A Critique of Postcolonial Reason - Review

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Towards a Theory of Native InformantA Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present by GayatriChakravorty SpivakReview by: Sukalpa BhattacharjeeEconomic and Political Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 14/15 (Apr. 14-20, 2001), pp. 1194-1198Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4410482.

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I Review article ___

Towards Theory o ative nformantA Critique of Postcolonial Reason:Toward a History of The VanishingPresent by Gayatri ChakravortySpivak;Seagull Books, Calcutta,1999;pp 449, Rs 695.

SUKALPA BHATTACHARJEE

he text is yet another hallengingintervention by GayatriChakravorty Spivak, one of theworld's leading critic, theorist and femi-nist intellectual. This text is a dense

weaving of interdisciplinary andintertextual hreads(in spite of the modestapology of the authorin the preface) ad-dressing itself to philosophers, feminists,scholarsof postcolonial and culturalstud-ies and the so-called 'native informants'of the academia and of the ethnographersfield. The avowed objective of this textis 'to trackthe figure of the native infor-mant through various practices' througharangeof philosophical presuppositions,historicalexcavations, and literary repre-sentations of the dominant (p xi). Thedominant is counterposed as part of thecriticalprojectof Spivak, in termsof nativeinformant defined and displaced withinthe dominant. The native informant is anamefor that mark of expulsion from thename of man - a mark crossing out theimpossibility of the ethical relation (p 6).Spivak's attempthas been to clear out the'native informant' of the 'cluster' ofwestern ethnographical research/inscrip-tions and 'postcolonial masquerading'.This 'clearing out' of the 'native infor-mant' eventually has raised certain fun-damentalandcrucialquestions andopenedup possibilities of alternative discourseswhich areperhapsmarksof Spivak's owncommitment not only to narrative andcounter-narrative ut also to therendering(im)possible of (an)othernarrative p 6).In theopening chapterentitled 'Philoso-phy', Spivakexamines the emergence andforeclosure of the 'native informant' inthe three 'greattexts of the western Philo-

sophical tradition- Kant,Hegel andMarx'.The flux of the 'history of the vanishingpresent' is perhaps the adjustment ornegotiation of what Spivak calls 'theEuropean discursive production' ant the'axiomatic of imperialism',which contin-ues to influence and instruct our knowl-edge, culture, economy, literature, andpedagogical practices. Spivak hopes thatsome readers-may discover a construc-tive rather than disabling complicity be-tween ourown position andtheirs (Kant,Hegel and Marx) (p 4). The constructiveaspect as suggested by Spivak emergesfrom an appropriation of these greatnarratives of western philosophical tradi-tion, which are still dictating the logic ofthe capital and the financialisation of theglobe. It is worthwhile to (re)quoteSpivak's quotation of Carl Pletch's con-clusion to 'The Three Worlds'.

Ourchallenge is not merely to cast asidethis conceptual orderingof social scien-tific labour (into three worlds), but tocriticise it. And we must understand hetask of criticism ntheKantian,Hegelian,and Marxist'sense here. We must, inotherwords, overcome the limitationsthatthe threeworlds notion has imposedupon the social sciences as a matter ofcourse (p 3).The last line here assumes greater sig-nificance with Spivak's clarification that'we' in thehumanitieshave alreadystartedseeing the 'third world', as a displace-ment of the old colonies as colonialism

proper displaces itself into neo-colonial-ism (p 3). This displacement of the oldcolonies has eventually resulted in thecollapsing of the geopolitical boundariesof the 'three worlds' and has made theconceptualisation of the 'fourth world'pre-emergent (Spivak has stated else-where that the fourth world is the firstworld pushed back). One thusjuxtaposesthe foreclosed figure of the 'native infor-mant' of Kant and the image of free-floating migrant (a concept coined fromRushdie) to construe the fourth world'subject' as thecross-pollinated,displacednative informant in this 'history of thevanishing present'.

Another importantaspect of this text asthe author herself claims is that it is afeminist 'book' where feminist issues are'pre-emergent'. The second chapter is adiscussion of several literary extsof whicha few pages probably has been Spivak'sown classroom lectures. Her discussion ofBronte's Jane Eyre, Jean Rhy's WideSargasso Sea andMaryShelly' s Franken-stein is anextension of hercritiqueof 19thcentury eminism in 'ThreeWomen's TextsandaCritiqueof Imperialism'.Rhy's novelbecomes particularly significant in herteaching of the 'native informant'becauseitprojectsthatthe 'other'cannotbe 'selfed'or given an 'identity' owing to fracturesproduced by Imperialism. For Spivak,contemporary feminism continues to beonly an extension of 19th century femi-nism with respect to the treatment of the'racial' other. Ourattempts orendervoiceto the (subaltern) other is also not freefrom the influence of western proto-femi-nism. One is reminded of Spivak's com-ments on such attempts of scholars andresearchers (to trace the subalternvoice)at the VIth Subaltern conference in 1998.Her word of caution to younger scholarswas that one should not put one's wordsinto the mouth of the Subaltern and claimthatthe Subaltern has spoken. Rather onecouldobjectively experiencethe 'textualityof doing' (without valorising doing overknowing) and learn the limits of one'signorancewhich informsthat the other hasno language (EPW, May 9, 1999). Thisis a strategic positivist essentialism thatresists reverse ethnocentrism while itreinscribes the native as an expropriatednon-presence beyond the claims of articu-late subjectivity. The expropriationof thenative is a strategy of transforming andradicalising the impossible moral luck ofitself in silences incipient between thesignaturesof theproper dentities, across-ing out of boththenative and the dominantrationality.In her reading of how colonialism andpostcolonialism are figured in literature,Spivak also discusses Baudelaire,Kipling,Mahasweta andCoetze. Rhys, Mahaswetaand Coetze along with Mary Shelley,

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according to Spivak resist what she callstheethics of alterity as a politics of iden-tity . Baudelaire's 'Le Cygne' andKipling's 'William the Conqueror' havebeen readtogetherwith a discussion paperlaid before a secret meeting of the EastIndiaCompany.Spivak's attempthasbeento projectthe affinity between the mirrorof our performance of certain imperialistideological structures even as wedeconstruct the tropological error ofmasculinism celebrating the female (p148) and the most crude presuppositionsof racism. Spivak's readingof MahaswetaDevi's 'Pterodactyl, Pirtha and PuranSahay' has focused on the measuring ofdifference in the master-slave enclosureprojected in Frankenstein and the impos-sibility of retaining the colonial femalesubjectof historyinsuch an enclosure. Theemergence of the 'native informant' takesplaceat thedisjuncturebetween the master-slave enclosure and the postcolonialperformance of the construction of theconstitutional subject of the new nation,in subalternity ratherthan, as most oftenby renaming the colonial subject, as citi-zen (p 141). The narrative scope ofMahasweta' textopenswide withSpivak'sobservation that Mahasweta's text cannotbeused as anexample of Jamesonian 'thirdworld literature'. Mahasweta's use ofthe myth of 'Pterodactyl' and her namingof the locale (beyond the recognised fa-miliar geopolitical significance) of themyth is significantly suggestive of thepresence of another world below andbeyond the politico-cultural enclosure ofthe 'three-worlds'.In trying to read the histories of themanagement of widow burning and thehistoryof a 19thcenturyhill queen, whichis again an extension of her article 'Canthe Subaltern Speak?' and 'The Rani ofSirmur', one of the important ssue raisedhere is the transition of 'Europe and itsother' to 'Europe as an other' (p 199) andhow it has instructedthe politics of genderand development. Through the resuscita-tion of the 'Rani of Sirmur' from thearchives and documents and her retellingof the story of Bhubaneswari Bhaduri,Spivak's argumentpartly s that woman'sinterception of the claim to Subalternitycan be staked out across strict lines ofdefinition by virtue of their muting byheterogeneouscircumstances p308). Thechapter attempts to discuss these twowomen as 'informant'of history. The Raniof Sirmur is resurrected from archives,letters and despatches in the interest of

British imperialists, just as 'Women andDevelopment' is restructured nto 'Genderand Development' in the interest of thefinancialisation of the globe. Spivak com-ments aptly that Between patriarchyandimperialism, subject-constitution and ob-ject formation, the figure of the womandisappears, not onto a pristine nothing-ness, but into a violent shuttling thatis thedisplaced figuration of the 'third-worldwoman' caught between tradition andmoderisation, culturalism and develop-ment (p 304). The tale of the widowBhubaneswari Bhaduri's suicide is asSpivak writes a subalternrewritingof thesocial text of sati-suicide of third worldwoman. Spivak's reading of Subalternspeech is extended through the questionof stakes to 'political speaking' into acollective arena. In the gap between na-tional liberation and globalisation, thecasting of vote (for the Subalternwoman)becomes a constative 'speech' in contrastto the silent self-inscription of violence onBhubaneswari, on her own menstruatingbody at the age of 17.1The last chapter is the history of thepresenttime, focusing on women in textileand postmoder fashion. She begins witha discussion on Fredric Jameson'spostmodernism and states that theconflation of postmodernism andpoststructuralism s a 'culturalproduction'in the metacritical production of culturalhistory,architecture, ashion,clothing, etc.These are 'privileged areasof inscription'of (postmodern) culture. Spivak discussesa host of culturalimages and their nuancesincluding the internetwhich arecaught inthe 'white-collar cultural enclave of thepresent times'. Spivak writes, This en-clave can, depending upon its class con-nections contain the impulse toward cul-tural museumisation as part of its sensi-tivity training (p 393). The immigranthumanities teacher is one who can relateto the institutionalisation of this impulsebecause the new immigrant s a figure likethenative informantand the 'postcolonial',who is 'woven into the folds' of the textof globalisation. The first three chapterstrack the native informantthroughEuropeandthe fourth circles around heUS wherethe author herself is traced..ocially, thepostcolonial/new management women inmulticulturalism is what Spivak has inmind in this concluding chapter. Spivakmakes a critique of the bid ofmulticulturalist feminism to acquiretransnational literacy in the new worldorder. Can the disenfranchised new or old

diasporic woman (of the east) inhabit thisaporia of the welfare and justice of thecapitalist state? This woman is howeverthe elite of global public cultureprivatised,the propersubject of realmigrantactivism(p 400). One here needs to rememberSpivak's caution of learning to read theobjective textuality of the silence of suchwomen before tracing her voice. The in-terventionistacademia canonly assist suchwomen rather than participate in theirgradual ndoctrination nto an 'unexaminedculturalism' (p 402). Groups of thegendered outsiders are the attraction oftransnational agencies of globalisation.Spivak's suggestion to them is that theyshould think of themselves as a collectiveand not as victims and engage themselvesin resisting globalisation and redrawingthe vicissitudes of migrancy. This groupshould address the challenge of the politi-cal imagination to rethink their countriesnot as nostalgic memories but as a partofglobality of the present, outside the USmelting pot. Theirparticipation n the newsocial movements of the west can havetheir own countries of origin as theirentrypoint. This re-meeting of America andglobality can re-invent the (his)tory of thevanishing present which would in turnretell the story of a Caliban or a Friday.It is this group which constitutes the 'im-plied readership' of Spivak's Critique ofPostcolonial Reason, a group with whichSpivak can perhaps identify herself.Critical HistoriographicalStrategies

Spivak's reading into the nature ofGerman nationalism that claimed an uni-fied national and cultural identity, bringsout its metonymic forgetfulness of the selfin the other as an unified identity. This isa typical posing of nationalist teleologythat the dialectic between Germancivilisation (the self) and Asian worldemerge into a larger epistemic and ideo-logical entity at the global level. WhatSpivak bringsout is aprehistoryof today'slinkages between nations to merge into atransnational andglobal entity and simul-taneously a teleology of liberal national-ism as well as progressive imperialism.The movement of Germanthoughtin whatSpivakcalls 'Kant'scomopolithia, Hegel'sitinerary of the idea and Marx's socialisthomeopathy' forms the double registerfordeterminationof oursubjectposition fromthe third world. On the one hand, itdetermines hirdworldas amargin ndon

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the other the very same determiningdiscourse forms the terms of our critiqueof the west. In between these registers,Spivak argues that we, the third worldcritic construe our kingdom by a 'denialof history, which paradoxically turns outas our own disavowal of agency' (p 9).Shelving such circular hermeneuticmoves within the maze of western dis-courses, Spivak vows for an impossibleperspective, the perspective of a 'nativeinformant'.Such a vow crops up from an under-standing of the internal logic of capital-ism-imperialism-socialism circle of west-ern reason.Firstly,it has always construedon other, either by bringing her within thefold of theirdiscourse on cultural other orby sheer non-recognition and exclusion ofthe other. Such a construal of the other,for Spivak, has remained as the crucialstrategy for iteration of the 'self in termsof dominant western discourse in bothwestern and non-western contexts avail-able as spaces for expansion of the ruleof capital, dialectic of spirit (Hegel) andfreedom of will (Kant). Instead of sayingthat such an entwined position of ours (asthird world subjects) had graduated andqualified us to attaina kind of self-reflex-ivity tojudge ourselves vis-a-vis the west(as believed to be the postcolonial expe-rience), Spivak says that it had led us toa self vs other opposition monotonicallyrehearsedin our endless tell-tale of colo-nial exploitation, national liberation andthird world underdevelopment. Spivakdeconstructs such an entrapped subjectiv-ity through a different strategy of inver-sion. When the terms of denial that werefer to (as listed above) are often con-struedas theexcluded marginsof thewest,the third world subjects are alreadydeconstructed in an otherised mode andhence one needs to deconstruct thisotherised non-western marginalised sub-jectfrom apositionoutside boththewesternand eastern discourses of civilisation andculture. Such a deconstruction is carriedout notmerely intheself-conscious aware-ness of 'forclosure' of subject positionsbut in the 'abyss' produced by western/easterndiscourses andits 'subject-effects'.Such an 'abyss' could be located onlycreatively, first by breaking the mirrorwhich gave animage of the other, a denialof alterityandthenby re-articulatinga selfin a substitution of the subject of human-ism by subject in emergence. Spivak takesup the issue of 'emergence' in terms ofideology of the aesthetic.

In Kantian aesthetics the move tonaturalise the sublime by way of subsum-ing the raw and the terrific under 'beau-tiful' and accord this to the mediating roleof reason, culture and education in therealm of human senses is for Spivak animpossibility to unalterif one is naturallyalien to this. Such an alienation is exem-plified in terming woman as 'naturallyunedilrable', especially a woman of thesouti, not only as the racial other to bealleviated by universal adoption throughthe perpetuation of racial superiority asbenevolent equalisation between womenof other races as white or black man asbrave as the white, a catachresis (an abuseor perversion of a trope or metaphor)describing something similar tosubsumption of the raw under the sublimewhile expurgating it fromthe sphereof thebeautiful. A global process likeAmericanisation of babies fromAfrica andthe east by wholesale adoption or creatingnative women as 'informants' in the UNstyle new world order, for Spivak, is anaestheticisation of the brute orces of racialdiscrimination, patriarchal violence andeconomy of sexism. But the move toexpurgatetheraw in an irreduciblemanneras in Kant's critique of judgment, assumewhat Spivak calls an impropriety ofdenomination by way of an ultimatesubstitution of the 'analogy of danger byreal danger' to evoke the sensation of theviolent, the dangerous, the raw and thebeastly. This is what completes the circleof reasonbydesensitising thesubjectwhenit forces theobject through he sublime andculture.Therefore,Spivakcautionsagainstsuch philosophical desensitisation by sug-gesting a therapeuticuse of 'politics' and'deconstruction'. Politics in the typicalAlthusserian sense in which Althussersuggested, Everythingwhich touches onpolitics may be fatal to philosophy, forphilosophy lives in politics (p 17).Deconstruction in an unusual sense of'setting-to-work mode' in which the textdeconstructed from a certain positionimbricates itself within the trace structureof the text. Therefore a politics of nego-tiating an exterior position inside the textwhile deconstructing the text assumes apolitics of impossibility of any relation ofself-sameness or alterity that keepsdeconstruction going. The question thenis, wherelies theagency of deconstruction?Spivak theorises the. agency ofdeconstruction no more in terms of au-tonomous subjects or subject effects, butin terms of an interminable chain of re-

production of value in the process ofexchange in the global market and one'between' critical vigilance and radicalpractice. Interestingly, the native infor-mant construed as a subject is produceddiscursively by a body of global powerfulpolitical, economic and financial institu-tions, who caught between exchanges,while the deconstruction of such a subjectproduces spaces between such exchanges.Spivak cites theexample of a migrant,whoas a native informantsimultaneously scalesthroughmarket-drivenforces of immigra-tion as well as remains complicit with herdifferent identity. A figure like a thirdworld woman placed outside the collabo-ration of global, institutionalisation alsoremains a 'native informant' by beingcaught in an exchange between represen-tations of her's and the role in which sheis cast within native patriarchalorder. Onthe one hand, Spivak critiques the instru-mentality of the thirdworld women assitesof representation and on the other anyrepresentation, for her is a process ofexchange within a chain of production ofsignifiers. Such a political economy ofsignification is what generallyoverdetermines the. position of the 'na-tive'. At the first level Spivak's strategyof deconstruction frees 'native' from sucha chain by eschewing the constitutivemechanism of theglobal political economy,but at the second level such a decentrednative re-enters into the global chain ofsignification as an 'informant', as a mi-grant, transnationaland hybrid subject ofknowledge. Such a knowledge is whatSpivak termsas, therisk of deconstructionwithout reserve (p 430).What Spivak claims is that both theselevels of deconstruction are inhabited bya process of effacement of the 'native'. Atthe first level, the 'native' caught withinthe global chain of signification is not the'subject' of reality, it is a movement withinthe chain of signification that has solelytechnical andrepresentativefunction. It isa representation of the loss of identitywithin representation of the 'native'through the structure of representationwhich is mediated within the global po-litical economy; his loss of cultural/na-tional identity which is again mediated bya non-identity of being a migrant. Such anon-identity is a rupturewithin the con-tinuum between the native and the globaland hence bringing t intopresence throughthe supposed role of an 'informant', is asecond level deconstructive move thataccount for the impossibility of the pos-



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sibility of the subject in the native infor-mant. Such an impossibility determines astotality of the limits of global appropria-tion of the third world by retaining theoriginal trace of the native in its trans-formed movements. Therefore, neitherpolitical economy nor any other preferredepisteme of globalising discourse cannotavoid linking the other and the self-reflex-ive appropriationof the other into an ir-reducible non-presence of the other in theexteriority of the fundamental topic ofcontemporary western discourses: repre-sentation, value and identity. Since west-ern discourses conceived these issues asgenerating themselves in a movement ofunmediatedauto-affection,what suchauto-affected movements conceal are theirdependence on both the structuraland thesupplementary laws of production.Deconstruction in its usual sense revealssuch dependence by way of exposing itsarchitectural components. The auto-af-fected productionof value, for example isa function of termination of the chain of'reproduction' exposing its dependenceon the supplementarityof capital. Capitalas a supplement remains attached to thevery structure of production, but it con-ceals such an attachment in its very op-eration. The length of time taken in theprocesses of generation of value stops itscirculation at the point where its chain ofreproductionis constantly substituted bythe 'electronic exchange of stocks andshares.Spivak, therefore,relocates time asthe non-present constitutive element ofvalue that terminates the auto-affectionof value by calling its exterior laws of(re)production. Such an exteriority is theremainder of what goes into making of'processes' and 'products' of economyof signs.Within the fundamentaltopoi of genera-tion of signs the culturalhistory of nativesof the erstwhile colonised countries stillact as the source of value and represen-tation for the first world. The instrumen-tality of western knowledge transformsthis source into an alienated essence. Thehistory of this alienation involves anupstaging of the western episteme in itsideology of sublime. The sublime is con-stituted by an image of celebrating theotherness of the native. Such an othernessproduces the self-same western image ofmankind with all its oppressive machina-tions. Outside thismanufacturedhistory ofmankind,Spivak opens the particularitiesof the textualised native souls by under-liningthestrategiesof appropriationof the

figure of the native. Spivak suggests amove fromexteriority alreadyinscribed inthe native to the interior norms of therelationship between the western cogitoand the native self to recover the nativefrom its instrumental presence in themetadiscourse of civilisation to its disap-pearancein the conceived othernessof thenative.This is the native whospeakswithouta voice and its silences need to be recu-perated in order to retrieve its self-con-sciousness. Spivak assumes that the tex-tual historiography can only stand testi-mony to this silence without any redemp-tive possibility as it can only assume thevoice of the dominant. Therefore bothhistory and time are frozen within histo-riography ngiving the nativeonlyaspectralidentity thatgoes into repetitively makinga structureof traces with the lost identityof the native. Such a structure is whatdetermines the narrativerepresentationofhistory and hence Spivak names it meta-phorically as the 'History of VanishingPresent'. The muted subverted and frozenpresence of the natives within historiog-raphymakes it repressive to the extent thatit only reinscribes and enacts the crueltyof writing the native in effacement, livingonlyattheexterior,a simultaneousexterior-isation and extermination of the native.The Paradox of Native Informant

Now the question is whether the extenu-ation of process of signification necessar-ily leaves open an exterior? This leads toa further question that, if the 'nativeinformants' of the third world defy anyrelationship of alterity , how can theirlocation at the exterior of dominant west-ern discourses help reinscribe themselveswithin the field of discourse? Isn't then the'native informants' remaining simulta-neously inside and outside of the dominantdiscourse? While remaining inside as'traces' they become anauto-artifactwith-out a self-conscious reflection on them-selves. Obviously the west cannot locatethem neither as 'natives' nor as 'supple-ments'. It s only whentheyareredescribed,they become 'other' as an identifiableentity. They are identifiable yet without a'voice'. While becoming anexterior to thewestern discourses, their voices are heardbut they speak the language of the domi-nant. Their own voices are forevereffacedin this absolute otherhood as an identityand as a non-identity in the foreclosurewithin the political ccunlomyof reproduc-tion of western discourses.

Taking the deconstructed figure of thenative as an irreducible exterior of thewestern discourse, one furtherquestion is,how do we write its genealogy? We areagain back with a Kantianquestion aboutthe condition of possibility of the nativeinformant. This is a replacement of thestatus of history by the possibilities of aminimal,much diminished structuralprin-ciple of making history move. Isn't it afurther move towards aestheticisation ofhistory without a closure? Such a historywithout a closure is despotic to the extentthat the historical sublime is broken intotraces of subjects of history, while suchsubjects live at the exterior of history onlyto re-inscribe themselves without beingsubjects of history. Such a project ofvanishing history vanquishes nativesas subjects.The crucial question is, are we then leftwith history without subjects to look forsubjects who could palpably standoutsidehistory? The answer seems to be deferredin Spivak's act of reading 'History ofVanishing Present'. Especially the figureof the native as an informant acts as a'concept metaphor' thatsuspends a literalmeaning as well as itsappropriationwithina discourse, especially discourse like his-tory, disciplined and institutionalised.Being displaced from their own roots interms of their discursive identification aswell as from their 'past', a simultaneousre-identificationandreconstructionof theirpast and present is what marks this build-ing of knowledge of their displacement.Such is theirvisibility thatthey areforeignto themselves andit is theirbeing 'foreign'that makes them visible. This visibilitywould as such remain the other of the'visible'. How would then the native re-cuperate its 'self'?The answer to this question lies inexplorations of 'irreducibility' to others aswell as to themselves, a position thatproduces a 'differential inappearance' ofits markers of identity. Such an openingis whatSpivak once describedas thegivingof the subject to the proprietor, as some-body not determined within the ethics ofalterity, but to be traced within an ethicsof responsibility. Such an act of givingturns paradoxical as it has to take a de-cision to give unto the point of total lossof self tobringan end to indecision. Furtherin a response of indebtedness to the given,what is given is split into the giver andgiven by bringing an end to the gift. So,the time of the gift can never be thoughtas a 'now', rather as what remains of it

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in the 'now'. What remains of it makesthe gift visible only as an in-between andhence as the subject of history it couldonly remain visible as an informant in apresent which is sublime and which doesnot have a history of its own, expurgatedfrom the domain of the real. Such aninvisible native is further split into thecobwebs of visibility bydenying itspresentand thereby reducing it to a pale shadowof the past, a vanishing trace to be onlydiscovered as an undecidable within thefleeting traces of spectral modern history.So the question remains open as to howdoes one can take stock of the presentwithout losing oneself in the act of givingor accepting a residual existence in therealm of sublime?Making Sense of theUndecidable

Seemingly the agency of the nativeinformant ies somewhere suspended as anagent of history against the episteme ofdominance. The drift of Spivak's argu-mentencourages a radicalmove to rewritethe history of the native as an agency inindependence to the role of being an in-formant. Such an independence of thenative is achieved by way of assuming anagency through responsibility to take astepbeyondtherelationshipof alteritythatmakes a 'double gesture': a criss-crossbetween the image of the native caughtwithin the western dominant discourse asbothnon-presentand an exteriorentityandthe image of the native present as thewholly other to the west; a native consti-tuted and dislocated by making a rupturethrough hecriss-cross in all possible figu-rationof the self andtheother. This is whatDerrida called 'conjuration', drawing aline between 'what there is' and 'what isnot there'.2 The line here could be drawnby cessation of the otherness of the nativewhich would interdict in the history or thepresent hatmakes it another nsteadofjustan 'other' by the production of a differ-ential inappearence.Spivak puts the situation in the wordsof Derrida, What could be theresponsibility...(toward) a consistent Dis-course which claimed to show that noresponsibility could ever be taken withoutequivocation and without contradiction?The question could be contextualised herein terms of the natureof the responsibility,of the native as an agent and subject ofhistory by asking how could the nativeremainresponsibleto the discourse of

makingher self identity?The answertothequestionbegsresponsibilitytself.Soeven the nativeis caughtonce again insituations fansweringo thecall ofdoing,acting and becomingan identitywhichdirectlyand ndirectly omesback to themetaphysics f subjectivity.In effect perhapsone shouldposit theidentityof an in-betweenas a subalternwho wouldoffer a persistent ritiqueofcapitalism-imperialismy wayof acts hatarerelatively utonomous ndthatwhichdiscounts he dominant ie as an interme-diarybetween heglobaland he ocal andwhostandsas a deconstructorf fulfilledreasonby theirsilences,by their refusalto takethe role commandeduponthem.The pace for such autonomy till existshistoricallyas Spivakherselfshows howtheattemptsfstumpingheresistant oicefrom heso-called hirdworld s foiledandalreadydeconstructedn the texts of re-sistance.Such deconstruction f the dominantdoes notsignifythatthenative s able tomakeherselfheard.Hervoiceas aniden-tityis excluded n thespaceof historyanddiscourse which is markedby a strictdivisionof theworld n amannerhatwhatis excluded rom t produces n inside interms of the legitimate. Thereforedeconstructionf the discourseonly in-vents the permissibleand the possible.This is what makes the other, and thenative, mpossible,onlyto be inventedasaninformant. his nvention f the nativeis whatopens uptime andwhat s spacedas history with the performance of

otherhood. So what history offers is arupturebetween the conscious self and itsportrait in which self resembles the non-self identity. Such anon-self identity couldonly be inscribed as the coming presentwithin history. Such a present is alreadythere in the excluded spaces of historywhich requires a decision to exposeourselves to the non-presence of ourpresent . In the inimitable words of JeanLuc Nancy,

Finite history is this infinite decisiontowardhistory - if we can still use theword 'history'(...).In time today is already yesterday. Butevery today is also the offer of thespacetime and toDecide how it no longerjust be time, butour time [JeanLuc Nancy 1997:166].[BINotes1 She becomes a body withoutpropertyas theconstativeseeks to reassure heperformance fspeech. Such a reassuringperformances thereproductionof a subjecthoodthatjibes withthe dominant.2 The term 'conjuration' s a neologism createdby Derridain his readingof Marx to signifya homology between capitalism's productionof value as a inappearent race and forms ofsignification that remains under perpetualerasureboth as a structuralphenomenologyof repetition.ReferenceNancy, JeanLuc (1997): The Birth to Presence,StanfordUniversityPress, Stanford.

Institutef SocialSciencesNew Delhi

Research Positions AvailableThe Institute of Social Sciences plans to recruit ResearchAssociatesforvariousprojectsrangingbetweenone to twoyearswith the possibilityof joining its permanent aculty.Candidateswith minimumM.Phil degree or Ph.D in Economics, PoliticalScience, Sociology and InternationalStudies can apply.Thosewithaptitude orfield workandorganisationalabilityas well asknowledgein computerapplicationsoftwares will be preferred.The posts carryconsolidatedsalary dependingon qualificationandexperience.ApplytotheDirector, nstitute f SocialSciences,8 Nelson MandelaRoad, New Delhi 110 070 with CV beforeApril 30, 2001.


A Critique of Postcolonial Reason - Review

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