:: Thursday, July 25, 2002 ::

Re: Longing and Belonging

Let me respond to the idea of the native informant and epistemology raised in your post. I feel somewhat uncomfortable discussing such issues of theory not because they are irrelevant/unimportant but because being trained as an economist and then as a historian, it is not an approach I have given much thought to and my musings on the subject seem inadequate, even to me but one only learns through making mistakes so without anymore apologies I will plough on ahead.

The Opportunities of Deconstruction:

Many of your concerns with speaking on behalf of others and the concept of the native informant bears interesting resemblances to Gayatri Spivak Chakraborty’s work on Post-colonialism and deconstruction and how we as social scientists can try to speak on behalf of others without speaking for them. Let me explore some of her ideas and see how they can potentially add to the debate. Spivak offers a complex interpretation of the effects of Western domination. While not underestimating the destructive impact that such domination has had, she also insists on the recognition of its positive effects too, describing it as an enabling violence in her work. Equally she also is deeply critical of the current inequities in the international division of labour, she also asserts that it is difficult to deny the civilising power of “socialised capital” in the globe today. More importantly for us, she is also very critical of the supposedly ‘benevolent’ interventions by Western thinkers on behalf of the postcolonial subject and subjects such engagements to a rigorous scrutiny. Whether organised by a liberal-humanist vision or by the anti-humanism of Foucault or Deleuze; she concludes that such interventions characteristically embody the same kind of vision as that which informs the imperialist narratives promising redemption to the colonised subject. In contrast to some (notably Edward Said), she rejects the idea that there is an uncontaminated space outside the modes and objects of analysis, to which the post-colonial critic has access to by virtue of “lived experience” or cultural/ethnic origin. A recurrent motif here is the ‘negotiation’ with, rather than simple rejection of Western, cultural institutions, texts, values and theoretical practises. Opponents often have to be fought on their own ground with their own methods being used against them, at least initially. Because of this any counter-discourse, critical or creative, is “a persistent critique of what you cannot want”.

In her work on the Subaltern Studies project which used the concept of the subaltern to examine the non-elite sectors of Indian society such as the impoverished gentry and the upper ranks of the peasantry, she extended this range to groups further down the social scale and consequently even less visible to colonial and Third World national bourgeois historiography alike; the focus of her attention rests on subsistence farmers, unorganised peasant labour, the tribals and communities of zero workers on the street or in the countryside. In her seminal essay”Can the Subaltern speak” the subject she chooses is the question as to whether the subaltern can speak for himself/herself or is forever condemned to be only known represented and spoken for in a necessarily distorted or ‘interested’ fashion. Certain salient criticisms emerge from this piece: she criticises Deleuze for his reference to “the workers struggle” as the organising principle in his political theory and practice as being flawed by his unconscious Eurocentrism so that, characteristically Deleuze ignores the international division of labour, a gesture that often marks poststructuralist theory. She goes on to argue that Deleuze and Foucault typically privilege micro-logical structures of resistance determined by local conflicts and operating through voluntaristic associations, at the expense of macro-logical and ‘objective’ determinations like class interest, global capitalism and nation-state alliances. While she does not wholly discount the effectiveness of micro-logical patterns of resistance, she argues that they must be not allowed to efface these larger configurations of power and other potential sites and modes of resistance. She also introduces the concept of ideology in order to challenge Foucault and Deleuze’s construction of the subject according to what she sees as a simplistic economy of desire. In her view, this renders subjectivity, agency and identity coherent and legible in a manner which is, ironically, in some ways comparable with what is proposed in liberal humanism: “In the name of desire, they reintroduce the undivided subject into the discourse of power”. In contrast, her own theory of the subject draws equally on the classical Marxist model of the “divided and dislocated subject” (at the level of both individual and class identity) and on Althusser (in whose work the decentred subject is only held together and given the illusion of free subjectivity, by the interpellation of ideology). In Spivak’s view, it is both the disavowal of a theory of ideology and a simplistic resolution of necessarily asymmetrical relations between desire and interest which lead Deleuze and Foucault to the assumption that the ‘marginal’ can act resistantly, have full self-knowledge and speak for himself/herself in an unmediated fashion. Their unquestioned valorisation of the oppressed as subject thus inevitably leads them to an “essentialist, utopian politics”.

Spivak’s relevance to our concerns with looking at postcolonial societies has two major strands. Firstly there is her belief in a ‘negative science’ the purpose of which is not to produce positive knowledge in the sense of establishing an authoritative truth of the text or problem in question; nor is it to be understood as a form of ideology critique or the “exposure of error”. Rather her emphasis is on revealing the assumptions, strategies and rhetoric through which a given narrative, whether political, literary, historical or theoretical is grounded and mediated. This allows her to look at the ways in which texts or the rhetoric of speech, whether in colonial discourse or contemporary modes of cultural analysis, interrupts and contradict their logical or thematic propositions. Much of her work analyses these “cognitive failures” and the ruptures that ensue from them, while not showing any desire to suggest a formula for correct cognitive moves. Key to this ‘negative critique’ is Spivak’s ability to read against the grain of the ostensibly logic or surface meaning of the text in question. This is usually done by what she calls paying attention to the “tangents” of a text – minor characters, sub-plots or seemingly marginal motifs in order to bring out the unconsciously racialised nature of the conceptual frameworks which operate in a variety of canonical 19th century texts.

Secondly, Spivak also sees deconstruction as having a directly “affirmative “ mode. While arguing that it can never in itself provide the basis of a political programme and while warning that “claims to the built-in radicalism of deconstruction” are ill-advised, she sees it nonetheless as having the potential to act in a number of politically enabling ways. In the first place, she ascribes to deconstruction precisely the qualities which Edward Said at moments values in Foucault – the potential to generate greater awareness of and, possibly help in the liberation (or ‘coming to voice’) of – excluded or marginalised social constituencies. There is this parallel between her attention to what is suppressed or ignored in order to allow a particular theory or text to function as a coherent or authoritative narrative, and her focus on the way that dominant social fractions operate hegemonicaly. Spivak responds by using deconstruction to subvert the systems of binaries on which dominant discourses characteristically rely on to legitimise their power. She is also convinced of the affirmative potential of deconstruction in so far as it can act as a political constraint or safeguard by preventing radical political programmes and forms of cultural analysis alike from reproducing values and assumptions, which they ostensibly set out to undermine.. the danger of what she describes as this “repetition-in-rupture” arises from her belief that reversal of the dominant discourse alone (e.g. valorising East over West as a means of countermanding the hierarchies of Orientalism) involves remaining within a logic defined by the opponent. Spivak asserts that while the reversal must be effected (this is a necessary stage) it must by succeeded by displacement of the terms in opposition. In a manner reminiscent of Derrida, she argues that directly counter-hegemonic discourse is more liable to cancellation or even reappropriation by the dominant than a tangential or wild guerrilla mode of engagement. This is the purpose behind using modes of negotiation and critique, which unsettle the dominant from within.

The two areas where such issue can arise with a counter-hegemonic discourse are the ones we are interested: definitions of identity and the role of the investigating subject. With regards to identity, Spivak uses Derrida’s conception of the decentred subject s a useful tool in preventing the postcolonial struggle from lapsing into a fundamentalist politics through its critiques of traditional ways of understanding “identity”, belonging and origins. The self or subject must be understood not as innate or given but as constructed discursively and therefore as inevitably “decentred”.

Therefore all forms of identity, which are fixed in essentialist conceptions of origin or belonging, are to be rejected. Criticisms of “roots-seekers” rests, thereby on the argument that any notion of a pure or “original” form of postcolonial consciousness and identity implies that neo-colonialism and colonialism has had no role in constructing the identity of its subjects. To ignore this epistemic violence involved in constituting the postcolonial subject is simply to efface in a naively utopian way, the long and violent history of colonial and neo-colonial power. The very term “Indian” for example is a product of colonial discourse and as a category of identity involves a particular material history of subject-constitution by alien forces, which cannot be wished away. The nostalgia for the “authentic” Third World subject is derived partly from the West, where many ‘radicals’ (like consumers who prize the genuine “ethnic” product over pale imitations) prefer the subjects of their benevolent attentions to be as pure as possible. There is of course here a parallel with the paradoxical colonial nostalgia of colonial discourse for the “noble savage” who is being “redeemed” precisely by the imposition of Western models of civilisation on the colonial arena.

A crucial corollary, of Spivak’s theorisation of identity according to textual models is that she dismisses the argument that only the postcolonial subject can address the subject of postcoloniality – a perspective which she dismisses as “nativism” or “reverse ethnocentrism”. While she accepts that all too often the postcolonial subject continues to be spoken for largely by the metropolis, there should be no question that the subject herself/himself has any privileged insight into her/his own predicament. Indians who work in English departments in India, by this reasoning, have no more privileged reality to Indian “reality” than their counterparts in the West. This leads Spivak to defend the use of “elite” critical theory to analyse postcolonial and subaltern material and resists the nativist argument that only local forms of theory or knowledge validly apply in this context. She dismisses as an alibi the argument of some “progressive” Westerners that they should not address the subject of postcoloniality due to a lack of expertise and direct experience – “ the holders of hegemonic discourse should de-hegemonise their position and themselves learn how to occupy the subject position of the Other rather than simply say “ OK, sorry, we are just very good white people, therefore we do not speak for the blacks.’ That is the kind of breast beating that is left behind at the threshold and which allows business to go on as usual.”

As Vikash, has already noted it is difficult to rely on modes of knowing that use a “native informant” as the basis of knowledge. This is part of the problem with the Subaltern Studies group, where there is an implicit assumption that there is a form of subaltern consciousness, which can be perceived in its “true” form independently of colonial discourses and practices, which have in fact constructed the subject-position of the subaltern as a social category. Such strategies precipitate an epistemic fracture where the subaltern only enters colonial textuality as an intending subject of resistance, for example at the behest of colonial officials or historiographers who have their own interests foremost in ascribing motivation (and thereby subjectivity) to the subaltern. This failure to take into account the epistemic fracture, as Spivak calls it, as well as the reinscription of a bourgeois/humanist model of subaltern agency, reveal the degree to which the group replicates aspects of the regime of knowledge which underpinned colonialism itself. There is as a result, an element of repetition as well as rupture in their practice.

Nonetheless, Spivak excuses the work of the Subaltern studies group for its ‘cognitive failures’. Partly this rests on the group’s concentration on marginal figures and social groups, in contrast to the nationalist historiography’s focus on local elites or the West’s customary attention to the Third World groups that are directly accessible to the First World. Secondly, , there is the argument that the idea of a “pure” subaltern consciousness is a necessary ”theoretical fiction” which enables us to critique the dominant models of colonial and national-bourgeois historiography to be begun. There are a number of such fictional constructs in the work of Marx and Derrida himself, as pointed out by Spivak. . In a well-known quote she states that: “I would read it then, as a strategic use of positivistic essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest” the implication is that while it is permissible to “strategically take shelter in essentialism”, the concept must be kept under “erasure” and not mistaken for a universal truth.

As alluded to earlier deconstruction also plays a role when examining the politics of the investigating subject. Even sympathetic investigators such as those in the Subaltern Studies group mistakenly assume that they can side step the implications of its creation of a space from which the oppressed can speak. There is the risk of being driven by a nostalgia for lost origins and thereby effacing the native and stepping forth as the real “Caliban” forgetting that he is only a fictional character in a play – “an inescapable blankness circumscribed by an interpretable text”. Spivak, contradicts Foucault’s and Delueze’s assumption that they are “transparent”, in other words that they are able to escape the determinations of the general system of Western exploitation of the Third World – in which Western modes and institutions of knowledge are deeply implicated – in order to intervene benevolently to further the struggle of the subaltern for greater recognition and rights. This can be seen as a classic instance of the West standing in for or speaking on behalf of the subaltern experience, a gesture which is continuous with (though it ostensibly challenges) the historical process of constructing subject-positions for the subaltern in the era of formal imperialism.

A good example of this critique, is where Spivak uses the British attempts to outlaw sati in colonial India as a case study. The key manoeuvre here, was for Spivak, to construct a figure of the Indian female, which ‘justified’ the imposition of the ‘modernising’, liberating and ‘progressive’ regime of empire, a process which also consolidated Imperial Britain’s self-image as civilisationally superior in comparison with both the ‘degraded native woman’ and her local oppressors. Central to this process of appropriation in the discourse surrounding sati was the ascription of a ‘voice’, representing free will and agency to the subaltern woman. In the case of the British this voice called out for liberation and rescue, to the native male elite it assented in the practice of sati voluntarily. Of course, neither version can be trusted as the ‘true’ voice of the woman. As Spivak, points out the British frequently were unable even to spell the name of those they were rescuing, often translating proper names into common nouns. She also notes that the rigour sati was enforced within Indian society was directly related to the amount of property the widow owned and the caste status of the woman. Poor low caste women did not have the same obligations to perform sati that their richer high caste sisters did. In both versions, the woman’s own voice is ventriloquised and we never hear the voice of the woman herself directly; thus between colonialism and native patriarchy the figure of the woman literally disappears.

Spivak argues that neither Foucault nor Deleuze is sufficiently aware of how their intervention as “benevolent” modern Western intellectuals soliciting the agency and testimony of the ‘marginal’ ties them into this history of appropriation, or of how their definition of the marginal as marginal reinforces their own prestige as interpreters of subaltern experience. Whether the object of “ethnocentric scorn” in the colonial period or “hyperbolic admiration” today the subaltern’s function and subject-position remains primarily constituted by the West. I will quote at length a short passage where Spivak makes this telling point:

“…the deep ambiguity of Freud’s use of women as scapegoat is a reaction-formation to an initial and continuing desire to give the hysteric a voice, to transform her into the subject of hysteria. The masculine-imperialist ideological formation that shaped that desire into the “daughter’s seduction’ is part of the same formation that constructs the monolithic ‘third world woman’…..Thus when confronted with the questions Can the subaltern peak?, our efforts to give the subaltern a voice in history will be doubly open to the dangers run by Freud’s discourse”

Spivak’s own solution is to rely on the critical self-awareness, evinced by Derrida as an investigating subject can overcome such an impasse. Referring to Derrida’s dissection of the use made of Chinese in the course of attempts by Western scholars such as Warburton and Leibniz to describe the principles of a universal language; where Derrida notes that the practical “writing out” of the specific properties of Chinese occur (even though it is an object of admiration) in the service of a “higher goal”, from which all of mankind will supposedly benefit and Spivak uses this to as a warning to contemporary intellectual traditions of the continuing dangers of claiming objectivity or disinterestedness in relation to the culture of the Other. Spivak, further uses Derrida to show how to keep the ethnocentric subject (in particular the Western observer) from establishing itself by selectively defining the Other. Such a technique “ does not invoke ‘letting others speak for himself’ but rather invokes an ‘appeal’ to or ‘call’ to the ‘quite-other’ (tout-autre as opposed to a self-consolidating other), of rendering delirious that interior voice that is the voice of the other in us”. Rather than assimilating the Other by “recognising it” in the terms of the dominant discourse which Derrida criticises, or “benevolently” assigning it identity in the manner of Foucault and Deleuze, Spivak argues that it is better to preserve the subaltern experience as the “inaccessible blankness” which serves instead to reveal the horizon and limits to Western knowledge.

One other example, which illustrates her point, very clearly is the analysis of Julie Kristeva’s About Chinese Women, where Kristeva examines the differing concepts of womanhood and feminism in the West and the East. The result is a good example of how for Spivak, the involvement of First World intellectuals in the Third World actually functions self-interestedly as a process of self-constitution. Thus Kristeva’s curiosity in the face of her objects of study is about her identity rather than theirs; as Spivak outlines: “in spite of their occasional interest in touching the Other of the West, of metaphysics, of capitalism, their repeated questions are obsessively self-centred: if we are not what official history and philosophy say we are, who then are we (not), how are we (not).” The shortcomings of Kristeva’s methodology, like her reliance on systems of binary opposition between the Orient and Europe leads Kristeva to reinforce, stereotypes such as the immemorial and timeless nature of Chinese life, especially in terms of its gender and religious power and experience.

There are of course some tensions within Spivak’s approach, which I think characterise that of deconstructivist approaches as a whole. Firstly, there is the tension between the logic of discourse theory, which insists that the real is constructed and not just mediated by sign systems. Much documentary evidence and even fieldwork cannot be retrieved independently of the processes of construction and manipulation, which they involve. Yet there are assertions in much of Spivak and other thinkers’ criticisms that there is an independent reality free from mediation. The most obvious case is the global economy built on an international division of labour. But there are also implicit beliefs in a “prior” state such as in Spivak’s criticism of Kristeva’s work on Chinese women; where Spivak argues that the “true” and “real” position of Chinese women has escaped Kristeva.There is also a neglect of the variety of non-western experiences such as India which are ignored in Kristeva’s narrative in order to make the whole of the East approximate to one of the binary terms being employed. For Spivak, Kristeva’s “research” is just another example of the West’s attempts to appropriate Chinese culture for its own various ends, and at best is another case of “colonialist benevolence”. Similarly in her translations of Maheswati Devi’s fiction, Spivak asserts “that it is representationally accurate to the last degree” and that her “protagonists could have existed as subalterns in a specific historical moment imagined and tested by orthodox assumptions”.

Moreover, there are problems with seeing the subaltern as an “inaccessible blankness” as this process in itself constitutes what Spivak elsewhere has criticised as “repetitions-in-rupture”. The problem is that the more the Subaltern is seen as the wholly Other, the more Spivak seems to construct the subaltern’s identity neither relationally nor differentially, but in essentialist terms, thus repeating the exact failure of the Subaltern Studies group to consider the subaltern in the context of adjacent constituencies like the native elite. By seeing the subaltern in this way, we are left in an impossible predicament: as the non-subaltern must either maximally respect the Other’s radical alterity, thus leaving the status quo intact, or attempt the impossible feat of opening up to the Other without in anyway assimilating that Other into our own subject-position, perspectives or identity. The problem is of course that as conscious agents it is extremely difficult to imagine Otherness in terms of radical alterity. We have to turn the Other into something like the self in order to understand even minimally.

Even if one remains with the assertion that the subaltern is wholly Othered and therefore there is not space from which the subaltern can speak, this just repeats the gesture of constituting and acting for the subaltern – something Spivak criticises Foucault and Deleuze for!! Moreover, the critic who accuses another of speaking for the subaltern by denying that subalterns can speak for themselves (or indeed cannot speak/be heard at all), is of course also claiming to speak for them by this very act. The other problem is that if the subaltern/marginalised were truly silent then the only voices we would hear from the Third World would be the voices of the elites – which is not the case. I find a little too simplistic Spivak’s claim that by the very process of having found a voice, subaltern figures that enter into a textual/discourse field automatically become part of the hegemonic order – or join the stooge-like body of “native informants”. The implicit assumption here is if the subaltern can speak then he/she is no longer a subaltern!!! I would have argued at the very least there would be a number of intermediate positions between that of the subaltern/marginal figure and the native informant.

Lastly, by focusing on the discursively constructed nature of reality, there is a discounting of material forces in the process of social development or crisis. If change in material and political reality is so dependent on instigations at the discursive level where changes in the sign-system occur; then this privileges deconstructive criticism and critical work as a force for change over more direct forms of action such as insurgency or peaceful political organisation against dominant groups. I find such a view of change hard to believe. In anycase there is no available vantage point left to mount such a criticism – as Spivak herself notes “My explanation cannot remain outside the structures of production of what I criticise”.

The Modern Production of Subjectivity:

I want to now consider some of the ways that the West has produced the East in its thought, to try and see whether it is possible to move beyond the deconstructionist impasse. Let me start first with Hegel, not the most likely of candidates in this line. I relate one of the first modern contours in the way this production has happened in his Phenomenology of Spirit, where he develops the notion of the religion of the artificer (or the German Kuntmeister), in which the natural religion culminates and points towards its own sublation: after the notion of God as light and the celebration of the plant and animal divine, where the object of veneration is something found in nature, subjects start to produce themselves the objects they honour, Hegel’s examples include the Egyptian pyramids and Obelisks. This Egyptian artifice and artificer is opposed to Greek art and the artist (kuenstler): an artificer is an artisan who is characterise by two opposing features, in contrast to the artist’s free subjectivity, his creativity is blind compulsion, epitomised by the ancient Egyptian scene of tens of thousands of people engaged in the building of the pyramid (just think of those scenes involving thousand of extras in epics such as The Ten Commandments) performing it, as Hegel argues as “an instinctive operation, like the building of a honeycomb by bees”, on the other hand, in contrast to the artist’s organic spontaneity, the artificer’s work is “reflected” effort, not spontaneous outgrowth.

The artificer struggles with the material, unable to achieve the direct expression of the Spirirt within it. We do not have a meaning proper, expressed in articulate speech, but an infinite longing for meaning which remains a mystery, a riddle not only to us but to the Ancient Egyptians themselves. For Hegel, the Greeks were the true artists, practising the direct expression of the Spirit in the organic form; the space for this direct harmonious expression emerged after Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx. In contrast to it, Egyptian art doesn’t yet properly speak; its speech is encoded in hieroglyphs, not yet in the abstract alphabetical letters. This follows Hegel’s much quoted analysis of the Sphinx as half-man and half-animal – the Spirit not yet liberated from its material constraint. Within this constraint, man as such only appears as and in a tomb, the empty place for the dead body and not as a living subjectivity: “ Therefore the work, even when it is wholly purged of the animal element and wears only the shape of self-consciousness, is still the soundless shape which needs the rays of the rising sun in order to have sound which, generated by light, is even then merely noise and not speech, and reveals only an outer, not an inner shelf.”

Here Hegel refers to the ancient Egyptian statue, which at every sunset, as if by magic, issued a deeply reverberating sound. This mysterious sound emanating from an inanimate object is a metaphor for the birth of subjectivity in its proto-ontological state. Subjectivity here is reduced to a spectral voice, a voice in which resonates not the self-presence of a living subject, but the void of its absence. What we need to renounce is the commonsense cliché of a primordial, fully constituted reality in which sight and sound harmoniously complement each other: as an unbridgeable gap separates the human body from its “voice”. The voice displays a spectral autonomy, it never quite belongs to the body we see, so that even when we see a living person talking, there is always some element of ventriloquism at work – as if the speaker’s own voice hollows him out and in a sense speaks “by itself” through him. Care must be taken not to miss the tensions, the antagonism between the silent scream and the vibrant tone – the moment when this silent scream resounds. The true object-voice is mute (“stuck in the throat”) what reverberates is the void: resonance always takes place in a vacuum, the tone as such is originally the lament for the lost object. This resonance, thus is not the secondary degradation of a “natural” speech, it takes places before the emergence of a “full” speaking subject. While Hegel’s notion of the Ancient Greek universe is interpreted as the reference to the lost, organic harmonious Whole, which is then destroyed by the work of negativity, what we have here is the pre-history of the Greek harmonious Whole and the spectral past that haunts it ( there should be no answer that the Greek Religion of Art is an answer to the Egyptian riddle as reflexive excess appears with a vengeance – the very fact that it is Oedipus who solves the riddle should be sufficient answer to dispel any notion of a happy integrative outcome).

There is another reflexive twist to Hegel’s argument, in Egyptian religious artistry, consciousness struggles to express itself but its expression fails, the gap remains between the inner being and external expression, which is a mere “unessential husk”, a “covering for the inner being.” In order for this inner being to persist in its failed expression, this very gap between the inner being and its inadequate husk must be reflexively inscribed in external objective reality, in the guise of external object in which the inner being acquires direct existence – and this inner being is in the first instance, “still simple darkness, the unmoved, the black, formless stone” (the Kaaba in Mecca is itself a dark, polished meteorite that has been elevated to the status of a sacred object).

I would refer here to the Freudian association with the notion of excrement as the immediate appearance of the Inner. Freud’s well known identification of excrement as the primordial gift, resonates with the small child who gives his own excrement away as a present and the offering of a piece of himself to the undefined Other – which oscillates violently between the good and the excremental. This is why Lacan following on from Freud, see Man as separate from animals: as with humans disposal of excrement becomes a problem – not because it has a bad smell but because it has come out of our innermost selves. We become ashamed of our own excrement in this reading because it externalises and exposes our innermost intimacy. Animals do not have this problem as they do not have such an “interior” to be ashamed of like humans.

One can juxtapose this inner element (excrement) with the subject’s direct equivalent opposite – the external mode of domination and the compulsion to be ashamed of our inner selves. Film critics have compared this external domination using examples such as the Jim Carrey movie The Mask, where when the subject puts the mask on his face, he is faced in n inexplicable compulsion, a feat repeated by the external compulsion to tell the truth for 24 hours in the film Liar, Liar. In both film giving way to our inner most self and desires is experienced by the subject as being colonised by some parasitic foreign intruder which takes possession of him against his will, somewhat like when we are haunted by an irritating pop-music tune, which no matter how much we fight, we ultimately succumb to its mimetic power and start to hum its soulless rhythm.

The subject for Lacan, in a sense faces a bundle of competing and contradictory compulsions: the compulsion-to-enjoy and the compulsion to obey. This gives a certain logic to the functioning of desire even in the Real ( note Freud’s comparison of drive and reason and the similar way in which they operate: in both cases the voice is low and slow but it persists over time and makes it itself heard.). What these two opposing modes have in common is their compulsory nature: as in both scenarios either of externally imposed rules and mores or the internal desire/drive, the Thing deprives the subject of his autonomy, acting as a compulsion that turns him into a formless puppet.

The Western Re-Production of the East:

This may seem far removed to our concerns over voice, nativism and the postcolonial impasse but I want to use this approach in trying to map out one of the specific ways in which the West re-produces the East. A particularly relevant example, which we have talked about before, is the Western re-production of Tibet in popular culture. Tibet here takes on the form of the fantasmastic Thing (i.e. the fantasy formation we refer to when we talk about Tibet) – a utopia or modern day Shangri-La, which when directly experienced jars and turns into something disturbing. It is a cliché to observe that the current fascination exerted on the Western imagination, especially in the USA, provides an exemplary case of the colonisation of the imaginary – it reduces the actual Tibet to a screen for Western ideological fantasies. The very inconsistency of the image of Tibet bears witness to this fantasmastic status. Tibetans are portrayed as a people living a simple life of spiritual satisfaction, fully accepting their liberation from the craving of the Western subject who is always searching for more but also as filthy, cruel and promiscuous primitives. Lhasa itself becomes a version of Kafka’s Castle: sublime and majestic when first seen from afar but changing into a “paradise of filth” when experienced directly. The social order is presented as the model of organic harmony but also as the tyranny of a cruel corrupted theocracy keeping ordinary people ignorant. There are the contrasting views of the Tibetan religion as the most spiritual of all religions, the last shelter of the ancient wisdom yet also reliant on primitive superstition, relying prayer wheels and other cheap magic tricks…this oscillation between an idealised romantic image and an ugly, pessimistic reality is not an oscillation between fantasy and reality: as both extreme projections are fantasmastic in their contrast of one extreme to another.

The first step in avoiding these extreme fantasmastic projections and their milder variants is to acknowledge the split reality of Tibetan society itself and the antagonistic nature of all social formations. The history of Tibet has long ties with the outside world – much of Tibetan unity and independence were imposed from the outside. From the 9th century a patron-priest relationship was established by the Mongol rulers: where the Mongols protected the Tibetans who in turn provided spiritual guidance to the Mongols (the very name Dalai Lama is of Mongol origin and was conferred on the Tibetan religious leader by the Mongol rulers). Even the building of Potala and the modern demarcating of Tibet that began in the 17th century, necessitated the intervention of foreign rulers such as the Mongols, Chinese and the Manchus to intervene in factional struggles in the palace. The culmination of this history is the current Chinese strategy: where rather than sheer military coercion, they now rely on ethnic and economic colonisation, transforming Lhasa into a Chinese version of the Wild West, with karaoke bars and Disney-like “Buddhist theme-parks” for Western tourists. Concealed by the media portrayal of the conflict between brutal Chinese soldiers and policeman and Buddhist monks, is the much more pervasive and powerful socio-economic transformation which marginalises the native Tibetans and effects a transformation that undermies Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule.

A second approach to the fantasmastic quandary is to see the reflective split of the Western image of Tibet as a “reflexive determination” of the split attitude of the West itself combining both invasion and respectful sacralisation. Colonel Francis Younghusband, who in 1904 led the British contingent of 1200 men that penetrated Lhasa and forced a trade agreement on the Tibetans (an interesting precursor to the later Chinese invasion), ruthlessly ordered the killing by machine guns hundreds of Tibetan soldiers armed only with swords and lances and thus forced his way to Lhasa. However, this very Younghusband experienced a true epiphany in his last days at Lhasa: “Never again could I think of evil, or again be at enmity with any man. All nature and all humanity were bathed in a rosy glowing radiancy; and life for the future seemed nought but buoyancy and light”. A similar process has been noted by historians of the period for the then Viceroy – Lord Curzon, who had justified Younghusband’s expedition by saying that: “The Tibetans are a weak and cowardly people, their very pusillanimity rendering them readily submissive to any powerful military authority who entering their country forthwith give a sharp lesson and a wholesome dread of offending.” This same Curzon who insisted that “nothing can be done with the Tibetans until they are frightened”, declared in a speech at an Old Etonian banquet: “The East is a university in which the scholar never takes his degree. It is a temple where the supplicant adores but never catches sight of the object of his devotion. It is a journey the goal of which is always in sight but is never attained”

What was implicit in this construction of a logic of desire, was the need for an obstacle to prevent the penetration of the object itself beyond a certain limit. William McGovern, who published his travelogue To Lhasa in Disguise in 1924, recounted the incredulity of the local people who couldn’t understand why anyone would undertake such an arduous and dangerous journey to reach a place that was so unappealing. He wrote of his frustration in getting a Tibetan official who had become his friend “to understand the pleasures of undertaking an adventure and dangerous journey. Had I talked about anthropological research he would have thought me mad.” The lesson enthusiasts of Tibetan Wisdom might learn from this is to forget about going to Tibet. The paradox is that the more Europeans try to penetrate the “true” Tibet, the more the very form of their endeavour undermines their goal. The Tibetans themselves were very self-centred as a civilisation and culture, “to them Tibet was the centre of the world, the heart of civilisation”. What characterises modern European culture is the reverse, a certain ex-centred (not de-centred) character – the notion that the ultimate pillar of Wisdom, the secret treasure, the lost object-cause of desire, which was long ago betrayed in the West, could be recuperated out there, in the forbidden exotic place. This kind of imaginary colonisation is not about simply assimilating the Other into Western thought/consciousness but is the search for the lost spiritual innocence of Western civilisation. The story comes full circle as it begins in the dawn of Western civilisation – in Ancient Greece: as for the Greeks, Egypt was just such a mythic place of lost ancient wisdom.

The Politics of Envy and the Nature of Sacrifice:

Turning to some issues I had raised in an earlier post on the image of the nation in an era of capitalism, I will incorporate this logic of desire. The difference between authentic fundamentalists and spiritualists (like ascetic communities and religious orders, e.g. Ramkrishna Mission, Bhakti sects etc. in India or the Amish or Trappist monks in the West) and those who use religion for political purposes such as the Conservative Christian Right or the Hindutva forces is that the former get along relatively peaceably with their neighbours and peoples of other religions because they are centred on their own world and not too concerned with what occurs in the external social sphere; while the Christian Right and the Hindutva forces are haunted by the ambiguous attitude of horror/envy with regard to the unspeakable pleasures in which sinners/Muslims engage in. This harks back to Lacan’s notion of jouissance, only in this case the jouissance is the stolen pleasure that the Other is enjoying at our expense : This accounts for the hidden envy of desire in the Hindutva rhetoric, where demagogues such as Rithambara and Uma Bharati recall the image of the lustful Muslim who captures in his body the excessive virility that “effeminate” Hindu males lack and thus pose a threat to Hindu women and womanhood in general. This also echoes much of the popular Hindutva (and also non-Hindutva) discourse about Christians and Christian missionaries within India, the fear that low castes, marginal communities and tribal groups are being lured into converting by the promise of money and allegations of Christians being given cars, houses and money as rewards and incentives for conversion, hides both orthodox Hinduism and the developmental state’s failure to address the problems of these communities and also of a certain envy that just as Muslims have access to an unbridles and powerful sexuality, so Christians have access to material benefits conferred on by their religious organisation such as free education, charitable aid etc. We dislike and fear the Other because we sense he is stealing our Jouissance, it is difficult for secularists to combat this by trying to show that the minority communities experience a very different reality or that there is in fact no such diversion of enjoyment actually happening and the stolen jouissance never existed in the first place; as these strategies are already inscribed into the very discourse of the politics of envy.

Reference to envy can help us distinguish authentic/actual spiritualists from those who use religion for politically entrepreneurial purposes: as the former do not really have a concept of envy for their neighbours/fellow citizens. Envy is grounded in a certain transcendental illusion of desire: a natural tendency of the human being to (mis)perceive the object which gives body to the primordial lack as the object which is lacking, which was lost (and therefore possessed prior to the loss) – this illusion sustains the longing to regain the lost object, as if the object has a positive substantial identity independently of its being lost. One can proceed further than the simple conclusion the religious fundamentalist conceals a hatred of the Other’s jouissance while the liberal/pluralist tolerates the Other’s identity and respects it. The liberal-pluralist position is less benign than it appears as it is only willing to tolerate the Other in so far as it conceals a desire for the Other to remain the Other and not to become too much like us. One example is the supposedly liberal acceptance of homosexuality, which says that it is happy to tolerate homosexuality as long as it remains in the private sphere – where people are free to do what they want sexually as long as they do it behind closed doors. What this superficial acceptance hides is a very strong proposal of Othering, which internally constructs notions of sexual divisions and fixes them and prevents an acceptance by heterosexual liberals that they too have it in themselves to be potentially homosexual (the nature of the male anatomy provides some support for this) this truly radical proposal is of course something most pluralists/multiculturalists are unwilling or unable to face/accept.

In Western productions and re-productions of the East this is combined with the nature of sacrifice of the Thing. As shown earlier Western preoccupations with Tibet, expose the superfluous nature of the compulsion to sacrifice: where in order to obtain the Thing which we do not have, we should not construct a scenario of its loss, of the Thing being taken/stolen from us by the Other, or of us betraying/losing the Thing. I want to use some ideas about sacrifice found in Bataille to illustrate my point: at its most basic the sacrifice relies on notions of exchange: I will offer up to the Other something precious in me in order to get back something I value even more – in this way tribes sacrifice animals and even humans so that the Gods will repay them by giving them the rainfall, good harvest, military victory upon which the tribes survival crucially depends (is this what Bataille meant when he remarked that only a society that really valued human beings would be willing to sacrifice them?). the next more intricate level is where the sacrifice does not aim at some profitable exchange with the Other: but where the aim is simply to ascertain that there is some Other who has the freedom/ability to reply (or not, the sacrifice does not have to be successful in its material terms for there to be an answer) to the sacrificial request. Even if the Other does not grant my desire, at least there is the assurance of an Other out there who could have responded differently (and may do next time) and the various mishaps that befall me is not the result of a blind meaningless process but the outcome of guided benevolence/negligence so that even catastrophe can be read as a meaningful response – this is the real answer to Job given in the Old Testament when his wife, children, belongings and health are all taken away with no reason given except that there is an Other who can do so, in this case a Judaic, omnipotent God.

The Lacanian inversion of this carries the analysis one step further; as the purpose of sacrifice is to cover up or conceal the constitutive lack in the big Other – the Lacanian subject does not offer his sacrifice to reap a material reward, or for a response from the Other, but to fill in the lack in the Other, to sustain the omnipotence of the Other. The old 1938 version of Beau Geste can illustrate this: the eldest of three brothers live with their benevolent aunt in an idyllic existence; then in what seems to be a gesture of ungrateful spite, the eldest brother (played by Gary Cooper) steals the family heirloom an enormously valuable diamond necklace and disappears with it, with his reputation ruined as the ungrateful thief and nephew and runs away to join the French Foreign Legion. It is only at the end of the film that we learn he did it to prevent the embarrassing disclosure that the necklace was a fake: unknown to the other brothers he knew that the aunt had sold the necklace to a rich maharaja in order to save the family from bankruptcy and replaced it with a worthless imitation. Just prior to his “theft”, Cooper had learned that a distant uncle who had co-owned the necklace wanted it sold for financial gain – such an act would uncover the fact that the necklace was a fake and so the only way to preserve the family’s honour and retain the aunt’s dignity was to stage the theft….

This crime of theft occludes the fact there ultimately there was nothing to steal – in this manner the constitutive lack of the Other is concealed: the illusion that the Other possessed what was stolen from it. In a crime of love, one steals from the Other what the Other doesn’t possess in the first place and this encapsulates the meaning of the title of the film Beau Geste, just as the act of love itself gives to the Other what it doesn’t have ( and which makes it the Other). This is the Lacanian interpretation of sacrifice: sacrificing oneself to maintaining the appearance of the Other’s honour and to save the beloved Other from shame.

The Elusive Figure of the Native Informant :

While much of what I have written may seem only elliptically relevant to our discussion on the native informant: I will apply some of the ideas outlined to some of the issues, which you have raised. There are some similarities in proposing the problem of having to rely on the figure of the native informant and criticisms made of deconstructionist reviews of “realist” work on history and social sciences. Most importantly, it assumes that there is some nativist/indigenous truth that can be got at or perceived if only we can avoid or overcome having to rely on the native informant – is this not essentialising some sort of original and pure ontological reality that always lies beyond our reach obscured by our perceptual limitations. In this way the figure of the native informant can be seen as a variant on the Lacanian symbolic castration: whereby there is the possibility of knowledge is held up as an implicit critique, were it not for the limitations of a dominant hegemony which acts as n obstacle, or the limited and selective nature of experience which produces invariably a partial picture which can never capture the “true” reality. The figure of the native informant is just the latest in a series of potential obstacles/barriers, which are put in the way of achieving Enlightenment. This gesture does two things: it always locates the desired “real” experience beyond the grasp of us as investigators and forces us to admit the supposed futility of empirical/realist based research and it also alienates the figure of the subaltern or any other marginal group such as the arboreal communities, which are being gazed at.

I would argue that on the contrary a certain amount of distance and alienation is necessary for any substantive understanding to be reached. I remember reading a brilliant essay by AK Ramanujan (I have unsuccessfully searched for the reference, but have failed to find it) where he recounts how he tells Indian students in India that if they want to really study India with any measure of success and retrieve or perceive the “true” India they should leave India and go to a Western university where only amongst sifting through the archives in a dusty, run down library and in an alien and unfamiliar environment will they really have any chance of really approaching the reality of rural India at least. This is less simplistic than it sounds as it echoes the same dilemma that Western Enthusiasts for Tibet face – desire by its very drive obscures the object-cause of desire and the first step in refusing to play out this game of desire is to refuse to give in to its open demands. Desire is one of the basic forces behind any human action and it must be either controlled, eliminated or satisfied (temporarily) in one way or another, the one thing I would argue that is truly impossible to do is to ignore desire altogether. Thus distancing ourselves from the object-cause of our desire allows us some measure of freedom from the desire itself. However, such distance also produces the gaze towards our object of desire and this entails its own problems, which I will not consider here, but what the figure of the native informant implies to me (I may be mistaken here, Vikash correct me if I am) is that somehow the subaltern, or whoever one wants to speak for is somehow given special insight into his own situation: the fallacy that only the subaltern can know the subaltern. This is a fallacy as it predicates the possibility of knowledge on the knower and the known being identical.

Although our own process of selection necessarily means that there are some stories we don’t tell – as Salman Rushdie has pointed out the very act of telling a particular story means that there are a range of stories within that field which remain untold; our desire does not operate in a simple binary fashion – therefore many researchers can set out to prove something, e.g. the decline in rural poverty by statistical methods only to have their assumptions and prejudices reversed or destroyed.

While when we commit speech acts we invariably seek some measure of authority for ourselves; I find it difficult to relate this to the figure of the native informant. As you have remarked we will speak to anyone who will listen, but this is just a measure of our own openness and unwillingness to place restrictions on any audience. But this doesn’t mean that we do not have a specific audience or target in mind – this goes to the heart of why we are doing what we are doing? Is it a career to speak about South Asia, is it a form of catharsis, an expression of longing? Both of us will have our own reasons, drives and desires and seepage is inevitable but I do not think that it contaminates our understanding of the region or the subject. To assume that our unconscious biases limit our ability to represent the “reality” of South Asia not only assumes that there is such a reality that can be represented but more crucially ignores the already split nature of the subject itself. Consciousness at both the individual and social levels entails a particular Epistemic fracture, as we are thrown into sign-systems and field of symbolisation that are not of our own making and which are imposed on us from “above” and this radical split characterises almost all human experience and provides some common basis of reference across cultural, historical, social, racial and other boundaries. Not that there is a ready made matrix or formulae that can easily resolve all problems of communication across sign-systems or render the experience of the Other completely accessible; but there is also that which can act as a basis for voices to merge and be heard.

In my recent thoughts on the subject I have been heavily influenced by the Russian linguist Voloshinov, who marked a different approach to language than Saussure. Voloshinov viewed language primarily as a form of social interaction, as dialogues that could not be separated from the temporal-spatial and socio-economic context in which individuals speak or write in contrast to Saussure’s judgement of language not as a process of social interaction but a primarily independent self-referential system of signs. For Voloshinov, Saussure was a neo-Kantian incapable of grasping the relation between the subject and object (the thing-in-itself). He criticised Saussure’s structural linguistics as one where:

"The idea of the conventionality, the arbitrariness, of language is a typical one for rationalism as a whole; and no less typical is the comparison of language to the system of mathematical signs. What interests the mathematically minded rationalists is not the relationship of the sign to actual reality it reflects or to the individual who is it’s the originator, but the relationship of sign to sign within a closed system already accepted and authorised. In other words, they are interested only in the inner logic of the system of signs itself, taken, as in algebra, completely independently of the meaning that give signs their content.”

Like Saussure, Voloshinov believed that language was integral to social life, requiring serious analysis, and that a naïve one-to-one correspondence between words and reality would not do. For Voloshinov, this was because language was a medium through which human social interaction took place. Unlike Saussurean structuralism, language was not self-contained but was always made for an audience (listener or reader). Even inner speech was like a dialogue made with others in mind. He also stressed that because language was social in nature (Wittgenstein: “There is no such thing as a private language”) that because it could not be separated from its users and contexts, language depended on context for meaning. For example, Voloshinov highlighted the way meaning could be altered by a variation in accent. This was what he referred to as “multi-accentality”. Language was not a system in itself and self-contained for him, as it took place in the shared territory of time and space and in the context of broader aggregate conditions, social relations, and therefore being a Marxist, class. As a Marxist under Lenin then Stalin; Voloshinov paid very close attention to the social implications of language in terms of class: he pointed out the importance of ideology in language and the way language was an “arena of class conflict”. The class struggle dimension of language was demonstrated in word selection, in the different accents given to words and in contextual interpretations of words – for a brilliant example of this see Kancha Illiah’s Why I am not a Hindu? An Ati-Shudra Critique of Hinduism, for how language shapes the different social and symbolic worlds of Dalit and caste Hindu children in school. What Voloshinov felt very sharply was the very sensitive nature of language to social reality, which it “reflects and refracts”.

The salient question for Voloshinov, around which all linguistics hinged was the “actual mode of linguistic phenomena”: that is the social context of language. A good example is CLR James’s analysis of cricket in the West Indies in which he identified the joy of the game mingled in with the context of imperialism and racism and asked “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”. Meaning , understanding, the generation of language and verbal interaction, Voloshinov asserted all depend upon this mode of existence for language: it’s place in the social world. In a manner reminiscent of JL Austin, Voloshinov located a key aspect of his work in the “productive role and social nature of the utterance, and the creative force of the utterance (parole) within the language system (langue).

Let me conclude this already too-long post; with some thoughts of a more personal nature. In so far as we have a particular or ideal audience in mind and as what we say/write is repeated by us in thought and conversation as a form of utterances, we can ask ourselves questions on the reflexive nature of our own work. Who is my ideal audience? I would have to answer that it would be other Indians and South Asians; for as an Indian citizen I my utterances are directed primarily to my fellow citizens. This is why I cannot accept that the figure of the native informant, for now with the end of formal decolonisation and the beginnings of a de-colonisation of the mind, the only colonial Other the native informant can speak to is the that of Capital and I don’t think our writings can be characterised as being addressed to this target (quite the reverse). As a citizen speaking to other citizens, the relations of power are different from what characterises that of the native informant, either in colonial times or in the current sense of representing India to those abroad or outside India (while I have no objection in doing so, they are not the audience I envision in the gaze of my mind’s eye). While the concept of speaking for others still remains, as does the issue of voice; I would argue that it is part of being a citizen as opposed to a subject or a consumer that you do attempt to speak for others, just as you let others speak on your behalf moreover one should prepare the conditions whereby those who we speak for will one day speak for us while we remain silent. Not all problems can be answered or resolved, the imprint of citizenship has not been felt evenly across the region and the violence of state-formation has twisted the process of citizenship itself in many parts of social life. The Gaze that I re-produce here has its own peculiarities and biases which cannot capture any “authentic, real or true” image/representation of India but then I don not believe one exists; the first step to overcoming this hurdle is to acknowledge this and also to be aware that it is the very particularities and partialities that any “real” image of India can be approximated. My gaze is self-reflective, it embodies my desires for a different India, a different South Asia than the one it actually perceives; yet my desire runs up against the Real which resists both symbolisation and desire: in this I would assume we are in a long line of those who desire a different India and a different South Asia, in our Grandparents’ generation such desire was articulated in involvement in the Nationalist movement both in it’s Extremist-terrorist incarnation and in the guise of the Civil Disobedience movements; in our parents’ generation it embodied itself in the form of a commitment to public service within the civilian/military bureaucracy, the private professional sphere and social action and in our generation it is captured in our own thoughts, efforts, debates and writings.

It can be said that my own part in this still fails to fully represent the India and the region, that the realities of lived experience by millions of South Asians still eludes me, that in fact the figure of the native informant is still very much present on the scene. Yet my own writing should show that there is an acknowledgement of this lack, this lack within myself and the lack I see within the nation. This lack eludes and escapes all my attempts to fill it out and remove it: the lack I see in the imagining of the nation, in my own fellow citizens, and in the Imaginary sphere we share still remains. It is in leaving this lack as an open, unfilled space, that I create an opportunity for Others to speak and to silence me in turn: my awareness of such a space lies as an open invitation for all to do so.


:: Conrad Barwa 5:11 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Longing and Belonging:

I would like to build upon my earlier post on "The Native Informant and The Colonial Anthropologist." I had argued that the projection of our desire on to the subjects of our stories not only silences voices, it also secures our authority as the person who speaks for others. What I would like to explore is the relationship between the two types of spokespersons: the native informant and the colonial anthropologist.

First, I want to discuss whether there is still a racial hierarchy between commentators on South Asian affairs. I am convinced that the old colonial hierarchy of knowledge producers, which was based on color, gender, and class, has been dismantled. However, I was talking to a social scientist of Chinese heritage who complained to me that she is always asked if she can teach courses on China, but she has never heard a white person being asked if they can teach courses on American or European politics. Similarly, I have friends of European extraction who complain that they are treated like children when they interview officials in South Asia. In other words, South Asians assume that foreigners cannot possibly have a sufficient grasp on the history and politics of the region to ask worthwhile questions. What are the assumptions that continue to dog the production of knowledge?

Second, I want to know what constitutes an "authentic voice" as even native informants rely upon a series of other native informants (to paraphrase: "it's native informants all the way down!") whether they are jounalists, local administrators, local spokesmen, etc. Is the quest for authenticity futile or is it an imperative? How do we communicate the layers of interpretation that go into the reproduction of a particular authentic voice. For example, in the story of Maheswati Devi (posted below), why should we assume that the author is not merely recounting a myth or projecting her own desires rather than/in addition to a retelling a factual moment of catharsis? When even well known South Asian commentators such as the noted eco-feminist, Vandan Shiva, have been brought to task for mythologizing the history of local peoples (e.g., the Chipko movement), how can we tell the difference between fiction and fact? How are we to discern the voices of the author and that of their subject?

These question matter to me not only as a person who studies South Asia, but also as a person of the diaspora. One of the most upsetting things that I noticed immediately after the September 11th tragedy was the attempt by minorities to establish their status as authentic Americans. Friends would quickly recount how many generations they have been in America or how their family members have served the country. An entire mode of establishing belonging was created or rejuvinated. At the same time this act of establishing belonging excluded those who were here as immigrants or whose patriotism or religious beliefs were suspect by the majority. As minorities we immediately fell for the divide and conquer strategy deployed by the US government to violate the rights of minority citizens. What are strategies that we can adopt in the future to prevent this fracture of the community?

Can/Should we make a discipline/a nation in which belonging is simply a function of longing?

:: Vikash Yadav 11:07 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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An Encounter in the Forest:

Vikash, you raise some important issues and cover questions that every South Asianist, any area studies specialist and indeed anyone in the Social Sciences needs to ask themselves. You also mine deep into the rich theoretical and conceptual work done over the last few decades on these issues and the impact is a deep felt one. Any response will involve a close personal and thorough answer; I would like to take the liberty of addressing this in a later post. What I would like to do is to give an example, which may illustrate some of the concerns we have in working and writing on South Asia. I have been reading the short stories of Maheswati Devi, a well known Bengali writer, who has been heavily involved in working with the adivasi communities in the Jharkhand region, and here I mean the geographical region of Jharkhand as it appears to many adivasis themselves - a geographical area with loose and ill-defined boundaries, covered in thick forests and with an underdeveloped infrastructure which sprawls across the new state of Jharkhand, into West Bengal, Orissa and Chattisgarh. For many adivasis, especially ones from the dominant tribes such as the Santhals or the Mundas, such administrative boundaries have meant little until of late, as the nature of the terrain and development have meant that these inhabitants have tended to see the area in its own right rather than a physical reality divided by administrative boundaries. This Jharkhand will not appear on any political map of India and is much bigger than the newly created state of Jharkhand; indeed it exists primarily only in the minds of the adivasi inhabitants of the region (this regional consciousness will change as well, given the changing demographics and the pattern of external immigration by what adivasis call dikus (outsiders) over time).

In one such story Maheswati Devi, describes how adivasis have experienced the developmental efforts of the post-colonial state. The Nehruvian rhetoric and the newly assertive Hindutva movement has only a limited space for adivasi cultures or beliefs; the attitude of the local well-meaning and idealistic government officer Mr. Singh, towards the adivasis replicates the British colonial prejudices towards non-Western peoples in general and arboreal chthonic ones in particular. To him they are mysterious, superstitious, uncivilised, and backward. In other words they are the deviants who need to be brought into line with the rest of the country consisting of nice-middle-class individuals. The rebellious amongst in Maheswati's narrative have been pushed back to the forests and have been starving there for years. At the end of the story which I will reproduce here, these adivasi "deviants" are brought face to face with us as the audience (previously they have remained in the shadowy background) and they thrust their bodies on Mr. Singh, forcing the officer to recognise that they are not underdeveloped individuals of colonial and neo-colonial lore but adult citizens of a free India and their stunted formation has been directly caused by this same independent India.

"Fear - stark, unreasoning, naked fear - gripped him. Why this silent creeping forward? Why didn't they utter one word? Why were they naked? And why such long hair? Children, he had always heard of children, but how come that one had white hair? Why did the women - no, no, girls - have dangling withered breasts?...." We are not children. We are Agarias of the Village of Kuva....There are only fourteen of us left. Our bodies are without food. Our men are impotent, our women barren. That's why we steal the relief (the food Singh brings from the Government to distribute to the more docile amongst the tribals). Don't you see we need food to grow to a human size again?"
They cackled with savage and revenge glee. Cackling they ran around him. They rubbed their organs against him and told him they were citizens of India....
Singh's shadow covered their bodies. And the shadow brought the realisation home to him.
They hated his height of five feet and nine inches.
They hated the normal growth of his body.
His normalcy was a crime they could not forgive.
Singh's cerebral cells tried to register the logical explanation but he failed to utter a single word. Why, why this revenge? He was just an ordinary Indian. He didn't have the stature of a healthy Russian, Canadian or American. He did not eat food that supplied enough calories for the human body. The World Health Organisation said it was a crime to deny the human body the right number of human calories...."


:: Conrad Barwa 8:47 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Native Informant & The Colonial Anthropologist:

When we speak of South Asia, we speak of a fiction. That is to say we narrate a story, we fit anecdotes into the structure of a narrative. This inevitably excludes and silences a range of voices both because we speak for others and because we inevitably place an end point on the stories we tell. In essence, our stories are out of joint, they place fluid lives in static contexts. In addition when we speak of South Asia, we project our desires into the subjects of our stories. Sometimes we project desires by the stories we select and at other times by the ways in which we interpret the stories we retell. It does not matter whether we use methods from anthropology to statistics, we are always telling stories, we are using rhetoric to persuade our listeners.

When we retell stories we not only distort, exclude, silence, and simplify, we use these stories to secure our own authority -- we become the native informant or the colonial anthropologist. This is not to say that we speak intentionally only to a Western audience, for I think that we want to speak to all audiences that will listen. I just think that as we usually speak in English and on the internet, from academic sites, we are necessarily outsiders when we seek to champion the causes of the oppressed and downtrodden within South Asia. I do not necessarily believe that scholars residing in South Asia or speaking a local dialect do a better job, in fact many professional and academic commentators from South Asia are remarkably flat-footed and callous when they attempt to speak for others around them. I am concerned about the consequences of speaking about South Asia because it is our passion and (perhaps) our calling.

I raise these issues because I want to think of ways of speaking about the subcontinent that incorporate reflexivity. I want to go beyond the trivial observation that speaking about South Asia is a complex task. Is our only solution to triangulate the stories we tell? In other words, is the best that we can hope for to tell so many stories that we allow as many voices to speak as possible? How can we speak about South Asia, without speaking for South Asians?

:: Vikash Yadav 10:54 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Diaspora in UK/US:

Conrad, in a recent post you had stated that the Non-Resident Indian (NRI) were some of the key financiers of the Hindutva and that this phenomenon makes you uneasy about globalization and its effects on Indian politics. While I do not doubt in the least that there are some strong Hindutva types in the diasporic community, I wonder if recent scholarly attention on the links between the VHP and NRI's in the US is not skewing the image of middle-class Indians living abroad.

I say this because the portrait that is being painted in the popular press and even some academic work does not square with my experience as part of the diasporic community in the US. I would certainly characterise most South Asians of my parent's generation as socially conservative, but their political affiliation is hard to predetermine. Most South Asians that I know (and I realize that this is really anecdotal evidence) are registered Democrats and hence generally left leaning in terms of US political orientation. One of my uncles is a republican politician, but he is quite an exception to the rule. Although the people I know are proud of their country/heritage, they do not strike me as jingoistic or likely to support groups such as the VHP/RSS. Most of the South Asians I know are busy with their social lives and occasionally fund raising for local temples and community centers. Fund raising in the diasporic community really does not go much beyond the local temple/community center at least in the Mid-West of the US. The diasporic community consumes Indian (i.e., Bollywood) culture but they really don't care to actively participate in Indian politics.

I should add that NRI/diasporic community in the US gives me great hope for how globalization can transform a culture. First, there is little attempt to segregate South Asians along religious lines here, especially in the college scene. While intermarriage between Hindus and Muslims is rare it does happen without too much commentary. Inter-marriage between Hindus and Christians of European extraction is completely commonplace. Second, social events are usually not segregated by linguistic groupings. In fact, at most parties that I have attended, South Asians speak in English so as not to alienate South Indian or other non-Hindi speakers (such as their children). The exception to this occurs in large cities and amongst the "New Jersey Indians" where large established communities have begun to faction off. Third, amongst my generation the Indo-Pakistan conflict makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You could spend hours trying to explain Partition and the hatred between Hindus and Muslims and you would hardly get a shrug out of the audience. Fourth, South Asians are begining to fuse their culture with the diversity around them to create a vibrant and dynamic new way of life. This is mainly good news for the US whose culture had been a "grindstone" dulling all diversity until the recent waves of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Chinese, and South Asians. Fifth, South Asians are the wealthiest minority per capita in the US, and at the same time South Asians occupy every rung of the social ladder from taxi-driver to CEO of a dotcom. This wealth/poverty means that European-American society is begining to have to face many of its own racist stereotypes as they cannot ghettoize this community as some might prefer. Of course, it is still the case that medial dramas such as ER still fail to show any South Asians even though East Asians and South Asians must certainly make up the majority of the healthcare professionals in the US. Nevertheless, these are growing pains and US society is coming around to the idea that one can be a shade of brown and be an All-American.

I don't want to paint an overly rosy picture of the South Asian community in the diaspora as I have seen my share of nasty casteism, classism, racism, bigotry, communalism, etc. Nevertheless, I hope that a more accurate portrait of the NRI community in the US will come to light in the press and academia. It is not surprising that zealots give money to their fellow zealots, especially when they are homesick, but the overwhelming majority of South Asians living in the US are generally not zealots as far as my experience goes.

My time spent in Britain leads me to believe that the UK is a very different world from the US. I don't really feel qualified to talk about the diasporic community in the UK, and I would appreciate if you (Conrad) might be willing to give your perspective as a long time resident on the South Asian "community" in Britain.

:: Vikash Yadav 10:25 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Mourning the Dead:

Relatives mourn for their dead killed in Saturday's militant attack in Qasimnagar before a funeral in Jammu, India, Sunday, July 14, 2002. Suspected Islamic militants killed at least 25 Hindus in the deadliest attack in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

The BJP after months of brinksmanship with Pakistan has opted to do nothing after the latest terrorist attack on Kashmiri citizens. The Kashmir issue has increasingly become a commodity that is manufactured and sold by both India and Pakistan to purchase international attention and resources. In the meantime the plight of the Kashmiri people is ignored and their ability to decide their own fate is suppressed by both India and Pakistan.

:: Vikash Yadav 12:24 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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The Regulatory Gaze of the State: A Medusa Effect?

In light of our past discussion on Biotechnology and the role of science in development I came across the following incident, which highlights very well some of the perils in ecological critiques of development, a number of issue present themselves in this regard.

The Keoladeo National Park Affair:

In 1982, the Wisconsin based International Crane Foundation and the Washington based Smithsonian Institution and its charismatic head, S. Dillon Ripley, urged Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to close Keoladeo Ghana National Park to grazing and livestock and local people collecting fodder and wood. India had an obligation, they argued to act to save this priceless global treasure. The waters of Keoladeo Ghana, it was passionately stated, and its associated waterfowl, belonged to everyone not just a few local villagers. The eyes of the world they intoned were on Indira Gandhi’s government. The campaign found popular support within India from figures such as Sankhala the highly regarded and popular director of Project Tiger; Indira Gandhi herself was something of a celebrity herself in international conservation circles after her 1972 Stockholm speech and her support for Project Tiger. She acted immediately and decisively to ensure the sealing off and protection of the Park. Such was the zeal and strictness with which the policy was enforced that some villagers protesting the no-grazing/no-fodder rule were killed in a police shooting. Indira Gandhi meanwhile received much international acclaim – in 1984, posthumously she was awarded the John C. Phillips medal of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. However, within ten years to the shock of American ecologists who had been so certain that grazing had been harming the park, a series of bird counts demonstrated that the grazing ban had in fact hurt the health of the park and that grazing and fodder collection actually played a key role in the sustainability and stability of the whole ecosystem and should be resumed. The villagers who had protested the ban and were killed did not just use scientific proof as the basis of their protest but also wanted to assert their right to a decent livelihood and were now seen to have been needlessly killed in the name of an incorrect policy and false assumptions.

This episode shows us several things. Firstly it links the disparate nature of Indira Gandhi’s administration and character – the link between the Gandhi of the Emergency and the Gandhi of Keoladeo was not too far; as typically her regime tended to be all too willing to sacrifice local and politically weak interests to broader goals favoured by more powerful voices and backed state policy with brute force rather than institutional procedure and persuasion. It is interesting that the posthumous award now seems less deserved and shows not only the dangers of sacrificing human interests in the name of some ill-defined distant end but also the peculiar respectability and expertise attributed to the mainly foreign ecological voices at the time, paralleled in most spheres of technocratic management; ignoring local and indigenous voices. In one guise or another this has been the relation between the state and its arboreal peoples since at least colonial times; most Adivasi communities regard the Forest Guards of the state with dread and relations are frequently marked with outbreaks of violence and harassment.

In terms of the Gaze of the state this shows the most unacceptable face of the Indian state: an unhealthy respect given to judgements from the developed world, still due I suppose to a post-colonial insecurity, the willingness to override localised interests which can be politically ignored and the use of naked force for technocratic ends on marginalised constituencies. As Vikash, pointed out with respect to the Bhopal Gas tragedy; if the Indian state is not willing to value the lives of all its citizens not just the propertied and dominant groups; how can we expect others to do so?

The Quasim Nagar Tragedy

The Channel 4 (a generally respected UK Television Channel) reporter Krishna Gurumurthy covering the most recent massacre in the shantytown of Quasim Nagar in Kashmir pointed out an unpleasant truth. As the massacre took place amongst slum dwellers on the socio-economic margins of society; the response by the supposedly ultra-nationalist BJP government in Delhi was quite muted. I can still remember the jingoistic outburst following the attack on Parliament in December of last year and the attack on the families of Army officers earlier this year: previously such attacks led to strong rhetoric and threats with the Prime Minister asserting that the December attack was a missed oppurtnity to declare war on Pakistan. Where is this reaction now? I don’t believe that the BJP government has all of a sudden heeded international pressures to tone down its response; the reaction by ‘civil society’ groups in Kashmir itself has been disappointing – marches in protest to the massacre have been poorly attended. This is a cause for anger – are not those slum dwellers in Quasim Nagar also not Indian citizens fully deserving of the protection of the state. Is a strong response/threat to be reserved only when some part of the establishment (read: dominant social groups and elite) such as Parliament, the political class or the civilian-military bureaucracy is attacked; are these the only part of the country the government is willing to defend ?! For those at the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy, such as the villagers at Keoladeo, the regulatory gaze of the state is a Medusa Gaze that spells fear and violence when it is cast upon them – just refer to the terror with which the organs of law and order such as the police are regarded in Bihar, Orissa or Gujarat; or the paramilitary forces such as the BSF (Border Security Force) in Assam, Tripura and Kashmir. Ask individuals who face the brunt of security or policing functions and operations what they think of this arm of the state and the response will mostly be a mixture of fear, anger and revulsion. In what sense do democratic institutions such as Parliament and the law courts protect them? Why then should they feel threatened or anguished when these same institutions are attacked? If the state expects its own citizens to make large sacrifices in the name and cause of the Nation, it too must act in such a way as to show that the Nation can act in the name of all those who come under its gaze and not just become a tool of institutionalised interest groups. Those who inhabit the margins are as much a part of the nation as those who claim to occupy the putative centre; it is time that real nationalists reclaimed this centre from the pseudo-nationalists of the Hindu Right; who seek to use the symbol of the nation for the Few rather than the Many.

:: Conrad Barwa 10:51 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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