The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

ISSN: 0308-6534 (Print) 1743-9329 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/fich20

The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-

Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory

Berny Sèbe

To cite this article: Berny Sèbe (2010) The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century
Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 38:3,
507-510, DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2010.503408

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2010.503408

Published online: 09 Aug 2010.

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 Book Reviews 507

The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial

Theory
Edited by DANIEL CAREY and LYNN FESTA
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009
xiii + 378 pp., ISBN: 978-0-19-922914-7 (£58.00 hardback)

Readers of this journal will remember the timely call made by Dane Kennedy in 1996,
in his article ‘Imperial History and Post-Colonial Theory’,1 to ‘take the historiography
of imperialism in fruitful, if unfamiliar, directions’ through a better dialogue between
historians and literary critics. This perspective opened promising avenues of investi-
gation, many of which still remain to be explored fifteen years later. Daniel Carey
and Lynn Festa’s edited volume The Postcolonial Enlightenment epitomises the kind
of stimulating results that an inter-disciplinary effort can help produce through
cross-fertilisation of methods, theories and objects of study. Although it is produced
by a team of contributors coming primarily from the discipline of English literature
(apart from one in French and one in modern Asian history), it appeals far beyond
its principal disciplinary constituency, and can prove particularly useful to imperial
historians. Those specialising in the early instances of European expansion will
appreciate the attempt to reappraise what the ‘Enlightenment’ meant in an imperial
context. Colleagues specialising in the second wave of western imperial activity will
get from this book stimulating material to reflect upon the origins and complexities
508 Book Reviews
of some of the key concepts and ideological tensions that cut across their period. They
might also reflect upon the apparent shortcomings of the once traditional distinction
between ‘first’ and ‘second’ British empires, the accuracy of which has been increas-
ingly challenged:2 this book demonstrates the relevance of eighteenth-century
thought to comprehend the conceptual framework underpinning nineteenth-
century empire-building. Early and late modernists alike will appreciate the laudable
epistemological effort which the various authors have made in order to un-weave the
complex and sometimes contradictory concepts and political implications which have
been all too often conveniently packaged under the umbrella term ‘Enlightenment’.
The editors of this volume have undertaken to explore, through the prism of a criti-
cal apparatus inspired by postcolonial theory (yet often aware of its limits), the impact,
meaning and legacy of ideas, practices and events shaped by a variety of thinkers of the
‘Enlightenment’, who have given it a multi-faceted character which is all too often
ignored when the historical concept is called to explain its role in the western
project of global domination. By using a vast corpus of texts by philosophers
(Hobbes, Locke, Bayle, Montesquieu, Hume, Diderot or Kant), scientists (Newton),
writers or poets (Behn, Defoe, Burke, Cowper) or explorers (Champlain, Lahontan),
they intend to establish ‘alternative genealogies’ for concepts and practices such as
race, sovereignty, Eurocentrism or universality that have been central to postcolonial
critique and have scarcely been applied to eighteenth-century texts.
The book revolves around three major themes. The first one, entitled ‘Subjects and
Sovereignty’, seems the least convincing of the book in terms of conceptual arrange-
ment: the juxtaposition of only two chapters looking primarily at one concept each
does not perhaps do full justice to the otherwise promising association of these two
key ideas. Fortunately, the quality of the chapters themselves makes this remark a
point of detail. Srinivas Aravamudan’s chapter on ‘Hobbes and America’ contextua-
lises the place of colonial America (and Hobbes’ own personal experience) in the
theoretical construct of Leviathan, offering an exploration of one of Hobbes’ central
concerns, sovereignty, in relation to empire, liberty and English maritime power.
David Lloyd uses Fanon’s racial phenomenology to appraise the aesthetic determi-
nation of the ‘subject’, as posited by Kant and Burke (especially in the Critique of Jud-
gement and the Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful), in relation to the sensible body of the colonised.
The second part of the volume brings together chapters looking at ‘Enlightenment
Categories and Postcolonial Classifications’. It reflects mainly upon the ways in which
the eighteenth century can contribute to postcolonial theory, and vice versa. Daniel
Carey applies Said’s conception of ‘contrapuntal reading’ to Robinson Crusoe as a way
of testing the limits of recent postcolonial readings which have focused primarily on
the representation of slavery. He also exemplifies how literary texts can be used to
explore the philosophical underpinnings of the Enlightenment. The other two chapters
of the section, by Felicity A. Nussbaum and Siraj Ahmed, engage with a major postco-
lonial categorisation, that of ‘Orientalism’, from an eighteenth-century perspective.
Nussbaum argues that the distinction between ‘Orientals’ and ‘Blacks’ which prevails
in postcolonial theoretical works tends to oversee the interplay between Orientalist
 Book Reviews 509

and abolitionist discourses. More amenable to postcolonial canons, Ahmed offers a re-
appraisal of the limits which eighteenth-century specialists have usually opposed to
Said’s concept of ‘Orientalism’, by showing how the military and fiscal logics of the
East India Company cannot be separated from the activities of even the most respectful
of Orientalists of the period, such as Sir William Jones (1746–94).
In the third section of the book, the contributors suggest that engagement with
eighteenth-century texts from a postcolonial standpoint does not necessarily imply
an antagonistic approach to the premises of the Enlightenment, as has often been
the case. Based on a careful analysis of the Baron de Lahontan’s Dialogues avec un
sauvage and Diderot’s Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, Doris Garraway explores
overt or covert critiques of colonialism in those key French Enlightenment works.
Daniel Carey and Sven Trakulhum look at the tensions between the acknowledgement
of difference by many eighteenth-century philosophers and the seemingly Eurocentric
universalist ambitions that lay at the core of the Enlightenment project. Karen O’Brien
contributes to ongoing debates about the nature and effects of cosmopolitanism (and
its link to imperialism), drawing on examples from the literary and poetic realms to
argue that the circulation of knowledge, more than transnational belonging, favoured
the development of global ways of apprehending the world. The philosophical ambi-
tion to subsume human diversity into a coherent whole appears much more varied
and open to debate than had been previously acknowledged by postcolonial critiques.
The ‘Coda’ to this volume, by Suvir Kaul, offers the most thought-provoking, and
possibly controversial, statements for imperial historians. Provocatively entitled ‘How
to Write Postcolonial Histories of Empire’, Kaul takes issue with what he terms ‘neoim-
perialist historiography’ (p. 315) in the context of the current American hegemony. He
sometimes over-simplifies the statements he attacks, but, in the last analysis, the
polemical nature of his stance is quite clear. Defending an agenda resolutely focused
on current affairs, he calls for ‘progressive and postcolonial critics’ to consider the
legacy of modern imperialisms in the current international order. He also offers a
timely reminder of the numerous alternatives to the Western-imposed trajectory
towards modernity that have appeared throughout the history of European imperialisms
and can today enrich postcolonial approaches to imperium.
Overall, this volume appears as a stimulating piece of work combining excellent
theoretical, literary and philosophical approaches, as shown by the rich footnotes
throughout the chapters which provide a wealth of references in various disciplines.
References to archival sources are very occasional, and this is normal given the disci-
pline and the purpose of the book, which obviously lies elsewhere. The volume offers a
concise yet useful and up-to-date bibliography. As is customary, there are always refer-
ences that one would have liked to see included. For instance, the list could have
included a reference to the insightful compilation of Yves Bénot’s articles in Les Lumi-
ères, l’esclavage, la colonisation (published the year of his death, in 2005). The volume is
coherently organised and reflects a real effort to integrate harmoniously the work of
the various contributors. Each of the essays is in itself a self-standing piece of scholar-
ship in its own right, but the volume is much more than the sum of its parts. Its quality
510 Book Reviews
makes a strong case in favour of the increased dialogue between eighteenth-century
studies and postcolonial thought which the editors call for.

Notes
[1] Dane Kennedy, ‘Imperial History and Postcolonial Theory’. Journal of Imperial and Common-
wealth History 24, no. 3 (1996): 345– 63.
[2] See, for instance, David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000, 2 –4.

BERNY SÈBE
University of Birmingham
# 2010, Berny Sèbe