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Identity Politics
Identity politics is a vital topic for discussions on how to bring about revolution. I first discovered these ideas in an essay by Patrick Hogan (Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut) on Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and subsequently got from the British Library the following book which he referred to. The afterword conveys some of the key ideas. Patrick Colm Hogan, Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean ( New York: State University of New York Press, 2000)
AFTERWORD SOCIALISM AND THE POLITICS OF OTHERNESS
The problems of culturalism and colonial identity are obviously complex, and deeply felt. They do not lend themselves to easy solutions. Indeed, they involve such a variety of conscious and unconscious feelings, beliefs, impulses, social practices and interrelations, that it is difficult to imagine any measures, however complex, that would genuinely resolve the social hatred and personal pain that have resulted from colonialism. In this context, two things seem necessary if we are to make any progress in thinking about these difficult issues.
First of all, it is crucial that we have a clear, analytic understanding of what is involved in dilemmas of colonialism and cultural identity. This includes the cultural geography of colonialism, the varieties of culture that are part of colonial relations, the nature of cultural identity—its precise psychological structure and operation, the ways in which it may be formed and specified, and so on. In the preceding chapters, I have tried to establish a basic framework for such an analytic understanding. Toward this end, I have distinguished regions of colonial contact from culturally autonomous regions, the two types of contact culture from the two types of “basic” culture, and so on. I have sought to discriminate the different sorts of colony—“indigenous majority,” “alienated majority,” and so forth—and the variables, such as degree of severance, that bear on cultural constancy and cultural transformation. On this basis, I have undertaken to distinguish the range of relations one might have toward the various cultures involved in the colonial situation, from orthodoxy to alienating hybridity. I have tried to outline their 303
properties and connections—for example, the link between mimeticism and reactionary traditionalism—and to detail their close relations with gender identity. After a preliminary statement in the first chapter, I have sought to expand this account in subsequent chapters, both in general terms—for example, by elaborating the concept of “nativism”—and in relation to specific cultural issues, such as Hindu notions of dharma or Igbo conceptions of cosmology and gender. In connection with this, I have drawn on Hindu ideas about law and custom to clarify the nature and variety of indigenous tradition, as well as the difference between modernization and Westernization.
In addition to this broadly social analysis, I have outlined a psychological account of the way in which “reflective identity,” as I have called it, arises and operates, primarily through social attribution. It should be clear to readers that this account is radically anti-essentialist. For the properties we take to define ourselves are not based on anything intrinsic in ourselves. Indeed, as Tagore’s Gora illustrates, these attributed properties have all their identity-defining force even when they are entirely empirically false. “Practical identity,” in contrast, is an identity of habit and expectation learned in daily activity, and bound up with socially hierarchizing divisions, such as those of class, race, and sex. In a sense, this practical identity is the true repository of culture—indigenous, metropolitan, or whatever—and the most significant locus of cultural conflict under colonialism, especially in those cases where a discrepancy develops between its psychological and social components, between individual expectation and social cooperation.
My hope is that this broad range of theoretical principles and distinctions will serve to facilitate productive discussion and analysis of colonialism not only in literary study, but in more directly consequential areas of politics and culture as well.
This brings me to the second matter that provides a necessary condition for advancement in understanding cultural identity after colonization: an entirely open forum for discussion. As John Stuart Mill wrote, “Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil: there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices”—a point well illustrated by Mill’s own unfortunate views about the colonies—“and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood” (301). It is extremely important—not only to literary theory and criti- 304
cism, but to practical politics as well—that the recent trend toward dogmatism in postcolonial studies be reversed. As noted in chapter 1, it seems to be increasingly difficult even to publish in this field without adhering to the ideas associated with Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, and a few other poststructural writers. Again, this is not the fault of these thinkers. Anyone’s work can be raised to the level of dogma by overly enthusiastic followers. But it is nonetheless a serious and consequential problem, both intellectually and politically.
There is another, more local consequence of this Millian principle as well. By its very nature, the issue of cultural identity will affect different people differently. However socially determined it may be, identity is nonetheless something that is experienced and asserted individually. Even at his most stridently Hindu, Gora still affirms and feels Hindu identity as a singular person, alone. This is poignantly made clear by the momentary despair he feels on learning that he is not a Hindu. At that moment, Gora recognizes not only that he might well be alone in the future, but that he has really been alone all along—“The foundations upon which, from childhood, all his life had been raised had suddenly crumbled into dust … What he had called the past seemed to have no substance” (402). There is no direct connection among the hearts or minds of people who share a commitment to one identity. Indeed, in many ways, that affirmation of shared identity is an attempt to deny the utter aloneness of each person’s thoughts and emotions, an attempt to overcome the painful recognition that we will never genuinely know or be known by anyone else, that identity can never be shared, except in name. Because of this aloneness, each person experiences his or her conflicts over identity uniquely. Certainly there are patterns. The patterns are precisely what appear in the theory, and what we have focused on in the preceding chapters. But there are also individual differences. And these differences become particularly consequential when we are discussing practical responses to problems of colonialism and culture. For what serves as a solution in one case, may not serve as a solution in other cases. Put simply, the problems faced by Makak, Okonkwo, Nnu Ego, and so on, are not the same. And even if the problems were the same, the people facing them are not. There is no “one size fits all” solution to the problems of colonialism and culture.
As a result of recognizing just this diversity, I have tried to interpret each of the preceding authors positively. I have not set out, first of all, to criticize their views. Rather, I have tried to draw out what seems valuable, 305
insightful, productive in their work, what seems to contribute to a larger discussion of cultural identity after colonization—and, perhaps most importantly, what might advance a reader’s sympathetic comprehension of the people involved. For these are human problems, and as such they demand not only abstract understanding, but empathic understanding a1 well. This does not mean that one should read uncritically. I have ended almost every chapter with some questions, some unresolved problems some criticisms. Nor does it mean that all responses to these problems should be treated equally. Take reactionary traditionalism. I have little agreement with this position, and I suspect that this feeling is shared by most of my readers. There is no reason for us to consider reactionary traditionalism a genuinely viable response to colonialism. Nonetheless, it is important to understand what drives people into this position, and wha1 its virtues are. The pain and love and ethical precision of Gora’s reactionary traditionalism show us that this is not a position we can simply dismiss with facile phrases about “fanaticism,” borrowed from the evening news. The intellectual issues, and the reality, are vastly more complex, and thoroughly human.
In this respect too, then, the active presence of many anticolonial views is important. Such a Millian multiplicity contributes to a dialectic in which some views, perhaps mistaken in themselves, nonetheless serve to highlight aspects of colonialism and neocolonialism that would otherwise be ignored and serve to counterbalance comparable colonialist views. We might shift for a moment from India, Africa, and the Caribbean to the contemporary United States. I have little intellectual agreement with such manifestations of identity politics as Afrocentrism, However, it seems likely that, in the context of a pervasive Eurocentrism, Afrocentrists help to alter the larger debate about American culture. If there were no Afrocentrism, the entire discussion would probably be even more skewed toward Eurocentrism.
On the other hand, though I believe that there is no single, complete solution to the conflicts of cultural identity, and though I believe it is important that a wide range of views be heard, and heard sympathetically, I also believe that some responses are particularly valuable, particularly consequential, and, what is more, generalizable. Though I can come to understand what sense there is in reactionary traditionalism, I cannot support its generalization, its acceptance as a broad social solution to cultural denigration and loss. Indeed, I cannot support the generalization of any particular cultural identity—syncretism, or ortho- 306
doxy, or whatever. That is the point of recognizing the individual diversity of responses to this problem. Again, there is no “one size fits all” approach to cultural identity. However, I do believe that there are two responses that are generalizable. Neither involves a commitment to one form of identity over another, one tradition over another. Moreover, both should function simultaneously to reduce cultural degradation and extinction, on the one hand, and to promote internal cultural reform, on the other. The first response is, roughly, individual—simultaneously emotive, intellectual, and ethical: universalism. The second response is economic and political: democratic socialism. Clearly, I cannot engage in anything resembling a full explication and defense of universalism and democratic socialism in the present context. However, I should like to conclude with a few observations on each.
“Universalism,” as I am using the term here, has four primary components. The first is descriptive. This is the view that, at some level of abstraction, all human cultures share structures of properties and principles. This should be an uncontroversial presumption, for without it we can make no sense of the idea that these are all human cultures. If there are no shared structures, then we are left in the position of those colonialists—rightly denounced by Bhabha—for whom Africans shared with Europeans nothing more than a deceptively similar outward appearance (see “Of Mimicry,” 131 and citations). Of course, as Appiah has noted in his defense of universalism, one must be careful in determining just what these shared structures are (58). But we have reason to believe that they are quite extensive. Work in linguistics over the past half-century has revealed a wide range of universal patterns even in the most superficially diverse languages. Recent research in literary study suggests that there is a similar universality in literature (see my “Literary Universals” and citations). There is no reason to believe that the point cannot be extended to all areas of culture.
Research on such descriptive universals is important in two ways. First of all, it is important in revealing cross-cultural continuities, the common modes of thought and action that underlie seemingly diverse practices. Second, it is important in helping us to understand cultural specificity. For, until we recognize our shared principles, we cannot fully understand what is not shared. Consider a very simple example. All written literary traditions appear to make use of allusion. The specific content of those allusions necessarily differs. But, if we are unaware of this universal, we will misunderstand, and probably undervalue, literary 307
works from other traditions, because we will not recognize or seek to recognize the literary and other associations that often serve to give depth and resonance to a work. In Kalidasa’s Sakuntala, the title character and her unborn child are partially repudiated by her husband, then taken from him and removed to heaven by her (nonhuman) mother. This scene repeats a famous episode from the final book of Valmiki’s Ramayana. There, Rama agrees to accept Sita and their children back into the palace only if she passes through a fire unharmed. Sita refuses, and calls on her (nonhuman) mother, who takes her away from Rama and deep into the earth. The thematic point of Kalidasa’s scene, and much of its pathos, are necessarily lost on anyone who does not recognize this allusive connection. And no one trained solely in the European tradition will bother even to look for such connections if he or she is unaware of the shared principle of allusion. Similar points could be made about much more complex literary properties, and have been made repeatedly about language—for it is clear that we will greatly mis-analyze any language, from English to Kinyarwanda, if we do not recognize the universal principles that are so crucial to all languages. No doubt, similar points could be made about ethics or religion or political structure as well.
The second component of universalism is, so to speak, experiential. It is the sense of universally shared humanity that serves as the necessary foundation for empathy. We have empathic identification with someone only when we can recognize in him or her the thoughts and feelings that animate our own actions and passions in the world, only when we feel that we can share’ a point of view on events, only when we overcome insular identities—of race or gender or nation or class—and imagine ourselves into common impulses, relations, and sensibilities. Lalita Pandit has called this “Empathic Universalism,” and identified it as a central component of Tagore’s work (207).
In the introduction, I referred to the view of Medieval Arabic theorists such as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, that an ethically successful literary work fosters rahmah. Usually translated as “compassion” or “mercy,” it derives from a root “signifying tenderness requiring the exercise of beneficence” (Maulana Mohammad Ali, 3n.3). This is a deeply empathic feeling that leads us to act humanely. And it is central to the ethical purpose and aesthetic force of virtually every work considered in the preceding pages. Though she was no doubt unfamiliar with the Arabic theorists and even with the concept of rahmah, rahmah 308
is nonetheless what Jean Rhys sought to cultivate through her revision of Antoinette. It is what Achebe labored to elicit through his portrayal of Okonkwo, what Emecheta developed so painfully in the character of Nnu Ego. Moreover, in the preceding chapters, I have sought to emphasize and render more salient precisely this empathic aspect of these works. Once again, this aspect is inseparable from universalism. For without a presumption of universality, at least in the broad contours of the human heart and human mind, no contemporary European American, nor even a contemporary African American, nor even a contemporary urbanized Igbo, could open him/herself to feel for Okonkwo or Nnu Ego that empathic tenderness which entails beneficence.
The mention of ethics brings us to the third component of universalism as I am using the term—the ethical or ethico-political component. Here I have in mind, not spontaneous beneficent action based on empathy, but the sorts of ethical precepts that are enshrined in the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” or in the fundamental ideals of sadharanadharma (universal dharma). These precepts do not so much lead us to understand whole cultures as to evaluate specific cultural practices. Unfortunately, universal precepts often conflict with culturally well-established practices. Does this mean that we should invariably outlaw such practices—or even that we should invariably take up the cause of opposing these practices? The answer is not entirely clear. On the one hand, it is only on the basis of universal ethical principles that we can forcefully condemn either indigenous or metropolitan practices—from Indian sati to American slavery, to British colonialism itself. On the other hand, such condemnations are often hypocritical, aimed only at those practices in which we ourselves are not implicated. Moreover, condemnation can prove counterproductive. For instance, as discussed above, Nandy has argued cogently that British cultural intrusions in India had precisely the reverse of their widely asserted effect, and turned sati from a rare practice into a virtual epidemic.
In this context, I find Tagore’s ethical universalism particularly instructive. Consider some of the more ethically admirable characters from his fiction: Jagmohan, of Quartet, is a Brahmin who sets aside his inherited beliefs, taking up instead European utilitarianism. When a plague breaks out in Calcutta, he opens a hospital that caters to untouchables, and so dies ministering to the suffering and the outcaste. That is one end of a spectrum, and now the other: Gora is an Irish foundling who devotes himself to Hindu acara, ordinary popular custom. When tenants 309
on the indigo plantations are terrorized by the European planters and the District Magistrate, Gora suffers imprisonment in their defense, while the anglicized characters pass their leisure time flattering that same magistrate at one of his garden parties. Between these extremes, there is Nikhil, of The Home and the World, a Hindu landlord who commits himself to the sadharanadharma, the universal dharma, of ahimsa or nonviolence and to the support of poor Muslim tenants—a commitment that pits him against his closest friend and against his wife. Above all these is Anandamoyi, who repudiates the exclusivist aspects of her familial tradition and suffers ostracism from her community, after she adopts an untouchable European child whose parents died during the rebellion of 1857.
Praising the “spirit of sacrifice and willingness to suffer,” Tagore wrote that “Nothing is of higher value … than disinterested faith in ideals.” That is, in part, what these characters share. But that is commonplace, and hardly distinctive of Tagore. What is distinctive is the way he extends selflessness beyond personal egoism to ethnic and racial categories; the way he forces detachment to cross what might be called the lines of cultural estrangement; the way he replaces the politics of identity with what might be called a “politics of Otherness”—a refusal to identify the good with one’s own community, a denial even that there is such a thing as “one’s own community,” walled off from the encompassing, shared community of humankind. Indeed, this politics of Otherness goes further still. It pushes us to condemn the faults of “our own” far more harshly than the faults of others. It reverses the ordinary biases of identitarian preference. It is the precise opposite of the narcissistic moral hypocrisy that characterizes colonialism, and, indeed, almost all human behavior.
Finally, the fourth “component” of universalism is the assumption of common cultural ownership, the view that cultures are not tied to particular lineages, but belong equally to all people. Though phrased in nationalist terms, this is fundamentally the universalism expressed by Gora, when he proclaims, “In me there is no longer any opposition between Hindu, Mussulman, and Christian. Today every caste in India is my caste, the food of all is my food!” (406). Or, earlier, when he tells Sucharita, “God has created men differing from each other in ideas and in actions with a variety of beliefs and of customs, but fundamentally one in their humanity. There is something in all of them which is mine … which, if only we can see it in its truth, will pierce through all littleness and incompleteness” (296). This universalism involves a radi- 310
cal deracialization of culture, a complete removal of culture from a hereditary group, and the extension of that culture’s ideas and practices to all of humankind. As Walter Benn Michaels has discussed with particular force, culture is almost invariably defined in such a way as to tie it to ancestry and, thereby, to race (see Michaels, 137-42). The advocates of preserving Hindu or Irish or Jewish culture almost invariably have in mind preserving that culture for Hindus, Irish people, and Jews respectively. A universalist wishes to preserve Hindu or Irish or Jewish culture for everyone.
The issue of shared human culture is, however, complicated—and closely related to the much discussed topic of cosmopolitanism. Clearly, anything approaching a full treatment of this would require another book. However, there are a few things that should be said here about this aspect of universalism. First of all, in order to discuss the topic more clearly, we need to analyze practical identity further, into the part that is “transportable” and the part that is “rooted.” “Transportable” practical identity would include anything one could do on one’s own, away from the society of origin. “Rooted” practical identity, in contrast, presupposes one’s presence in the relevant cultural community. In fact, we already suggested this distinction in the first chapter; it is a sub-variable of the degree of severance. However, in that context, we were considering cultures as wholes. Here, I am referring to practices within cultures. For example, food and music are, for the most part, transportable. In contrast, larger social activities-from communal farming techniques to such simple matters as greeting practices, activities that rely on uniform expectations and actions of the community as a whole or a sizable proportion of the community—are hardly transportable at all. Even a large group of Igbos, removed to another, culturally mixed region, will find it difficult to maintain such practices.
Common cultural ownership applies most readily to transportable culture (e.g., music). In this case, universalism suggests that we should preserve as much transportable culture as we possibly can. But we should do so in a deracialized or “cosmopolitan” form, as the common heritage of humankind. In that way, it can contribute to an individual’s sense of cultural identity, but not a racialized identity. Consider music. Human culture is impoverished whenever a tradition of music is lost. But, according to this form of universalism, human culture is also impoverished when a tradition is preserved by being bound to a narrow human ancestry, by being racialized. Over the last two years, I have been 311
working to organize an international conference on Tagore. Sometimes people—both Indian and non-Indian—would suggest that the main purpose of such a conference is introducing “the second generation” (i.e., the children of Indian immigrants) to “their” culture. According to the universalistic principles I am espousing here, and according to the principles suggested in Tagore’s work, the children of Indian immigrants have no greater claim to Tagore than do the children of Irish or African or English or Armenian immigrants. As Edward Said wrote in Culture and Imperialism (xxv):
This universalism is obviously of a piece with the politics of Otherness discussed above. In fact, it is, so to speak, the initial stage of a politics of Otherness. First of all, it involves a thoroughgoing repudiation of a politics of identity, for it involves a rejection of that racializing of culture that is a necessary condition for the politics of identity. But at the same time, it equally involves a thoroughgoing repudiation of the “assimilative majoritarianism” that is regularly seen as the only alternative to identity politics. Often, when writers criticize identity politics, they seem implicitly to assume that majoritarian culture—the most common culture in any given society or the most dominant culture globally—is somehow “neutral.” To take a very simple example, many people seem to assume that a sari is “ethnically particular,” whereas a European-style dress is “ethnically neutral.” Once one adopts this view, then an argument against identity politics tends to become an argument against “ethnically particular” ideas, practices, and the like. It tends to 312
become an argument that everyone should conform to the “ethnically neutral” practices of the majority. Advocates of identity politics rightly respond that this distinction is false and hypocritical—dresses are no less ethnically particular than saris. Their conclusion, then, is that every practice is ethnically particular, and that each ethnic group should embrace its own ethnic particularity. The universalist view advocated here, agrees with the identitarian criticism of assimilative majoritarianism, but reverses its conclusion. In the universalist view, no practices are “ethnically particular.” Every one of them is “ethnically neutral.” Moreover, insofar as some of these practices are in a minority position and in danger of extinction, we all have an obligation to work to preserve them—assuming the practices in question conform to the universal ethical principles mentioned above. We have this obligation because the endangered practices are not the business of one ethnic or racial group, but are, rather, part of our common, human heritage.
But, again, this applies most readily to “transportable” culture. The issue of “rooted” culture is more complex and difficult. By the universalist principles just discussed, even rooted culture cannot be said, in principle, to belong to one group more than another. But, by definition, it is not easily shareable. It cannot be made cosmopolitan, integrated into a larger, human culture. One can wear a sari in Boston, or give a vina recital, but it does not seem that one can recreate the governing social structure defined by Igbo title societies. Related to this, any attempt to integrate such threatened practices into a full-fledged ethico-politics of Otherness would be absurd. For one would actually have to live the life of the people in question. A politics of Otherness that governed, say, the English in relation to Igbo rooted culture would require that English people actually go and live in Igbo villages.
Here we need to remark on three things. First of all, it is important to recall the nature of tradition, as discussed in the first chapter. The sort of rooted culture of which we are speaking is in fact continually changing. Indeed, almost all rooted culture has been lost. The rooted culture of Africans or Indians is no less historical than the rooted culture of Europeans (as, for example, Coundouriotis has emphasized in a different context). It is no less changeable. In this way, the desire to preserve rooted culture is a mistaken desire; the ethical imperative to preserve rooted culture is a mistaken imperative. It is, ultimately, a form of reactionary traditionalism—even when it is universalized. The problem here is not that rooted culture should be preserved, but that it should not be 313
killed, that it should be allowed to develop, to change, to have its own history. As Gora says, “I want the changes in India to be along the path of India’s development, for if you suddenly begin to follow the path of England’s history then everything from first to last will be a useless failure” (330).
This is related to a second point, which will initially appear contradictory with this concern to end cultural extinction, but which is ultimately consistent with it. It is mistaken to think that our highest ethical obligations regarding colonized countries are cultural. Even complete cultural extinction is not the worst consequence of colonization. It is not, in my opinion, even close. Rather, the most urgent dilemmas we face are the various forms of direct, physical suffering that result from economic inequality—the grinding poverty that is so common in much of the Third World, the disease and hunger that could easily be prevented in a more egalitarian economic system.
And this brings us to the third point, which reconciles these two concerns. Both the physical pain of colonialism and the extinction of rooted culture are the result of economic and political inequality. The case of physical pain—hunger, disease—is perhaps too obvious to require elaboration. The case of culture should be almost as obvious. The dominance of Euro-American culture throughout the Third World is one effect of the economic dominance of Europe and America. In some cases, the connection is direct, as when Euro-American media conglomerates virtually control the international market in popular or entertainment culture—music, film, and the like. In other cases the connections are indirect—as when Africans or Indians emigrate to Europe or North America seeking a level of material well-being not easily available at home and consequently are unable to continue the practices of the rooted cultures in which they were born. Cultural extinction—and, far more importantly, the extinction of individual human hope, health, life—do not result from some cultural choices or actions, and they cannot be combated effectively by other cultural choices and actions. Rather, dying cultures and peoples are the casualties of political economy—the relations of ownership, production, and distribution that define both global and local economic realities: who owns the land, how it is worked, who receives the produce.
And this brings us, at last, to the second crucial response to the broad human devastation left in the wake of colonialism: democratic socialism. This too is a form of universalism. But it is a political and eco- 314
nomic form, associated in the preceding pages, not with Tagore, but with Emecheta and Hosain. As I am using the phrase, democratic socialism involves, first of all, a form of analysis—largely Marxist in provenance—that seeks to understand the underlying political-economic determinants of cultural degradation and human misery. Second, it is an ideal of human community and well-being. The first importance of this ideal is not cultural, but material, physical. It is an antidote to hunger, poverty, disease. But even for the purest culturalist, political economy should ultimately have pride of place in any scheme of social action. First of all, for a negative reason—the culture passes away with people. When an Igbo or Hindu or Spiritual Baptist dies of preventable hunger or curable disease, one repository of traditional culture is irrevocably lost. Second, for a positive reason—in conditions of genuine democracy and economic equality, there is no reason to suppose that there would be any serious threat to most cultures, for the usual forces that stifle cultures, directly or indirectly, would no longer exist. An egalitarian political economy will not, of course, preserve rooted culture. Nothing can or should do that. But it will allow rooted cultures to develop along the lines of their own historical change.
The works we have examined by Emecheta and Hosain illustrate the close relation between culture and political economy. They illustrate also the overwhelmingly greater importance of political economy—its determinative force, its brutal consequences. And they suggest that a concern with culture removed from a concern with political economy, an advocacy of cultural resistance without a corresponding advocacy of socialist and democratic activism, is too often the means by which exploitative domination—including domination through gender or ethnicity—is secured or concealed by powerful indigenous groups in former colonies.
Here a number of questions arise that Emecheta and Hosain cannot really address, due to their focus on cultural issues: What is the relation between economic equality and political independence? How are we to understand socialist economy? Does it involve worker/peasant ownership or state ownership? And what politics are truly democratic? Does democracy require a strong central government, or is it inconsistent with a strong central government? How are we to achieve democratic socialism—through trade unions, through the establishment of local cooperatives, or what? How can we guarantee that both the democracy and the socialism extend equally to all people, whatever their ethnic origin, gender, and so on? These issues are taken up in a rather different set of postcolonization 315
literary works, a set of works focusing on political economy, rather than cultural identity: Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood, which considers trade unionism, political revolution, and the oppressive use of neocolonial nativism; Peter Abrahams’ Mine Boy, which addresses the conflicts between black nationalism and communist trade unionism; Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve, which indirectly advocates principles of Gandhian peasant socialism, in tacit opposition to Nehruvian industrial socialism; Bessie Head’s A Question of Power, which examines the semi-anarchistic cooperative movement of then-contemporary Botswana, and so on. Indeed, these works show that responses to political economy after colonization are as multiple and complex and differentiated as the responses to cultural identity explored in the preceding pages. Thus, they are as much in need of systematic analysis arid theorization.
I have been maintaining that cultural universalism, with its politics of Otherness, and democratic socialism are necessary, if not sufficient, anodynes to the pervasive cruelty or himsa perpetrated by colonialism. But this is clearly not the end of the story. To mention democratic socialism is not to give a final answer to the question—what is to be done after colonization? Rather, to advocate democratic socialism is to bring up a series of further, equally difficult questions, questions that have also been the topic of complex debate, not only in philosophy and politics, but in literature as well. Clearly, these debates are of deep relevance to the cultural issues we have been considering, and, more importantly, to the human hope and pain that underlie those cultural issues and give them ethical consequence. Unfortunately, however, that complexity and consequence necessarily make the debates surrounding democracy and socialism into the topic of another book. 316 |