by far the most varied and eclectic of the identity fields

that we're passing in review in this portion of the course:

eclectic really of necessity, of course, because of the

immense variety of the materials covered,

but also because of swirling issues and controversies within

post-colonial studies or "po-co,"

as it's affectionately known, which kind of pose a number of

questions from the side that keep things lively,

to say the least.

We are taking up only one strand, one developmental

strand, in post-colonial studies today,

a kind of progression from the work of Said to the work of

Bhabha which is relatively easily mapped,

simply in terms of the intellectual agendas of each of

them, but there's a great deal else

going on.

I suppose I should just mention in passing certain topics that

we won't be discussing, at least except possibly in

passing and that, however, you might really be

interested in considering if you do have an interest in this

field.

The first issue, of course, is who says

"post-colonial," and who says that we're

necessarily out of colonialism?

Just because the local viceroy packs up and goes home doesn't

necessarily mean that things change all that significantly in

the so-called postcolonial setting,

and it needs to be taken into account,

seriously considered, whether or not one isn't still

in colonial or colonial studies and that the moniker

"post-colonial" might therefore be

inappropriately applied.

There's also the question that arises in the study of the

so-called third world, which is obviously in itself a

controversial term.

It arises as that which is not comprised as either of the great

sort of trajectories of the superpowers during the Cold War.

There is no Cold War, at least allegedly no Cold War

any longer, and so the question of the

status, nature, and structure of the third

world is obviously wide open.

But the issue I mean to touch on in terms of post-colonial

studies is whether, in fact, crises and concerns

with respect to the third world are necessarily always to be

understood in terms of coloniality.

Is it just that certain parts of the globe have been colonized

that constitutes them as they are and shapes their identity?

Said in a very interesting way takes this up in trying to

figure out how it is that German Orientalism so very closely

resembles French Orientalism, even though the Germans had no

colonial interests in the Middle East.

During the whole period--the early nineteenth century in

particular, when German Orientalism is

practically indistinguishable from the French,

takes up the same concerns, and has the same interests--

how is it that the French are undoubtedly in some sense,

in Said's view, determined by their colonial

interests, and the Germans,

who seem so much to reflect French attitudes,

have no colonial interests, at least in the Middle East?

Said sort of quite honestly tries to come to terms with

this.

His answer is, "Well, German Orientalism

is simply derived in scholarly terms from French Orientalism.

It has the stamp of that thinking and reflects that

thinking," and so there you are.

He could have said on the other hand,

however, that a certain mindset toward the third world--

and this is the point I have been making about this

particular issue-- dictates a certain way of

structuring one's thought about that world,

irrespective of whether or not there are colonial interests

involved.

That's what I mean by raising the question,

"Is coloniality always at issue in cases of this

kind?"

There's a kind of confusion in thinking about these things,

a confusion which is distilled in the history of the British

East India Company-- which is both nationalist and,

as it were, globalizing--but a confusion

which comes out in more recent history of coloniality,

and that is: well, what drives coloniality?

Is it always nationalism or, as seems increasingly the case

in the modern world, is it transnational interests

in globalization?

In other words, is the relationship between the

colonist and the colonized a relation of some sort of

metropolitan nation with respect to a provincial empire,

or is it a relation which is dictated and generated by the

economic interests of globalization?

This is a complex subject which generates a great deal of debate

in the field that we take up today,

but in a way, we can't just say,

"Well, nationalism isn't important

anymore, now it's globalization"

because actually nationalism seems to have reappeared in the

Bush foreign policy, even possibly to be continued

in the Obama foreign policy, and so there's a complex

relationship still between nationalism and globalization

that needs to be considered and thought about if these social

relations are to be clearly understood.

Finally, there is within post-colonial studies--

especially among those who represent the various colonized

interests of the world-- there is the question,

to borrow an expression from Gayatri Spivak,

"How should the subaltern speak?"

It has to do most vividly with the very question,

"Which language should the subaltern speak in?"

Spivak's own question is, "Can the subaltern speak

at all?"

and Said raises that question, as you notice,

during the course of his analysis;

but the related issue is, okay, suppose that the

subaltern can speak--suppose Ngugi wa Thiong'o,

for example, can write a novel.

What language should it be written in?

Ngugi campaigned in his more recent career not to write in

English and also to urge other African writers to write in

native languages and not in the language of the colonizer.

This is a frequently heard opinion from within

post-colonial studies, but debate swirls around it

because, of course, the means of

circulation of literary influence is languages that draw

upon international publishing possibilities and not languages

that can only be grasped and published and disseminated

locally.

So there, too, you have a complicated issue or

controversy on both sides, of which there is much to say;

but as I say, for us today it's simply a

question-- or more simply a question,

because when you've got Homi Bhabha on the syllabus there's

no such thing as simplicity-- so I should say it's a question

of following the trajectory or development specifically between

Said and Bhabha.

In beginning to think about Said, I thought we wouldn't

think about him.

We'd think instead, for a moment at least,

once again about Virginia Woolf.

In the second chapter of A Room of One's Own,

this young woman, Mary Beton, Mary Seton,

Mary Carmichael--whoever she is, is sitting in the British

Library.

She's thought that she'd spend the morning trying to figure out

what scholars think about women.

After all, the subject is women and fiction.

I'm supposed to be addressing these undergraduates on this

subject: "what do I know about women?

I'd better go to the library and find out."

So she expects just to find a couple of books and she'll be

all set.

Instead she is simply overwhelmed, and there's this

avalanche of material.

She submits maybe a dozen or two call slips and then sits

back waiting for the material to appear.

Of course, the point of it is that everything in the British

Library on what turns out to be the voluminous subject of women

is written by men, right?

Everything.

She begins to take note of the way these things are described

in the sort of pre-computer database.

That is to say, how do you classify the various

things that men have to say about women?

This is the way it goes: "condition of Middle Ages

of; habits in the Fiji Islands of;

worshipped as goddesses by; weaker in moral sense than;

idealism of; greater conscientious of;

South Sea islanders age of puberty among;

attractiveness of; offered as sacrifice to;

small size of brain of; profounder sub-consciousness of;

less hair on the body of; mental, moral and physical

inferiority of; love of children of;

greater length of life of; weaker muscles of;

strength of affections of; vanity of;

higher education of; Shakespeare's opinion of;

Lord Birkenhead's opinion of; Dean Inge's opinion of;

La Bruyere's opinion of; Dr. Johnson's opinion of;

Mr. Oscar Browning's opinion of; and dot, dot,

dot--the list can continue.

In other words, she sits there.

She's simply overwhelmed, and what she of course is

telling us is that there's lots and lots and lots and lots of

opinions on record about women, all of them expressed by men.

So now thinking about Edward Said,

if Edward Said had taken up Virginia Woolf's project,

if Edward Said had undertaken to write A Room of One's Own,

the title of it would have been Female-ism,

right?

That's precisely what he means by "Orientalism,"

the vast body of information-- some of it scholarly,

some of it just sort of sheerly doxological--

the vast body of information about peoples called

"Oriental" by and large,

especially in the nineteenth-century tradition.

Said's main concern is the peoples of the Middle East,

and he shows how it is that there's a certain reason why

this is an appropriate term to use for that tradition of

scholarship and philology in the nineteenth century.

In any case, the vast body of material

published about these people-- and it's perfectly true that

there are the infinitely long shelves of the library devoted

to multivolume treatises on this topic,

all of them written by us in the West--

us--about this other who is perpetually in our imagination

and constructed by us in the variety of ways that Said

discusses on page 1811, the right-hand column.

He says toward the bottom of the column:

Orientalism is premised upon exteriority,

that is, on the fact that the Orientalist,

poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak,

describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for

and to the West.

Just as in Woolf, men's opinions about women

getting themselves expressed in books make the subject of woman

clear to an audience of men.

All right.

So before moving in with some more depth and precision into

Said's text, let me quickly explain what I

mean by saying that Said and Bhabha constitute a kind of

sequence.

I'm thinking in particular of Elaine Showalter's distinction

between feminist and gynocritical criticism.

You remember the distinction which is echoed,

by the way, in Gates's essay.

The distinction is: first you get criticism in

which the treatment of women in literature by men is the focus

of attention, and then subsequently you get

criticism in which the women's tradition,

the voice of women themselves, is the focus and,

as Showalter believes, the more fruitful terrain for

criticism.

You can see that in that context, by way of making that

distinction, you can see that Said is

decidedly phase one because, of course, Orientalism is about

the treatment of the Middle Eastern other by the West.

It can be slotted into that same moment.

Then Homi Bhabha obviously in a variety of ways takes up the

subject position of the colonized, of the subaltern.

He doesn't leave out the subject position of the

colonizer because he sees them as being radically interrelated,

but he plainly is as interested in a variety of ways of talking