly positive, but rather shows how, in each situation, the balance of power can be ambiguous, precisely because forces of resistance and domination are at work. The second reason Mbembe's text is driven back towards disembodied negativity is his overreliance on a specific understanding of the intellectual and what constitutes conceptual contestation within the political sphere. Mbembe's interest is in locating theoretical and political engagement in the writerly sphere of academic, juridical, and overtly political texts, not on the street or the ghetto or within the practices of everyday life. In unison with his stunted development of bodily resistance, his thought does not engage with demotic modes of resistance and the micropolitics of daily life. As Benetta Jules-Rosette writes: "While in the 1960s and 1970s African intellectuals played crucial roles across the continent in shaping independence struggles and new nation-states and in introducing such philosophies as Pan-Africanism, negritude, and African Humanismall critiqued by Mbembethe contemporary plight of bourgeois intellectuals as political and economic refugees has left a void in many African nation-states. In part, this void has been filled by grassroots intellectuals, [End Page 37] religious leaders, artists, and entrepreneurs. This development is not a product of proletarian nostalgia, as Mbembe suggests, but merely a fact of daily life. These organic leaders occupy an empty space of creativity where new ideologies and cultural strategies are shaped and deployed. It is in this milieu that the responses to the devastation of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid analysed by Mbembe must be traced. (604)" Mbembe refuses to engage with the space of everyday life, and he does not theorize grassroots resistance. This is an enormous problem for his project, for as Jules-Rosette rightly points out, it is precisely within the sphere of everyday culture in Africa that seemingly absolute modes of power are contested and modified. Moreover, it is only by sidestepping the demotic sphere that Mbembe can lend his dismissal of all previous forms of thought any semblance of credibility. As has been seen, even a passing attention to the condensed list of African thinkers and writers mentioned above would soon put paid to his tabula rasa approach. Beyond the writerly sphere, however, nonlinear Africa has already been "writing" itself into history, whether Mbembe's text acknowledges it or not. Whether it is Set Setal graffiti art in Senegal, Mami Watta across West Africa, the sapeurs in Congo, Afrobeat or Fuji musical culture in Nigeria, or an almost limitless supply of other cases, African cultural forms have continually sought to engage with and document the times.

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AT: Mbembe (2/5)

Mbembe's thought embraces an unconscious patriarchy- feminism is associated with creative agency and both are rejected, destroying the possibility of creating new avenues of resistance. Jeremy Weate, philosopher, PhD from University of Warwick, 2003, Achille Mbembe and the
Postcolony: Going beyond the Text, Research in African Literatures 34.4 (2003) 27-41, projectmuse, bjx As Kimberly Segall writes: "To ignore the cultural invasion of legal forms and local adaptions to themas exemplified in the operations of the postcolonial performative of victimizationthus courts the charge of a cultural blindness, an academic imperialism. (617-18)" The final reason Mbembe fails to fully open his thought to thinking resistance is because of an unconscious gender bias that pervades and structures his text. Mbembe is often explicitly scathing of feminism and African feminist analyses of power. For example, in an essay in Public Culture,he writes of African feminism that "the philosophical poverty of these discourses is notorious, and several isolated attempts to correct this shortcoming have not succeeded" (631). Unfortunately, his assertion is backed [End Page 38] by neither argument nor references, so it is impossible to match his claim with further argument. However, beyond his obvious distaste for explicit engagement with gender-based considerations, it is at a deeper, structural level that Mbembe's relation to gender is most problematic. I suggest that the most fundamental reason Mbembe's text is driven by the death-drive of suffering, complicity, and perversion is because of an unconscious rejection of the matrix of creativity itself. As a masculinist thinker, Mbembe falls into the all-too-common trap of unconsciously mapping an association between creative agency and the maternal or feminine. Ultimately, Mbembe fails to think the creative power of embodied agency and cultural resistance because he unconsciously associates both with feminine modes of being. As a thinker of death rather than birth, Mbembe places himself within a long tradition within phallocentric Western thought. Rather than the subtleties of the nuanced response, where what appears to be a situation of domination is reversed by an agent who uses complicity to her own ends, Mbembe can only think complicity as willing one's own death. Instead of baroque practice being the overture to a sustained theorization of the birth of the new and of adaptive strategies of resistance, it falls back into death and destruction. The masculine mask of Thanatos rears its head yet again. Because of all the failures charted above theoretical, methodological, corporeal, historiographical, and so onAchille Mbembe's project of opening up a new epoch of African writing beyond the colonial is, as it stands, doomed to failure. It commits the double mistake of attempting to erase the past completely, as well as not providing any substantive ground for further development. On the Postcolony lacks body, in a literal sense. Mbembe condemns himself to the very "narrative of loss" he had sought to avoid. Across his work, a pattern has emerged, whereby he continually fails to attain the goals he sets himself. In On the Postcolony, we are left guessing as to in what the new form of writing Africa would consist. Elsewhere, in his essay "African Modes of Self-Writing," the proclaimed end-result of engaging with African "self-styling" is again not attained. His failure to see beyond de jure limitations, and his refusal to engage with everyday praxis and modes of creative resistance mean that his account is complicit with the very Western paradigm of the victim that he had sought to avoid.

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AT: Mbembe (3/5)

Mbembe's rejection of the possibility for resistance closes off the possibility of meaningful change for Africa. Jeremy Weate, philosopher, PhD from University of Warwick, 2003, Achille Mbembe and the Postcolony: Going beyond the Text, Research in African Literatures 34.4 (2003) 27-41, projectmuse, bjx The question to put to Mbembe, against his overt rejection of domination vs. resistance, is to ask how "play" and "inversion" can have any value for "the masses," if not in terms of resistance to the domination of the power of the state? Play, in the above passage, cannot function without an underlying teleological form; the intention to "modify whenever possible" musthave an intentional structure in order to support a framework of meaningful action. Put the other way, if play were denied an intentional structure framed in terms of resistance to domination, it would be very difficult to see the point of engaging in it. As in Nietzsche, we must be able to distinguish a "positive nihilism" that seeks to overcome (that is, it has an intentional structure) from a "negative nihilism" that remains mired in its own negation (that is, exists without a telos). This distinction can only be made if one can also distinguish between absolute and relative limitative power. In Mbembe's text, this distinction is never clearly made, which muddies his argument. For example, in the passage just quoted, how can "incontestable power" maintain its unchallengeable status, if it can at the same time be "modified" via affirmation? Logic dictates that either power is incontestable, and therefore unmodifiable, or it is not. Resistance is the name we must give to the force that modifies power. And an acknowledgement of the possibility of resistance requires also that power itself cannot be absolutely incontestable. The irony in the text above is that the very terms Mbembe rejected in polemical fashion in the introduction, "fluidity," "agency," and other Foucauldian, Gramscian and poststructuralist concepts, he returns to precisely in order to articulate the power dynamics within African existential contexts at close range and at the same time maintain his refusal to engage with the discourse of resistance. More
significantly still, Mbembe's "baroque practices" move underneath and subvert the "written and precise rules" of state power. A different form of writing could emerge through this very moment, generated on the basis of the body in movement as a power that relativizes the apparent absolute power of the state. Ambiguity and fluidity, the two ciphers for an unacknowledged theorization of resistance in Mbembe's text, are contrasted with the writing of power. The fluid bodily practices involved in affirming power in order to modify it are therefore the gateway to the "other form of writing" that Mbembe has sought all along. Instead of the poststructuralist economy of the sign, a text that can always be made visible and articulated, a structure that denigrates the body and materiality for the sake of the visible marker of the signifier, Mbembe introduces a writing of the body. Here, the body is not an object, violently inscribed by the state as in Foucault's account, but rather a capacity to play and subvert written codifications. The performative body is therefore the site of an undoing of the text itself, moving below the level of explicit legibility and juridical capture, towards an underworld of revolutionary possibilities. The potential raised at this moment in Mbembe's text is therefore nothing less than a rupture in postcolonial theory, away from the textualist/inscriptivist paradigm it has been based on since its inception, and towards what we can think of as a more materialist and somatic paradigm of "texture" and the "palimpsest." The new postcolonial theory would be [End Page 35] that of writing not from the point of view of clear and written rulesthe Cartesian/Derridean economy of the sign, but from an incorporated perspective: the opaque perspective of the baroque practice. Here, instead of the ocular proof of the perfectly legible text, a palimpsest presents itselfthat of writing within a material frame, implying a continuum between text and body, instead of scission. Unfortunately, this key moment of possibility in Mbembe's entire project gets submerged and dissipated as soon as it has been articulated. He does not explore further the rich potential of the notion of "baroque practice," nor does he discuss or further explore the notion of play. It is interesting to ask what stunts this line of enquiry in his text. Perhaps the reason why Mbembe does not further theorize his notion of baroque practice is that his denial of the possibility of resistance would become increasingly untenable. Africa, as an "economy of death," a site of near-infinite suffering, complicity and horror, cannot fit easily with Africa as a complex site of baroque practices that creatively subverts and mangles the overt codes of state power. What remains repressed in Mbembe's text, despite his gestures towards a performative praxis in "The Aesthetics of the Vulgar," is a stronger and more developed ontology of embodied being and an open acknowledgement of the necessity of resistance. Instead, in order to articulate complexity, Mbembe throws the teleological baby of explicit resistance out with the bathwater of binarism. What is elided in this move is an acceptance that power relations may, on an existential level, be complex and messy (or "convivial") at the same time as underlying forces of resistance and domination may still operate. Ambiguities in detecting any obvious direction of powerin terms of resistance from below or domination from above in any given situationshould not preclude a parallel analysis that privileges excavating the hidden dynamic within any given situation. It is precisely this move from the visible to the invisible that Mbembe is appealing to in the above passage in terms of practices that move below the explicit written codes of the state. The failure in Mbembe's thought is to follow this thinking of the invisible through with an understanding of how it nuances his own account of power. Instead of simply replacing the binarism of resistance vs. oppression with irreducible complicity and a retrenched victim paradigm as he does, what this thinking of the invisible would open up for articulation and further exploration is a more nuanced and subtle account of complicity itself. Instead of play and baroque practice thought of purely in terms of masochism and negative dialectics, we would therefore see masochism as but one option within a whole array of possible responses to domination. Once the lid of informal practice is lifted, an opaque complex of responses can be theorized, many of which need not involve either a thanatographic economy of death or masochism. Unfortunately, in On the Postcolony, this richly nuanced understanding of responses to power is refused. Again, we might question further what it is that pushes Mbembe to the brink of thinking play as creative resistance only in order to zigzag away from it.

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AT: Mbembe (4/5)

Mbembe fails- his reliance on postmodernism dilutes resistance until it becomes a mockery of its former self. Albert Paolini, lecturer in International Relations at LaTrobe University in Australia, 1999, Navigating
Modernity: Postcolonialism, Identity, and International Relations, bjx There are notable inconsistencies within Mbembe: power is enclosed in a chaotic, open postcolony; the commandment is rendered powerless despite its hermetic material power base. Here we witness the intersection of postmodernity/poststructuralism and the politics of resistance: At once power relations can make sense only in terms of the "intimacy of tyranny," which is seen by Mbembe as a central feature of postmodern life; further, his representation of the postcolony is refracted through the poststructural lenses of Foucault and Bakhtin. These twin dynamics condition the appreciation of resistance: They simultaneously undercut its traditional impetus and complicate the understanding of how it operates in the contemporary period. Resistance is recast along postmodern lines in order to make sense of the "convivial tension" between ruled and rulers. Resistance and hegemony are at once familiar and domesticated. The spatial setting of resistance moves along a more postmodern path, yet in a temporal sense, undercurrents and tensions from a previous incarnation linger. The contemporary postcolonial stage becomes one in which subjectivity and agency are at once diluted and recouped, and consequently resistance itself becomes mottled and, ironically, a mimicry of its former self.

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AT: Mbembe (5/5)

Mbembe ignores creative spaces for resistance and privileges the dominant forces of the status quo. Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Professor of sociology at the University of California at San Diego and director of the African and African-American Studies Research Project, 2002, Public Culture 14.3 (2002) 603-605, Afro-Pessimism's Many Guises, projectmuse, bjx Moving nimbly from Hegelianism to postmodernism, Mbembe fixes a steely gaze on Africa's master narratives and cultural tropes. He asserts: "On a sociological level, attention must be given to the contemporary everyday practices through which Africans manage to recognize and to maintain with the world an unprecedented familiaritypractices through which they invent something that is their own and that beckons to the world in its generality" (258). Yet in balancing universalism against particularism, Mbembe covers numerous philosophies of the invention of Africa with blanket criticisms and provides little discussion of the creative spaces opened up by cultural resistance. [End Page 603] In his classic treatise, L'autre face du royaume, V. Y. Mudimbe (1973: 102) develops a troubling metaphor for the condition of the African intellectual: "To adopt an image, everything takes place as if the African intellectual were trapped in an elevator that perpetually goes up and down. In principle, a single gesture would be sufficient to stop the machine, get out, and rent an apartment or room; in sum, live and experience the reality of the world. But apparently, he does not understand that the initiative to escape belongs to him." Mudimbe's anecdote refers not only to the legacies of colonialism, but also to a restricted menu of cultural choices in contemporary African societies. When the only options for the preservation of selfhood rely on oppressive political and economic ideologies, one might as well close the elevator door and stay inside. While in the 1960s and 1970s African intellectuals played crucial roles across the continent in shaping independence struggles and new nation-states and in introducing such philosophies as Pan-Africanism, ngritude, and African Humanismall critiqued as inadequate by Mbembethe contemporary plight of bourgeois intellectuals as political and economic refugees has left a void in many African nation-states (Mazuri 1990: 32-38). In part, this void has been filled by grassroots intellectuals, religious leaders, artists, and entrepreneurs. This development is not a product of proletarian nostalgia, as Mbembe suggests, but merely a fact of daily life. These organic leaders occupy an empty space of creativity where new ideologies and cultural strategies are shaped and deployed. It is in this milieu that the responses to the devastation of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid analyzed by Mbembe must be traced. The grassroots base of South Africa's antiapartheid movement is a case in point. Another creative space emerges around what Afro-Parisian novelist and social critic Calixthe Beyala (1995: 20-22) terms feminitude, or the cultural and domestic resistance of African women. From Nigerian market women to Congolese cambistes (street bankers), African women have occupied creative spaces from which they have influenced the course of history. Mbembe avoids any systematic discussion of gender as an aspect of selfhood or subjectivity. Instead, he privileges dominant ideologies, institutions, and public instruments of power over private sources of resistance. The absence of any treatment of women's initiatives and unique inscriptions of selfhood is both a theoretical and empirical lacuna in Mbembe's argument. This oversight has further consequences for the diasporic component of Mbembe's essay. In his critique of traditionalist essentialism, Mbembe downplays [End Page 604] the fact that traditions were, indeed, transmitted across the Middle Passage and may be revived, and even reconstructed, for legitimate cultural purposes. Cynthia Schmidt's (1998) fascinating research on the transmission of Mende chants from the villages of Sierra Leone to the rice paddies of South Carolina comes to mind, not just as a Herskovitsian shipboard retention, but as a case of cultural reinvention. The "return" of the African American women songsters to meet their fictive kin in Sierra Leone is a moving example of self-writing and the hermeneutic reconstruction of culture. This case also illustrates some of the pitfalls and paradoxes surrounding myths of African authenticity, which Mbembe both critiques and tenaciously retains. With the African continent pushed to the margins of the contemporary global scene, Mbembe's act of self-writing is a chilling reminder of the continent's fragile future. Far more than an instance of "salvage social history," Mbembe's essay places Africa's dire situation in perspective. But it offers no solutions. The only hope for Africaand therefore the worldin the turbulent twenty-first century lies in a creative spirit.

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Backlines Feeds Capitalism/Globalization

Globalization has co-opted the postcolonial project- it now represents a new mode of colonialism. Adebayo Williams, visiting fellow at Afrika-Studiecentrum, 1997, Third World Quarterly, Vol 18, No 5,
pp 821-841, 1997, The postcolonial flaneur and other fellow-travellers: conceits for a narrative of redemption, bjx In this sense, globalisation can be seen as a peculiarly postcolonial, end of empire response by the colonising metropole and its allies, a logical transformation of the dynamics of capitalism after the epoch of colonisation. And this is precisely what places a refocused postcolonial discourse, as the most historically privileged intellectual response to this development, in the best position to serve as its ideological nemesis. But for now postcolonialism appears more like a casualty than a nemesis. Indeed, with the concept of hybridity aping and unconsciously validating the capitalist homogenisation of global economic structure, with its abolition of the primordial self subconsciously underwriting the loss of selfhood under global capitalism, with its hybridisation of racial identity secretly valorising the nation-less and borderless triumphalism of transnational capital, and with the downsizing of the subaltern echoing the forcible abolition of the old underclass categories in the process of globalisation, postcolonialism appears like a strong ally of global capitalism rather than its profound foe. What began as a radically anti-colonial project has transformed into an intellectual facilitator of a new mode of colonisation.

Postcolonial criticism only feeds the capitalist system of domination on which it is based. David Slater, Professor of Social & Political Geography Loughborough University, 1998, Review of
International Political Economy, 5:4, 647 - 678, Post-colonial questions for global times, bjx In his wide-ranging intervention into the debate on post-coloniality and global capitalism, Dirlik (1994) makes the point that there is a need to go beyond the crisis of understanding that has been produced by the inability of old categories to account for the world. For Dirlik, post-coloniality represents one response to such a need in a world characterized by an unprecedented proliferation of new tendencies and instabilities, including the decentring of capitalism nationally, the weakening of boundaries, the disorganization of a world once conceived in terms of three worlds, the flow of culture which is at once homogenizing and heterogenizing, the rearticulation of native cultures into a capitalist narrative, the emergence of new global information technologies and transnational communities, the presence of cultural fragmentation and multiculturalism, and the transnationalization of production. However, this important connection between one key meaning of the post-colonial and the changing world of global capitalism is then juxtaposed to the assertion that postcoloniality is the condition of the intelligentsia of global capitalism (Dirlik, 1994: 356). It is this kind of somewhat reductionist argument and the critique it has engendered that have helped to create a mood in which economic analysis overall has tended to be seen as being tainted in the same way. As a consequence, much postmodern and post-structuralist literature has been characterized by the evasion of critical economic analysis in general.36

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Backlines Locked in Colonialism

The view that Africa should help itself is locked in a colonial and realist mindset. Michael Chege, director of the Center for African Studies, University of Florida, 2001, SAIS Review
21.1 (2001) 225-237, A Realist's Minimal U.S. Policy Toward Africa, projectmuse, bjx Not surprisingly, the situation in Africa has spawned a growing body in ultra-pessimistic literature on Africa's future, grounded essentially on the supposedly intractable culture of Africans as a people. This literature now traces this perverse African cultural trait back "many centuries" and claims to speak the truth about Africans as a race even at the risk of being politically incorrect. The Economist, for example, in its issue of May 13, 2000, rendered the verdict that Africa was "the hopeless continent." To cite the most poignant contemporary academic examples of this interpretation of Africa's current state, Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz go to great lengths to illustrate that, far from being a puzzle, the catastrophic conditions represent an African age-old rationality at its best, using "disorder as a political instrument." In time, according to their analysis, Africa will reorder its own political constitution--violently if need be--putting it on a surer footing than any external aid programs have done so far. Indeed, according to Jeffrey Herbst, centuries of failure in effective state construction in Africa due to its "harsh" geographic and demographic attributes now justify reconstituting of African international boundaries (violently at times) in order to match actual capability of the state to "broadcast power" within genuine national frontiers. Given the current artificial boundaries and low population density, Africa's chaos will multiply within ineffective states bereft of the bold nationalistic institutions that came to Europe with war-making over state frontiers in densely peopled lands. If only "Africans" and their external benefactors would listen. A close inspection of this stridently pessimistic trend betrays its polemical characteristics. Whereas the "dependency" arguments of the 1970s and 1980s by Walter Rodney and others saw African and Third World underdevelopment as an economic and social tragedy originating primarily, if not entirely, from external sources, present-day cultural determinists consider the source of the problem to be predominantly internal and African-made. They dismiss any African success as miniscule and bound to fail in the same tone as dependency protagonists derided examples of rising Third-World capitalists as an ephemeral "comprador" farce. U.S. and other external interventions [End Page 226] in Africa are derided as patronizing and ineffectual. The dependency theorists at the opposite pole saw them as all-powerful and economically perverse. Under the circumstances, adherents to the new paradigm believe that foreign actors can in good conscience wash their hands of the matter and let Africa sort out its problems out the best it knows how. It will be all for the good of state maturation in Africa for Africans to at last take responsibility for their own mischief. At its worst, this often racially derisive argument smacks of the colonial theories at the turn of the nineteenth century, a premise that Daloz and Chabal at one point acknowledge. At best, it presents itself as a policy argument based on political realism and the primacy of hard-nosed U.S. national interest. But it should be hard to prove the latter.

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Backlines Makes Revolution Impossible

Postcolonialist ideas that everything is constructed make revolution and criticism of atrocities impossible. Arif Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology University of Oregon, 1999, Postcolonial Studies, 2:2, 149 - 163, How the grinch hijacked radicalism: further thoughts on the postcolonial, bjx If the abandonment of revolution has made possible the applicability of postcolonial criticism to revolutionary societies, postcolonial criticism has contributed in turn to the erasure of revolutions, or at the least to their further discrediting. For the same reason, however, recalling revolutions not only helps us place postcolonialism historically with greater accuracy than is possible only with reference to the term `colonial . But the goal here is not just to historicise postcolonial criticism. Even more important may be the necessity of the perspective of revolutionary history to a critical evaluation of postcolonial analysis and politics. Ours are confusing times for anyone who might be foolish enough still to care to distinguish right from left (politically constructed), right from wrong (culturally constructed), or even reality from illusion (it is all in the representation). The right-left distinction lost its meaning to the historian of China when, beginning in the eighties, former leftists were rendered into conservatives (and even rightists), and former rightists were reincarnated as progressive reformers. The same decade witnessed the considerable attenuation of judgements over right and wrong in debates (again involving China) over the cultural constructedness of human rights; so that it became nearly impossible to criticise the abuse of human beings without opening oneself to charges of cultural insensitivity or worse, cultural imperialism. With everything being socially, politically or culturally constructed, it was inevitable that sooner or later reality itself would be open to questioning; not for the first time, to be sure, but this time around with the aid of media that could turn deadly wars into Nintendo games. Postcolonialism erases the possibility for revolution and allows itself to be misappropriated to support new forms of colonialism. Arif Dirlik, Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology University of Oregon, 1999, Postcolonial Studies, 2:2, 149 - 163, How the grinch hijacked radicalism: further thoughts on the postcolonial, bjx On the other hand, the projection of the postcolonial argument to the past has rendered the colonial past into just one more phase on the way to globalisation, while erasing the revolutionary pasts that, for all their failures, envisioned alternatives to capitalist globality. The criticism of the nation, that does not distinguish between different kinds of nationalism , also serves to erase the revolutionary movements that took the nation as their premise. So does the obliviousness to questions of class. In the light of what I have observed above with reference to the re-evaluation of class formations in earlier national liberation movements, it may be understandable why postcolonial critics from formerly colonial societies should be reluctant to speak to issues of class, as they hail for the most part from classes that were(and are) suspect in the eyes of nativists. This makes it all the more imperative to speak to issues of class, however, as postcolonial elites are increasingly entangled in the transnational class formations produced by global reconfigurations. In the process, the postcolonial argument is mobilised to serve as an alibi for a cultural colonialism that is so thorough that it is nearly impossible to speak about it, as colonialism itself loses its meaning where it proceeds by consent of the colonised. However diluted in its dissolution of social differences into generalities about marginality or subalternity, the postcolonial argument even in its later phase initially retained concern for the underdog; as witness the affinity postcolonial critics have expressed with the Subaltern historians. By now, however, postcolonial criticism has become absorbed into institutions of power, its arguments appropriated by those who may feel marginal in certain ways, but represent new forms of power in others. It may be indicative of this assimilation to transnational power that any call to disentangle postcolonialism as an intellectually and politically critical strategy from its service to new structures of power provokes censorial charges of `leftconservatism, racism , and more colourfully, if in language reminiscent of politburo commissars, monsters arising from the netherlands. 5 It may also explain why First-World muchacho postcolonials should be even more adamant than Third-World postcolonial intellectuals in the defence of postcoloniality. It is even arguable that, within the discourse of postcoloniality, the literally postcolonial are increasingly marginalised as the postcolonial is abstracted as `method , and appropriated for First-World concerns that have little to do with the colonial per se.

21

Backlines Double Bind of Violence

Postcolonialism's reduction of all analysis to textuality creates an ahistorical eternal present. It becomes a double bind of downplaying the real violence of colonialism or textually replicating such violence. Jasper Goss, University of New South Wales, 1996, Third World Quarterly, 17:2, 239 - 250,
Postcolonialism: subverting whose empire?, bjx Postcolonialism has, as a term, become fashionable and, in line with other posts (such as postindustrial or post-feminist), seems to be of particular use in textual studies (as Bhabha, Said and Spivak demonstrate). However, the theory of postcolonialism is at best a mishmash of deeply confusing elements drawn from literary criticism, history and philosophy. The importance of Derrida to postcolonial theory is paramount, though it seems that Bhabha and Spivak (among others) have taken Derridas maxim of `there is nothing outside of the text and converted it to `there is nothing but the text . In this sense all relations (colonial, personal, institutional, etc) only have meaning as textual relations, the result being that, as Parry argues, `in the interests of establishing the autarchy of the signifier the narrated event is existentially diminished.27 Having reached this position of textual `autarchy it is easy to enunciate that all discourses are heterogeneous, having no foundational backing, simply being the result of numerous other discourses interacting (hybridity). Often postcolonial analysis regards any explanation that seeks a relativity of categorisation (eg gender is more important than class in analyses of contemporary Australia 28 ) as a set of colonial discourses which universalise and homogenise. It is exceedingly banal to say that social forces, discourses, etc are heterogeneous. Most people (except perhaps strict base-superstructure Marxists) are cogently aware of this phenomenon (even Leninists understood the importance of alliances across and within classes). The point is to incorporate some kind of mechanism that provides a comparative and contextual means to theorise relational power and its impact. Postcolonial theory explicitly avoids this process of historicisation by solely locating analyses at the local (`subjective ) level, creating an ahistorical eternal present. Gates argues that postcolonial theory has created its own double bind whereby one can choose to: empower the native discursively... downplaying the epistemic (and literal) violence of colonialism; or play up the absolute nature of colonial domination, [by] negating the subjectivity and agency of the colonised, thus textually replicating the repressive operations of colonialism. 29 The theoretical implications are that one is left in a constantly ambiguous position as to the impact of colonialism. Even Young, an admirer of postcolonial projects, must still raise the question, `of what, if anything, is specific to the colonial situation if colonial texts only demonstrate the same properties that can be found in any deconstructive reading of European texts .30 If the subaltern cannot speak (according to Spivak) and never will, then the situation we are left with is one that half-heartedly acknowledges the social ramifications of colonialism but has no way (or seeks none) of locating them within an historical project outside of `local discourses. Ahmad notes the impact of this theoretical turn by arguing that, `[colonialism ] thus becomes a transhistorical thing, always present and always in the process of dissolution in one part of the world or another, so that everyone gets the privilege, sooner or later, at one time or another, of being coloniser, colonised and postcolonial.31 We have arrived at a situation where the difference between the coloniser and colonised is not only the result of colonial discourses but in fact can be turned around so that the coloniser is in fact colonised as well. There is no dispute that it is certainly desirable to make a critique of static and universalist categories (black, white, Third World, etc), but by seeking an eternal regress postcolonial theory problematises every category to the point at which it has no usefulness whatsoever. As Dirlik states: postcolonialism s repudiation of structure and totality in the name of history ironically ends up not in an affirmation of historicity but in a self-referential, universalising historicism that reintroduces through the back door an unexamined totality; it projects globally what are but local experiences.32

22

Backlines Masks Neo-colonialism

The declaration that we have moved into a new era of postcolonialism masks the presence of neo-colonial forces and oppresses those still under colonial rule. Kuan-Hsing Chen, Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Coordinator of the Center for Asia-Pacific/Cultural Studies at National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan, 1996, Cultural Studies, 10:1, 37
- 70, Not yet the postcolonial era: The (super) nation-state and transnationalism of cultural studies: Response to Ang and Stratton, bjx As an 'Anglo-American' academic product, the postcolonial discourse has in recent years become a fashionable enterprise. Granted, postcolonial discourse has successfully taken over, appropriated and then politicized the energy of postmodernism. But under the condition where places like Hong Kong, Macao and East Timor, among others, are still undeniably colonies, entire third- world spaces are deeply saturated by neo-colonial forces (Constantino, 1988), where aboriginals, local and migrant workers, ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians have always been 'internally colonized' throughout the world, where large parts have not even begun to go through the process of decolonization (partially because of the imposed nation-state building projects which have swallowed up social energies), to announce the arrival of a post colonial (post-imperialist) era, the formation of a postcolonial culture and society, the shaping of a Global-Postmodern hybrid subjectivity, is politically not justifiable. Beyond the therapeutic function so that previous colonizers feel better, postcolonial discourse in effect obscures the faces of a neo-colonial structure in the process of reconstructing global capitalism, and potentially becomes the leading theory of the global hegemonic re-ordering. In short, an all too easy orchestration can generate devastating effects. One of the strategies commonly adopted by the postcolonial discourse is to universalize a historical periodization, to forge a total rupture in order to legitimate a new invention, presumably inherited from the discourse of the postmodern. This formulation to suggest that 'we' (the entire universe) have entered another historical stage can be extremely imposing, and hence oppressive to the still colonized subject.

Postcolonialism is mostly unrelated to Africa- the movement masks the neocolonialism of the status quo. David Slater, Professor of Social & Political Geography Loughborough University, 1998, Review of
International Political Economy, 5:4, 647 - 678, Post-colonial questions for global times, bjx Clearly, however, we cannot assume that there is an unproblematic association between postcolonial thought and the Third World intellectual. First of all, as Radhakrishnan (1996: 155) indicates, the term postcoloniality rarely surfaces within the formerly colonized worlds of South Asia and Africa.15 Indeed, in the words of one African political scientist, the current international scene would be better described in terms of a recolonization of subject peoples (Tandon, 1994), where it is contended that the imperial north has extended its sources of control (economic, political and military) over the subordinated peoples of the south. Similarly, and also with Africa as the main focus, Ould-Mey (1994) is of the view that the development and strengthening of international institutions under global adjustment is bringing about a new form of multilateral imperialism. Nor is the context exclusively African, as the recent text on global colonialism and democracy by the Mexican sociologist Gonzlez-Casanova (1995) amply demonstrates. The stress in the above works on the continuity of imperialism and colonialism, albeit in new and reasserted forms, would seem to take us back to older notions of neocolonialism, which were produced in a period when dependency perspectives and radical underdevelopment theory were far more in uential. It can be argued that the term neocolonialism overplays the power of the imperial centres and frames the Third World as passive and continually captured, while correspondingly leaving underexposed the impact of the colonial relation on the societies of the west.

23

Backlines Depoliticization Turn

Postcolonialism is dangerously depoliticising. Historical obscenities are subject to analysis that removes their political characteristics. Jasper Goss, University of New South Wales, 1996, Third World Quarterly, 17:2, 239 - 250,
Postcolonialism: subverting whose empire?, bjx By concentrating on the local in bringing forth an analysis of subjective agency, postcolonial projects risk depoliticising highly political activities. It seems that, while most postcolonial historiography has been associated with radical projects (studies of rebellion, banditry), there is no reason why a project concerning the Oklahoma bombing would not be feasible. But in postcolonial terms all understanding of such an act could only come from those engaged in the act. An analysis of discursive forms would not concentrate on the politics of the movements associated with the bombing since this could be colonial homogenisation (eg criminals/not criminals) but rather on why and how the bombing was justified in the minds of the bombers.37 In our hypothetical study the heterogeneity of their practices would be enunciated, their hybridity (`left-wing terrorism, libertarian, militant) would be conflated and their deliberations analysed. Yet, at no point would postcolonial analysis, from its own logic, be able to treat the event as a crime since crime in itself is a highly problematic (heterogeneous) discourse. What is important here is the study of study, rather than the study of `acts, or, more simply, study for the sake of study. Postcolonialism has brought forth a complete and thorough reduction of discursive activity so that all social and cultural forces are denuded of anything but self-referential context and completely depoliticised. We now have no ability whatsoever to speak of the act only to explain its presence. At the very least postcolonialisms own ambivalence over politics is contradictory, given many of its proponents anti-colonial rhetoric. However, at worst this form of postcolonialism open the door to a whole slew of analyses that lessen and depoliticise historical obscenities.

The impact is oppression- depoliticization has been the starting point for all facist African states. Aaron T. Gana, executive director of African Centre for Democratic Governance, 1985, International
Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique, Vol. 6, No. 1, The Future of the State. (1985), pp. 115-132, The State in Africa: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, bjx When defensive radicalism fails, however, the state is easily available for repression. The first step toward a repressive political culture is depoliticization. African ruling classes-from the reactionary regimes of Mobutu Sese Sekou and Arap Moi to the progressive regime of Julius Nyerere-have resorted to the depoliticization and deradicalization of the masses. One-party states or military juntas have become the rule rather than the exception as a manifestation of the descent to authoritarian and in many cases fascist rule.

24

Backlines Indigenous Solutions Fail (1/2)

Indigenous solutions fail- power relations, questions of legitimacy, and gender politics all go ignored, resulting in an inability to create a consensus solution. John Briggs, Professor of Geography, Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, 2005, Progress in Development Studies 5(2):99-114, The use of indigenous knowledge in development: problems and challenges, bjx Simply because an indigenous knowledge exists does not mean that it is necessarily correct or unproblematic at the local level. Indeed, because indigenous knowledge is so empirically rooted, there is a tendency to ignore power, legitimacy and gender politics, and therefore there is no check on whose view might be the legitimate one (Kapoor, 2002). An example of meetings in Tanzania shows that mens voices are heard more than those of women, and that women tend to speak for women as a group, whereas men tend to speak as individuals (Cleaver, 1999). This creates real challenges for those trying to make sense of the power relations and legitimacy of indigenous knowledge in local communities; it creates even bigger challenges for those who are trying to implement indigenous knowledge as part of a development armoury. Indeed, as Davies (1994, 7) comments, if people are prepared to hide, distort or misunderstand local knowledge (as she suggests they might) and to hold multiple and even contested views, then a consensus, community knowledge can never be reached rendering the use of all these differing sources of knowledge in decision-making impossible. Indigenous solutions only replace one hegemonic knowledge system for another- culture has romanticized indigenous knowledge and ignores its lack of efficacy. John Briggs, Professor of Geography, Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, 2005, Progress in Development Studies 5(2):99-114, The use of indigenous knowledge in development: problems and challenges, bjx Because of its attractiveness as an alternative, indigenous development, there exists a real danger of overvalorising and over-romanticising indigenous knowledge in practice. In an important way, indigenous knowledge serves to empower local communities by valuing local knowledge and, for example, in supporting notions of the African renaissance. This is reinforced by the contemporary trend of promoting development and environmental programmes at the local level by governments, NGOs and some development agencies. However, Schroeder (1999b) warns that such approaches may end up by romanticising such communities. The difficulty then is that indigenous knowledge tends not to be problematised, but is seen as a given, almost a benign and consensual knowledge, simply waiting to be tapped into. Maddox, Giblin and Kimambo (1996) have provocatively framed this as a Merrie Africa versus Primitive Africa debate. The former represents a society living in harmony with nature before ecological disasters and economic exploitation under colonialism took place; the latter represents pre-colonial Africans living in a hostile environment subject to disease, famine and dislocation. The trick is to extract those environmental and other knowledges that contributed to the former. For some, the romanticised conceptualisation of an untainted Merrie Africa is what drives their conceptualisations of indigenous knowledge. The view of indigenous knowledge as an untainted, pristine knowledge system is unhelpful. It cannot be assumed at all that indigenous knowledge will necessarily provide a sustainable answer to production challenges in poor rural communities. Bluntly stated: ...the selfevident (but nevertheless useful) point that if IK and ISWC [indigenous soil and water conservation] were truly effective, there would not be the problems of food shortages and land degradation that are evident today (Critchley, Reij and Wilcocks, 1994, 297). Whilst this can be charged as a nave view, in that other factors such as land ownership and terms of trade may contribute to food shortages, it nonetheless makes the point about the overromanticisation or over-privileging of indigenous knowledge. Bebbington (1993, 278) is similarly sceptical when he writes that: [n]onetheless, there remain few experiences in which low- input agriculture has proven economically viable. The notion that in some way the application of indigenous knowledge is necessarily always going to provide a more appropriate and sustainable solution to land management issues than, for instance, western science, is untenable. Simply because members of a community use a particular set of methods, based on local knowledge, does not guarantee better land management, sustainable increased production or reduced land degradation (Osunade, 1994). But it may be more than this. Given farmers concerns to maximise food security, there needs to be considerable caution in exercising calls for a return to traditional agricultural practices based on indigenous knowledge (Jewitt, 2002). In some ways, the romanticisation of indigenous knowledge results in its adoption as the hegemonic knowledge system as a replacement for Western science, making the same claims for pre-eminence. Indeed, Cleaver (1999, 605) pertinently asks whether there is not a danger of swinging from one untenable position (we know best) to an equally untenable and damaging one (they know best).

25

Backlines Indigenous Solutions Fail (2/2)

The common conceptualization of indigenous knowledge masks its ineffectiveness. John Briggs, Professor of Geography, Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, 2005,
Progress in Development Studies 5(2):99-114, The use of indigenous knowledge in development: problems and challenges, bjx This brings the discussion back to where it started, with the Tanzanian farmer. He clearly had little faith in what indigenous knowledge had to offer him, and, in many ways, we should not be surprised. It seems that, all too often, we have conceptualised indigenous knowledge in unproblematic, and even nave, ways, and therefore it has turned out to be less helpful than has been supposed or hoped for as a development tool. Indeed, arguably, the term indigenous knowledge itself reflects this, conceptualised as some separate, self-contained folk knowledge.

26

Local Good (1/2)

A decentered exercise of resistance at the local level allows everyday subjects to break down state power. Albert Paolini, lecturer in International Relations at LaTrobe University in Australia, 1999, Navigating Modernity: Postcolonialism, Identity, and International Relations, bjx How do the postcolonial politics of resistance fit in here? Mbembe's virtual dismissal of a resistance politics makes sense only within an early Foucauldian framework: He would like to direct our attention away from top to bottom, binary, and zero-sum relations of power to the "microphysics of power," that is, the whole network of power relations in which resistance is recast as occurring at the local level and at multiple points, often randomly in response to the normalization of society. For Foucault, where there is power, there is resistance; but the two do not exist outside or exterior to one another. Following this reasoning, resistance does not disappear in the postcolony; it merely becomes decentered and, at times, unintentional or "nonsubjective" in Foucault's terms. Mbembe's postcolony is populated with a wide cast of policemen, administrators, state officials, teachers, and "everyday people" who all collaborate in the fabulization of power. These everyday subjects are able to reflect back the vulgarity of power and in the process ridicule state power: "There, they can tame it, or shut it up and render it powerless. Once having symbolically bridled its capacity to annoy, they can enclose it in the status of an idol." African values must be incorporated into attempts at development and aid. Kwaku Osei-Hweide, University of Botswana, September 2005, AFRO-CENTRISM: THE CHALLENGE OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, bjx Over the years, African leaders have faced difficult challenges in their efforts to transform their countries. It is in the context of these difficulties that efforts are made to understand indigenous cultures, as a basis for improving the welfare of the people. African values, especially, the latent, unobservable ones culminating into social activities, and referred to as Ubuntu in South Africa and Botho in Botswana, have become important factors in socio economic development (Mangaliso et al, 2005). Ubuntu/Botho and related terms, have become core organizing concepts for developing countries, such as Botswanas Vision 2016. The thought systems of societies usually influence their attitudes and behaviors. Thus, Ubuntu/Botho, underlined by the notion of humanness, provides the moral basis for behavior. Therefore, it is a measure of whats good or bad, right or wrong, just versus unjust (Mangaliso et al., 2005:794). It is emphasized that humanness is manifested in relationships, language, process of decision making, productivity and efficiency, and leadership, among other factors. Ubuntu/Botho is based on human interdependence as related to the norms of, and respect for, reciprocity, selflessness and symbiosis. In this sense, language is used to establish a sense of community, belonging, shared heritage, and common welfare. Thus, for example, an important aspect of language (conversation) is to establish and reinforce relationships. Therefore, unity and understanding among groups are valued above efficiency and accuracy in language use (Mangaliso et al., 2005:795). Under Ubuntu/Botho, decision making becomes an inclusive, community saturated process, undertaken with deliberate speed and flexibility to allow deviations so as to delve into other matters even if they seem remotely connected to the issues under discussion. Issues are looked at from different angles. The goal of decision making, in this context, is to preserve harmony and achieve consensus. Thus, a decision supported by the majority or reached through consensus is seen as superior to the one deemed right which may be opposed and resented by many (Mangaliso et al, 2005:796). Mangaliso et al (2005) note that, for example, this value was at play during the Convention for Democratic South Africa (CODESA). Despite the numerical advantages of the ANC and its partners, all major decisions were made by consensus, after a lot of discussion to bring other parties into agreement. African life, to a greater extent, is traditionally communal and espouses the values of social solidarity, harmony and cooperation. African religions affirm these and provide constant support and sanction for the moral obligations associated with these (Gyekye, 2003). Gyekye (2003) emphasizes that the religiosity of Africans implies and underlies the limitations and the shortcomings of humans and thus, the need to depend on God. The awareness and the acceptance of theses limitations, lead to humility which has implications for social, economic and political relations. Thus, to do the right thing is a moral as well as a religious obligation.

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Local Good (2/2)

Bottom up approaches are key- only way to create sustainability in development. Kwaku Osei-Hweide, University of Botswana, September 2005, AFRO-CENTRISM: THE
CHALLENGE OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, bjx Afro-centrism calls for alternative perspectives on development and on popular notions of poverty. The orthodox conception of poverty, for example, refers to a situation where people have no money to buy adequate food or satisfy other basic needs. This understanding has arisen as a result of globalization of Western culture and associated expansion of the market. Thus, communities which provide for itself outside wage labour and monetized cash transactions such as hunter-gatherer societies are regarded as poor (Rajaee, 2000). This has also led to the popular notion of the poor surviving on less than U$1 a day ( World Bank, 2001/2002: 37). However, critical alternative view of poverty does not simply put emphasis on money, but on spiritual values, communities, and availability of common resources (Baylis and Smith, 2005:648). Such an alternative view of poverty has also led to alternative perception of development as centered broadly on entitlements and redistribution, and incorporates matters of democracy such as political empowerment, participation, meaningful self-determination and protection of the commons, among others (Baylis and Smith, 2005). Alternative views of development therefore, see poverty as a situation where people cannot provide for themselves through their own efforts. Thus, development is to create human well-being through sustainable societies in social, cultural, political, and economic terms (Baylis and Smith, 2005:650). The achievement of this is through a bottom up, participatory and self-reliant approaches and based, in the main, on appropriate (often local) technology and knowledge. Thus, community participation, equity and empowerment become critical aspects of development.

A grassroots orientation of development applies expertise at the local level while avoiding the trap of Western grand narratives of development and rationality. Christine Sylvester, Professor of Women's Studies and Professorial Affiliate of Politics & International Relations at the Lancaster University, 1999, Third World Quarterly, 20:4, 703 - 721, Development studies
and postcolonial studies: disparate tales of the 'Third World', bjx Postdevelopment is that description of something else that combines postmodernist and postcolonialist rejections of Western rationality as the modus operandi of all contemporary life, with the related reluctance to accept any grand narratives of history as truth. By no means one current of thought, postdevelopment is the 1980s and 1990s answer to the failures of all theories and practices of development not only to lift standards of living around the world, but to comprehend local ways of knowing and doing in the sites to be helped. It is an approach that is anti-technology and in favour of working at the combined level of reformed ontology and epistemology. Pieterse characterises it thusly: It shows affinity with the lineage of the Franciscans, liberation theology and Gandhian politics, but the methodology, theoretical framework and politics of post-development are Foucauldian. Its methodological premise is discourse analysis of development...[its] programme is one of resistance rather than emancipation. Its horizon is made up of...local struggles a la Foucault, disavowing a universal agenda. 32 Given the emphasis on local resistance, considerable faith in postdevelopment circles is placed in liaising with and learning from grassroots social movements. This is the way of becoming ontologically engaged and of beginning to alter an epistemological positionality that derives from Eurocentric training. The grassroots orientation of postdevelopment stands in counterdistinction to the ways some alternative development strategies apply development expertise to local communities. It assumes that by working with local communities at generating knowledge, networks forming the development apparatus, which links development with capitalism and with scientific rationality, will prove irrelevant or bankrupt.33 Laudable in the postdevelopment approach is the effort to form mutual knowledge and practice that operate around and in spite of development practices established by a Western industry.

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Postcolonialism Good (1/2)

Current solutions to African problems ignore the emancipatory potential of postcolonialist thought. The negative project is key to understanding forms of struggle that can generate possibilities for transforming political situations. Rita Abrahamsen, lecturer in African and Postcolonial Politics in the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, 2003, African Studies and the Postcolonial Challenge, African Affairs
(2003), 102, 189210, bjx The harsh, everyday realities of life for the majority of people on the African continent lend an urgency to African studies, a deep-felt and sincere aspiration to make scholarship relevant and not simply an activity of the ivory towers. This sense of urgency and the desire to contribute solutions to the African crisis in turn explain to a large extent the marginal position of postcolonial perspectives within African studies, which are frequently understood as too theoretical and as pertaining primarily to postmodern Western societies, rather than poor African countries. This article, however, has argued for a more active engagement with postcolonial theory and I have tried to demonstrate that, although there is no single postcolonial methodology and political stance, this does not mean that the critics charges of political quietude or irrelevance are justified. On the contrary, I have argued that postcolonialisms concerns with the relationship between power and knowledge and practices and institutions provide theoretical and conceptual resources of particular pertinence to contemporary African politics. By making explicit, for example, the forms of rationality and the assumptions that underpin common sense and that permeate languages and practices, postcolonialism not only helps to expose the contingency of the current social and political order. It also provides crucial insights concerning the maintenance and reproduction of current relations and structures, and through this critique postcolonial perspectives can help generate possibilities for transforming social and political conditions. This argument challenges those who regard postcolonialisms reluctance to provide a political manifesto or a programme of action as an indication of its political irrelevance. It is certainly true that postcolonialism, like most perspectives informed by poststructuralist and postmodern sentiments, is deeply suspicious of programmatic political agendas and manifestos. But this does not necessarily represent a wholesale retreat from politics, nor is it automatically vulnerable to what are by now somewhat hackneyed accusations of nihilism or irresponsibility. Rather, it can represent an attempt to understand forms of struggle and practices of contestation that cannot be fully captured from more conventional perspectives. Foucault commented in relation to his own work that My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper- and pessimistic activism.73 A postcolonial approach to African politics might well take this as its credo. This critical project has much to offer African studies, and if the field is genuinely to address the African crisis it needs to embrace and include the postcolonial project. While it is true that to date postcolonialism has not been particularly concerned to generate policy-relevant conclusions for foreign ministries and departments of development, this does not mean that its theoretical insights are devoid of political relevance, or that its methodological and conceptual resources cannot be put to work in more empirical investigations. It is at this point that the postcolonial perspective can also benefit from the encounter with African studies, as a more empirical focus can help give postcolonialism more contemporary relevance through investigations of current relationships between power, discourse and political institutions and practices. Through such an engagement, both postcolonial perspectives and their critics may have much to learn from each other.

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Postcolonialism Good (2/2)

Local postcolonialist movements are critical to catalyze broader resistance movements. Rita Abrahamsen, lecturer in African and Postcolonial Politics in the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, 2003, African Studies and the Postcolonial Challenge, African Affairs
(2003), 102, 189210, bjx Postcolonialisms understanding of power as productive and ubiquitous has clear implications for the investigation of resistance. We have already seen how Bhabha locates ambivalence and resistance in hybridity, thus showing how resistance operates within a structure of power and how it is not always or necessarily in a direct relationship of opposition and polarity (colonizer/colonized, white/black). Instead, resistance is frequently much more subtle, and as part of the recovery of subaltern subject positions postcolonial investigations have often focused on histories from below and everyday forms of resistance rather than revolutions, armed struggles or large-scale political opposition. James Scotts explorations of everyday forms of resistance, for example, demonstrate superbly how the subaltern, despite oppression, frequently avoids and mocks power through hidden transcripts and veiled forms of practical resistance.68 By drawing attention to such resistance, Scott reveals the agency and subjectivity of the subaltern even in conditions of extreme domination. Given postcolonialisms pervasive scepticism of meta-narratives and universal truths, such local-level micro-struggles take on a particular importance as they may give rise to alternative ways of organizing life. A crucial question accordingly becomes to what extent local-level struggles can bring about social and political change. For Scott, the weapons of the weak are not only meaningful in the sense that they effect change in peoples daily lives. These weapons are also crucial to the construction of a resistance culture that may eventually become capable, at certain historical moments, of acting as a catalyst of broader, more openly oppositional liberation movements. When the first declaration of the hidden transcripts succeeds, he writes, its mobilizing capacity as a symbolic act is potentially awesome. At the level of tactics and strategy, it is a powerful straw in the wind.69

Only viewing Africa through a postcolonial lens can break down colonial structures of power. We need to rethink in a process of examining power and modernity. Pal Ahluwalia, Research SA Chair and Professor of Post-Colonial Studies, Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia, 2001, Politics and Post-Colonial Theory: African Inflections, bjx
In the context of sub-Saharan Africa, where the post-colonial state is prevalent, one needs to examine closely the power relations which allow the goals of the developmentalist state to be furthered. As globalisation and cultural imperialism intensify, it is vital for the nation-states of Africa to consider the costs of a modernist project that celebrates economic development above all else. Certainly, tensions already are evidence with the assertion of African values, albeit these values are being subsumed rapidly by the development conundrum. The African countries also need to examine the global system and to discern the patterns through which hegemony is maintained. Post-colonial theory offers a way to break down the tyranny of the structures of power which continue to entrap post-colonial subjects. As Edward Said has pointed out, the strengths of postcolonial theory lie in its attempts to grapple with issues of local and regional significance whilst retaining an emancipatory perspective (1995: 350). It is this task that needs to be confronted by Africanists. For too long, Africa has been subjected to a history of analogy, in which it is compared to other parts of the world, notably Europe. By taking into account the specificity of the African case, it is possible to move beyond such analyses as the patrimonial state, the black man's burden, the langue duree, disorder as political instrument, the criminalisation of the state and the warlord state. A post-colonial perspective on Africa points to the formation of a hybrid African state, one which has appeared through a process of transculturation and cannot be easily understood simply as part of the structures of Western modernity. At the same time, post-colonial studies needs to take account of African studies if it is to avoid eliding culture with the state.

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Outside Aid Bad (1/3)

Outside aid crushes local initiatives and disempowers Africans. Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie, Executive Director of the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD), 6-7-2005, African agency vs the aid industry, http://opendemocracy.net/globalization-G8/aid_2650.jsp, bjx
In the northern hemisphere Live8 has been celebrated as the biggest concert in history an impressive feat but most people in Africa found it irrelevant. Until Africans in Africa are the architects and planners of such efforts this perversity will remain. The really corrosive damage of Live8-type initiatives is twofold. First, they demoralise and disempower Africans in Africa and the diaspora because they render Africans own agency invisible. Second, they undermine local, African-led initiatives and help destroy trust and relationships between African organisations the very stuff of any movement that will author the next stage of Africas liberation. Few people watching Live8 could have known for who told them? that the Johannesburg concert and, crucially, Nelson Mandelas appearance on stage there happened as a direct result of the efforts of an African-led coalition of organisations assembled in March 2005. It had originally planned a concert for 7 July, the first full day of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. Sadly, the coalitions co-option into Live8 has left a legacy of bitterness, distrust, damaged relations, and a small amount of (good) publicity. It will take months of conflict resolution to heal divisions and get the movement back on track. The African coalition now has to assess whether the modicum of publicity was worth the aggro. Firoze Manji of Fahamu, a coalition member, is adamant that it wasnt. We would have gained more political capital if we had refused to go with Live8, says Manji. We would have made the important point that this is about Africa, by Africans, on their own terms. The coalitions exchange (in Firoze Manjis words) of short-term fame for long-term pain is identical to the trap that African leaders themselves often fall into. Because they lack self-confident belief in what they can achieve on their own, they follow a lead from the north. But the north has interests and instincts that differ markedly from Africans. When the two clash, those with more power win out.

Western concepts shouldn't be allowed to dominate development- indigenous cultures and their values must be incorporated. Kwaku Osei-Hweide, University of Botswana, September 2005, AFRO-CENTRISM: THE
CHALLENGE OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, bjx Until recently, Western values and ideas were seen as the only sources of development. However, the importance of other values and norms is evident. Other traditions, as exhibited by Ubuntu/ Botho, demonstrate that flexibility and accommodation are critical in all aspects of development. Mangaliso (2005) emphasizes that in a globalizing world economy, nations will increasingly be hard pressed to develop unique resources that they can use as their sources of competitive advantage. It seems that in the case of (Southern) Africa, qualities and values embodied in Ubuntu/Botho represent an intangible resource that potentially can elevate (Southern) Africa to a higher level of social stability and development. Successful development requires the effective harnessing, harmonizing and rationalizing of indigenous cultures in order to appreciate their added value instead of suppressing them. Traditionally, Western based concepts and processes have been allowed to unconditionally dominate development activities around the world with little regard for indigenous cultures. The challenge, therefore, is to become familiar with indigenous cultures and their core values, and appreciate and incorporate them in development policies and processes. For social work research, for example, the challenge is to fashion a new agenda that incorporates the ideas enshrined in Ubuntu/ Botho as a source of sustainable competitive advantage(Mangaliso et al., 2005:807) in the process of social development.

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Outside Aid Bad (2/3)

Aid in its current form is ineffective- reform that focuses on local agencies is necessary. Alex De Waal, fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University, 1997, International Affairs
(Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 73, No. 4. (Oct., 1997), pp. 623-639., Democratizing the Aid Encounter in Africa, jstor, bjx The record of aid to Africa, in actual achievements in the improved well-being of its recipients, is not a good one. This article contends that this does not mean that aid should be abandoned, but that reform is necessary in the way it is given and managed. The author points out that aid programmes founded on a strong local base and pursued through local agencies have a much better success rate than those imposed from outside. He is critical of the tendency among aid donors to avoid proper engagement with the question of political power and argues for a democratization of the aid encounter which would put decisions on the use of aid in the hands of the recipients and ensure the accountability of those administering it. The record of aid to Africa is not encouraging. The moral case for the affluent helping the hungry has not been matched by results in the form of aid actually improving the well-being of its recipients. Aid is both a textbook example of a self-justifying activity and a paradigm case of how the best intentions can produce the most disastrous results. Most writing on aid tends towards one of three positions. One is to accept the premise that aid can 'work', i.e. promote development, fight hunger, and support democracy and human rights. Hence the failures of aid call for more and better aid: an effort by concerned people to reform the aid system to enable it to work 'properly'. A second (usually Marxist) position is that aid is an integral part of a system designed to promote the interests of imperialism and capitalism; that 'development' in fact creates poverty; and consequently that aid should be done away with altogether. A third viewpoint, increasingly favoured by many academics, is more detached: it tries to analyse what the various arms of the aid industry do (and say) and the actual outcomes, refracted through the power structures of recipient societies. This certainly makes for better sociology than either of the other two approaches, but it is of less use to the policy-maker. This article tries to combine approaches one and three. It accepts that aid exists and will remain: there is sufficient institutional weight behind it. But there are enduring problems, both with the aid apparatus in its current institutional and political context, and inherent in the aid encounter itself. The current government review of aid policy which promises the most far-reaching restructuring of the aid encounter for 20 years, is an appropriate moment to examine some of the problems and make a simple but radical suggestion for reform. The subject-matter of this article is aid in general, but a large amount of attention, in proportion to their size, is given to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and emergency relief. These sectors of the aid business are small but growing, with a high profile and much influence in determining public attitudes. For over a decade, emergency relief has been taking up an ever-expanding proportion of official and NGO aid budgets. In 1980, disaster relief comprised less than one per cent of official development assistance; by 1991 it had risen to nearly seven per cent; in response to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia it increased even more sharply.' In 1994 14.8 per cent of Britain's bilateral aid was emergency assistance. The relief sector is also rapidly changing in response to new pressures and conditions, and may show the future for the whole industry. The focus of this article is Africa, where these trends are most pronounced. One of the abiding problems of the aid encounter is the mental tyranny it exerts: aid itself becomes the lens through which we see the many and varied social and economic problems of poor countries. This is a version of the familiar problem that those holding bureaucratic power can only envisage change in so far as it comes about through their own actions. Even the most cursory examination of the history of famine prevention and the conquest of social ills such as illiteracy indicates that factors other than planned, externally initiated or externally financed change are the most important. Aid is a distorting lens, and no writing on aid can fully escape this distortion. The least that can be done is to issue a warning at the outset: beware, we are studying a marginal phenomenon.

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Outside Aid Bad (3/3)

Foreign aid in Africa hinders development- there is little local involvement, and expenses are wasted. Isaias Afwerki, president of Eritrea, Foreign Aid Hinders African Development, Winter 1997, Opposing
Viewpoints, bjx In many instances, excessive "donor" involvement in aid management has not only reduced the effectiveness and efficiency of aid by delaying timely implementation, but it has also limited local involvement and capacity building because foreign consultants and experts tend to take on the majority of the administrative work. Consider, for instance, that conservative estimates place the number of foreign experts administering aid in Africa today in excess of 100,000. This figure says much about the tendency of aid programs to create self-perpetuating circumstances. Moreover, the seemingly endless number of missions to assess project feasibility before projects are launched, not to mention costly mid-term reviews, often entail considerable expenses that could have been funneled into productive activities to benefit the recipient nations. Though international aid programs show tremendous room for improvement, my intention is not to reinforce isolationist pundits in Washington and other Western capitals who think "foreign aid has become a rat hole" that should be plugged. But how can we reconcile that jaundiced view of international aid with trends toward increased globalization and interdependence? The pitfalls of isolationism are obvious; the idea that one can live safely and comfortably within the confines of one's territory while a substantial portion of humanity remains in the grips of endemic poverty is an illusion. Indeed, growing affluence and consumerism in one part of the globe cannot coexist for long with extreme deprivation in another part of the same planet without threatening world peace and security.

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AT: Dirlik
Dirlik is wrong. Postcolonialism is powerful precisely because of its multitude of themes which allows it to challenge traditional modes of thought and propose radical methods of change. Prasenjit Duara, Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago, 2001, Postcolonial Studies, 4:1, 81 - 88, Leftist criticism and the political impasse: response to Arif Dirlik's
'How the grinch hijacked radicalism: further thoughts on the postcolonial', bjx As for the identity of postcolonialism , one point made by Dirlik rings true. What he calls a grab-bag of issues and themes, the editors of this journal have called a tool-kit. Although there is evidently a difference in attitude towards the usefulness of this catch-all category, both sides are agreed that this makes postcolonialism something less than a systematic theory. I fully agree with such an understanding. Postcolonialism is not a theory, but an insight or a perspective that is extraordinarily fertile simply because it provides a point of view from outside the modernising perspective of Enlightenment rationality that has fostered so much of our modern historical thinking.2 And because it is a perspective and a tool-kit of concepts and strategies designed to recognize difference (124), it has been useful to a wide range of scholars, many of whom, such as Gayatri Spivak and Edward Said, have used it for radical purposes. In a sense, this parallels the use of poststructuralism by European radicals such as Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Etienne Balibar. Several of these thinkers have proposed their own ways of reconciling epistemological antifoundationalism with the political project of constructing a radical agency of societal transformation. Dirliks critique of the diffuseness of postcolonialism initially left me a little puzzled. He complains that postcolonial criticism has become something impossible to define and theorise what may be specific to it (156). If so, one may wonder how he has been able to specify its function so precisely.
Dirlik's charges of facism against the postcolonial project represent a misunderstanding of postcolonialism. Prasenjit Duara, Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago, 2001, Postcolonial Studies, 4:1, 81 - 88, Leftist criticism and the political impasse: response to Arif Dirlik's 'How the grinch hijacked radicalism: further thoughts on the postcolonial', bjx On the way to this rather tame conclusion, however, Dirlik makes a serious, and, in my view, highly irresponsible charge, namely that those who identify with postcolonial criticism are serving fascism. His proof of this preposterous assertion emerges first from the notion that multi-cultural politics simply celebrate identity and neglect or erase the conditions of its origins. There is a deep confusion here between postcolonialism which is, at least for me, a critique of fascistic tendencies underlying the homogenising tendency of nationalism (whatever its other merits), and multi-culturalism , which celebrates identity politics. I certainly agreeand argued long agothat multi-cultural declarations of identity which do not reflect on their own conditions of emergence are doomed to remain within the problematic of nationalism . Second, even though Dirlik himself does not wish for a return of the revolutionary paradigm, he nonetheless believes that by giving up foundationalism and the search for a subject of history, postcolonialism is substantially antirevolutionary and therefore becomes a tool for fascist forces. Does Dirlik want a postrevolutionary foundationalism or a postfoundational revolution? It might help to know, but then, it might not. How exactly postcolonial analysis, which is committed to deconstructing identity, has been useful for fascism or some other entity committed to the reification and glorification of national, ethnic or cultural identity is, as I have pointed out, not easy to grasp. Dirliks loose-cannon approach appears to be his personal way of addressing an impasse, which I believe, is faced by critical historians in the world today. Critical historiography which had found its inspiration in Marxist and other radical social theory encounters a world in which the possibilities of noncapitalist emancipation have receded and one where the revolutionary states have been discredited. At the same time, capitalist globalisation continues to widen the gap between the powerful and the powerless while the erosion of a national society itself unleashes a reaction which results in still more violent and exclusive rei cations of nation, race or culture. In this impasse, Dirlik has reacted by flinging about irresponsible labels, making vague gestures about imagining a different future, and resorting to the carping criticism of other academics as the one reflex of which he is capable in paralysis.

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