Colonisation- unless it involves the extirpation or complete indoctrination of a subject population- does not mean that one Social Theory necessarily replaces another. On the contrary, Colonialism might mean the abandonment of a 'metropolitan' Social Theory in favour of the pragmatics of one which is indigenous.
Julain Go disagrees. He says-
Social Theory flourished after Imperialism ceased to be economically viable during a period when there was a massive expansion in Higher Education made possible by 'Wagner's Law'- i.e. the State's ability to retain a higher proportion of GNP. However, by the Seventies, this had led to 'stagflation'. Meanwhile Social Theory had degenerated into paranoid fantasy based upon the imminence of some imaginary orgasmic Revolution. Sociology became a joke subject- fit only for budding Parole officers or stupid bureaucrats bucking for promotion. Economics turned its back on Institutionalism, 'Verstehen' based dirigisme, and dropped the foreign language requirement for PhDs substituting Maths and Stats instead. Indeed, neoclassical economics derives from statistical physics. Gossen, Walras, Pareto, Menger, Marshall- not a single Marginalist had any interest in Colonies. Why? They don't matter in themselves. You don't have to turn African people into Europeans to secure a market for your cheese. Make good cheese. It will find its own market. Indeed, the only thing that matters is that, irrespective of who governs what, there is a burgeoning of Trade of a sort which leads to Technologically innovative Capital formation and knowledge based Social Development.
Thus Marshall warned a brilliant Indian student of his that only a small minority of Indian entrepreneurs were committed to technological progress in the manner of the Tatas. Sadly, India chose a ressentiment based 'swadesi' dirigisme which gave a prominent role to 'Socialists' as enabling a corrupt, rent seeking, 'license permit Raj'. In this context, 'Social Theory' was the legitimating ideology of a semi-feudal type of Crony Capitalism. Thus, Professors would pretend to be Marxist so as to escape a beating and draw their salary while knowing full well that the son of the Marxist C.M was getting very rich without any effort.
Elsewhere, if foreigners or minorities owned profitable assets, stealing those assets for the benefit of a kleptocratic clique motivated a wholly fraudulent 'second wave' anti-colonialism. Thus ambitious young South African Rhodes Scholars might find it useful to pose as 'decolonisers of the mind' tweeting 'Rhodes must fall' because they hope to grab property belonging to minorities. However, they will run the enterprises they seize into the ground and then whine about how the IMF isn't giving them free money to avert the resulting famine.
In India, Post Colonial theory and 'subaltern studies' was nothing but a credentialist fraud or Ponzi scheme, whose reward was emigration to some Western Ivory tower. Ranajit Guha set the trend by taking British citizenship even before Niradh Chaudhri. He is now holed up in Austria- a great center of resistance to neo-colonialism.
Julian Go, who was enraptured by Dipesh Chakravarty, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha as a Post Grad in the early Nineties, takes a different view. He says-
What of this notion of 'persistent legacies'? In the case of India, we know that no such legacies obtain. Why? India, like Ireland, has a doctrine of constitutional autochthony. Smart people- like Ambedkar- didn't just know more Social Theory than any of Go's stupid professors, none of whom can write a single cogent sentence, he actually put Social Theory into action on a grand scale.
Go asks-
Can social theory and postcolonial thought be reconciled?In other words, he is admitting that postcolonial thought has no grounding in social theory. It is wholly irrational.
The task is to consider the possibilities of articulating social theory and postcolonial thought, to see how they might fruitfully engage.Why perform the task of reconciling paranoid nonsense with a rational discourse? What 'fruitful engagement' will result?
One part of the task is to explore how postcolonial thought might benefit from a direct engagement with social theory. Can it learn anything at all from it?Wow! Even a brain damaged sociopath can learn something useful if medicated properly. Go questions whether Poco thought can rise even to the level of a retarded maniac.
The other part of the task is to see how social theory might be enlightened by postcolonial thought. How might social theory, and indeed the social sciences more broadly, be reconstructed and reworked in order to better suit the intellectual challenge that postcolonial thought poses to it?Oh! So Go is asking how a rational discourse can be made user friendly to intellectually challenged nutjobs.
This question is especially vexing for, as we will see in chapters to come, the intellectual challenge to social theory posed by postcolonial thought is potentially insurrectionary. What anticolonial revolutions were to empires, postcolonial thought is to social science. Postcolonial thought is the intellectual equivalent of the anticolonial movements of the twentieth century that birthed it. Hence the question: How might social theory survive the invasion?Wow! Substitute the word 'Black' for 'anticolonial' and one begins to understand why Go has written this book and why White people teaching worthless subjects might buy it. Economics, however, is safe. Gerschenkron, at the beginning of the Sixties was worried that the Niggers entering the Ivy League would eat their teachers unless they were properly dosed with German. But, Maths did a way better job. African American Economists have produced some of the best work in the subject in a consistent manner decade after decade- though, as with female Economists, they have often been ignored or condescended to. Math weeds out the lazier and more egregious types of stupidity. Social Theory does not.
Go's own writing amply demonstrates this.
Consider the following passage- (my remarks are in bold)
In the late nineteenth century, social theory took on an institutional form as disciplinary sociology, nestling within the emerging social sciences in the metropoles of the United States and Europe. So, Social Theory is something which exists in the ether and which takes on different forms. Why? How? Go won't tell us. Dance is something which exists. In recent years, it 'has taken on institutional form' in so far as you can do a degree, or even a PhD, in Dance at some Institutions of Higher Education. So what? There is nothing sinister about this. If people are willing to pay for a degree in Dance, or Astrology or Alchemy, so what? Who cares? We wont watch a dance performance just because the dancer has a PhD. We will, however, start busting out Gangnam style moves at the Christmas party.
It is here (at Universities) where sociology as we know it today was hatched, and it is here where the imperial origins of social theory become clearer. Go is wrong. Sociology arose out of the expansion of the metropolitan bureaucracy and the manner in which this impacted rent contestation within the governing class. Its most significant contributors were not academics. Imperialism did have a relationship with anthropology which retained a certain cachet which Sociology never attained. Thus, it was permissible for the Prince of Wales to study Anthropology but not Sociology which was distinctly plebeian.
For it is precisely at this moment that Anglo-European imperialism began to reach its pinnacle. So what? It could only 'rise to a pinnacle' because the foundations had been laid long before Sociology became a thing. Increased Wealth meant more bullshit degrees could be marketed. That's all that happened here.
This was the moment of the “new imperialism” or “high imperialism” (as it would later be called)—the unleashing of violent power as nations like England, France, Germany, the United States, Belgium, Italy, and others mounted new territorial assaults upon Africa and Asia. By 1900, the new empires were ruling 90 percent of Africa, 56 percent of Asia, and 99 percent of the Pacific. By the First World War, imperial powers occupied 90 percent of the entire surface area of the globe (Andersson 2013; Young 2001: 2). Sociology was institutionalized through and within this imperial moment (Connell 1997; Go 2013d; Mantena 2012). America also started awarding degrees in things like Journalism and Physical Education and, a little later, Theater studies and so forth. They had a more market driven educational model and one must admit that it was superior to the European model. American Sociology, at one time, seemed a good handmaiden for big Corporations, and, later on, for overblown Federal Agencies, but that time passed long ago. Why? Because tax payers revolted. They weren't interested in why Society had a moral duty to spend much, much, more money on non-tax payers so that they could become more delinquent yet.Sociology abandoned its original mission- which was about using empirical findings about collective behavior to run things more cheaply and efficiently- and turned into antagonomic whining. It was no longer about linking cause and effect, preferring to base itself on seeing paranoid patterns in all things.
In 1893, the first Department of Sociology was established at the University of Chicago and the first doctorate in sociology in the United States was awarded at Cornell. But just as this was occurring, the French were colonizing the Ivory Coast, Laos, and Guinea; the British South Africa Company was invading Matabeleland in current-day Zimbabwe; and Queen Liliuokalani was surrendering her Hawaiian kingdom to the United States.1893 was the year the Independent Labour Party had its first meeting. This proves that it was complicit in British imperialism in South Africa.
A year later, the same year that Franklin Giddings was appointed chair and professor of sociology at Columbia (marking the first full professorship in sociology in the United States), England took Uganda as a protectorate, France seized Madagascar, and the Sino-Japanese War erupted.Fuck you Giddings! Why did you make the Japs and the Chinks fight each other? Shame on you!
In 1895, as the American Journal of Sociology published its very first issue, Japan seized Taiwan, Britain turned Bechuanaland into a protectorate and raided the Transvaal Republic against the Boers, and the Cuban rebellion against Spain was unleashed. In 1901, the year that the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota was established, England was adding Tonga and Nigeria to its empire, and the U.S. government was violently suppressing an anticolonial insurgency in the Philippines, occupying Cuba, and solidifying its colonial regimes in Samoa and Puerto Rico (Go 2013d).1895 was also the year in which Le Petomane gained world wide fame. This proves that farting is complicit in the Imperialist episteme. Some years later, Le Petomane was disgraced because he sharted during the course of public performance. That's also what happened to Social Theory. It shat its pants when it took the stage.
Go recognizes that Du Bois was a Professor of Sociology. He is not so foolish as to claim that Du Bois was a racist swine. Instead he says Du Bois was the exception that proves the rule. Why? Because Du Bois was marginalised. Why was he marginalised? D'uh- the man was Black in the era of Jim Crow. Also he wrote well and had something sensible to say. He was much more than a pedagogue.
Go thinks a Racist type of Imperialism was inevitable. We wouldn't be where we are today without it. He says-
Empire—and related processes of colonialism or racism—has been foundational for metropolitan societies as well as colonized societies....it has been crucial for the making and remaking of modernityThere is absolutely no justification for this view in either Economic theory or empirical data. Nineteenth Century Radicalism, of the Cobden & Bright & the later Manchester Guardian type, continually refuted the notion that 'Trade follows the Flag'. Political Corruption caused the Flag to go where it could capture rents for the ruling class. This meant that Trade could not burgeon because of pure drain. The Empire was castigated as a vast system of outdoor relief for the Aristocracy. Indian born writers like Thackeray & Saki continually made fun of the system whereby Colonial Governors were appointed, more often than not, because of scandalous incompetence or adultery or incompetent adultery.
British Colonies were getting a declining share of Investment and Trade compared to independent countries. Pax Britannia was the peace of the Grave for dynamic businessmen. Shaw and Wells popularized a message which the Fabians painstakingly researched and documented.
Portugal and Spain were a stark reminder of the manner in which Imperialism throttled Modernity. Suddenly, Scandinavia- Ibsen, Strindberg &c- were showing the way for Shavian Man and, more importantly, Shavian Woman.
Consider the LSE. It was far more important than the Uni of Chicago. In what way was its 'episteme' complicit or contaminated by the Imperial project? One could find a genealogy for the LSE in Florence Nightingale and Arthur Hugh Clough's efforts in the 1860's to reform the War Office. Nightingale lived to bless the Indian National Congress and act as guardian, together with Jowett, to Cornelia Sorabjee.
Go is not stupid. He knows all this. Why is he writing such worthless shite? The answer is that he feels that non-stupid people like himself may at any moment be carjacked or cannibalized by stupid nutjobs. He says-
Whereas gender theory treats gender relations as foundational, and Marxist theory treats capitalism as foundational, postcolonial theory treats empire and colonialism as foundational.Who gives a fuck about gender theory? Certainly no sane woman not actually paid to peddle that shite. Marxist theory failed. Get over it. Postcolonial theory is just a self aggrandizing academic careerism on the part of deracinated shitheads playing the Race card. Why give them the time of day?
Imperial Power is not about 'Episteme'. It is about firepower and logistics and abstract mathematical financial engineering. It is not based on any 'Social' process at all. If it is, it ceases to be 'Imperial' and gives way to Creole power contestation.
Sociology had nothing to do with the change in Naval doctrine we associate with A.T. Mahan and with the rise of 'infant industry' Protectionism as an Economic theory. It wasn't infected with anything save pedagogic stupidity.
Go says-
The early sociologists’ own words and concepts bespeak this imperial context of sociology’s institutionalization. Franklin Giddings, who later served as President of the American Sociological Society and was the first full professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Columbia University, declared in 1911 that among the pressing questions of importance to sociologists were the questions of “territorial expansion and of rule over alien peoples” (Giddings 1911: 580–81). Meanwhile, many of these leading sociologists often affirmed imperialism, heralding it as the necessary and desirable outcome of the “race struggle” and social evolution.Giddings had a complicated theory of a thermodynamic type such that human beings gravitated to forms of reciprocal consciousness which released more 'work'. Marxists may trace this type of thinking to the 'baronised Yankee' Count Rumford. However, for India- where Giddings book 'Democracy and Empire' was read by votaries of 'Harbhat Pendse'- what was really important was its last chapter titled 'The Gospel of non-resistance'. Karl Pearson's theory of 'extra group struggle' showed the utility of in-group non-resistance and making common cause against an external enemy. Gandhi's genius was to discover a way to turn even conflict with that enemy into something potentially mutually beneficial and productive.
Go thinks America having Sociology professors is very important. But India had better Sociologists- because they were well versed in Mathematics and Statistics- at that time. Indeed, as the great E.J Hannan states in his memoirs, Indian scholars were ahead of American scholars till the late Fifties. Gokhale was and is important. Giddings is not. Gokhale, being a mathematician, could marshal information and present so cogent a case that he won over a select committee at Westminster. No doubt, American Sociology can claim similar achievements but only in domestic contexts. Imperialism has nothing to do with Social Theory. It lives and dies on the basis of purely military and economic considerations.
Go thinks otherwise-
Sociology in this sense has imperial origins: not necessarily because it was in the direct service of empire (though in some cases it was), but because it was formed in the heartland of empire, crafted in its milieu, and was thus embedded in its culture.If Go is right then Modern Dance has imperial origins. So does baseball and chewing gum and breakfast cereal and the electric light-bulb and the Gramophone record and so on.
Phrenology was once considered an academic discipline. It was very popular in Edinburgh at precisely the time that Britain was consolidating its Indian Empire. Thus phrenology must have been embedded in British culture. Yet it disappeared without a trace because it proved to be worthless shite. The same thing might not have happened to Sociology but smart people don't go in for it anymore. It keeps its place only as a soft subject for retards.
Go admits as much-
It (Social Theory) was part and parcel of the imperial episteme. It was dependent upon and shared empire’s way of looking and thinking about the world, even when it did not directly contribute to it.Sociologists have been among the first to assert that ideas are shaped by the social environments in which those ideas are generated (Camic, Gross, and Lamont 2011). If they believe their own theories, it should not be too difficult to acknowledge the context of empire within which their discipline was founded and their founding ideas forged.Sociologists don't believe their own theories because their own theories predict that Sociologists have shit for brains and are incapable of uttering anything save a schizophrenic word-salad derived from some essentially evil episteme that pervades everything.
One goal of this book is to explore how this imperial context more precisely shaped the content of sociology and social theory—and whether it still does today.The Sociologists Go speaks of had only a second hand and imperfect knowledge of Imperialism. Thus the discipline was shit from the get go because it was far removed from the scene of the action. But, if Sociology was ab ovo shite then the discipline was adversely selective and every succeeding cohort of Credentialised Sociologists were even more worthless.
Does social theory bear the imprint of its imperial origins? Has social theory extricated itself from this earlier imperial entanglement? How are sociological concerns, categories, frameworks, and research shaped by empire?Sociologists- like Go- are too stupid to understand that Imperialism ceased to be viable a long time ago. Thus they are incapable of ever 'extricating' their subject from anything. Its concerns, categories, frameworks and research didn't make any contribution to empire but were passively shaped by it at second hand. It is wholly worthless but Go is not dismayed.
Surely, the explicit racist claims of the early sociologists are not to be found in contemporary theory and research. And few sociologists would praise imperialism as a social good. But as we will see, the legacies of sociology’s early imperial origins persist in subtle yet powerful ways—just as the legacies of empire in our world persist. There are important differences between social science today and social science in the era of high imperialism. But there are also continuities. In chapters to come, we will see how social science still works within an imperial episteme whose pervasive power we have underestimated.Algebraic Topology gained salience at about the same time as Sociology. But it weeds out stupid shitheads and so helps create and shape a genuine episteme- not some fake paranoid bullshit about how like Language thinks us dude and we gotta go back and read some shite some Dead White second rate pedagogue wrote a long time ago.
If Sociology- or what Go understands by the term- has always been shite, what of 'Post Colonial Thought'?
Go says-
The earlier first wave of postcolonial thought included writers and activists such as Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), Amilcar Cabral (1924–1973), W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), and C. L. R. James (1901–1989) among many others. These are the same thinkers in whom the second wave found inspiration. And they wrote amidst the throes of anticolonialism and decolonization in the mid-twentieth century.This is sheer nonsense. Anti-colonial thought existed from the inception of Colonialism. Moreover, it was thought accompanied by action- not worthless drivel. India was independent by the time Fanon started writing. He was a French trained Psychiatrist- i.e. utterly fucked in the head. He didn't know Arabic. Only idiots read him. Amie Cesaire wrote some good poems. Cabral was an utter shithead who fucked up his own country down to our own day. Du Bois was a good man but his context was domestic. His mistake was to think the sun shone out of Nkrumah's ass and to go settle there.
James was silly but wrote well about cricket. Benoy Kumar Sarkar, whom Go mentions elsewhere, was a promising scholar who is all but forgotten- probably because he favoured industrialisation based on f.d.i and denied any real difference between colonised and coloniser- despite writing voluminously in numerous languages. His Bengali travelogues were quite popular at one time. Perhaps he had some influence on the Ananda Marg- but the Marg was viewed as just a crazy cult, nothing more. The truth is, none of the people Go mentions had any real importance or political significance. It is useless to pretend otherwise.
By contrast, Edward Said- who could write well and who did have some standing with the P.L.O in its heyday- did have some impact because America genuinely does have a Zionist lobby which in turn influences a particular Israeli political party which sometimes acts mischievously. Indeed, level-headed Jewish American diplomats and statesmen have themselves blown the whistle on some of their crazier shenanigans.
Unfortunately, Said- a Christian peeved that the Episcopalians had turned their backs on their co-religionists in Palestine and Egypt- did not understand the politics of his own part of the world. History marginalised him just when a voice of sanity was required. But then, sanity wasn't exactly his strong suit.
Go thinks Bhabha and Spivak were 'picking up the mantle' from Said and that they constitute a 'second wave'. This is crazy. Bhabha, poor fellow, was stuck at Essex University and, purely by way of camouflage, started writing in an obscure manner. He was a nice Bombay boy- but a Parsee without any deep roots or connection to the sub-continent. Spivak, by contrast, was entrepreneurial and didn't let ignorance stop her rushing in where angels might fear to tread. She took up Subaltern shite in the manner in which she'd taken up Derridan shite. While the Left Front ruled her native Bengal it paid for her, as it paid for Amartya Sen, to appear some high brow sort of Commie without expending any intellectual effort on trying to try to make sense of that brand of tripe. Many Marxists in India and elsewhere faced a similar challenge. However, in obedience to Adam Smith's invisible hand, they retained their Professorships in worthless subjects and devoted themselves to writing incestuous shite.
Thus, there was no actual 'second wave'. There was only opportunism and careerism- Dipesh Charabarty actually has an Ahmedabad MBA!- and a small Globalized niche market for retarded whining about the occult hegemony of long dead white males.
It was the sedulous apes of this 'second wave' which fastened on Go's 'first wave' which had no previous existence.
True, Go mentions something called the Tricontinental Conference held in 1966. But it was an obvious Communist front- Kim Il Sung published an article in its journal!- and had zero impact.
Go doesn't care. He says-
Go is not ignorant of the historical background. He writes-
However, people like Bhabha and Spivak and Leela Gandhi weren't motivated by opposition to 'neoliberalism' at all. They were careerists simply seeking to minimize their expenditure of intellectual effort while maximising their returns from parodic scholarship and worthless pedagogy.
This is not to say that some post-colonial thought has not had a political effect. Rajiv Malhotra type shitting on Western Indologists, has raised helped secure technocratic recruits and NRI funds for the Sangh Parivar. But Malhotra and his ilk aren't relying on 'Social Theory'. Rather, they fight (and lose) their battles on the basis of philology and archaeology and DNA studies.
At one time, it might have appeared that Po-Co theory was contributing to Global Literature. This was before it became apparent that Salman Rushdie was just a Public School boy on the make, cracking wise about towel-heads to get 'em good & riled. Now Rushdie is writing shite books about America- which he does know something about- the game is well and truly up.
Go concludes his worthless tome thus-
By contrast, Edward Said- who could write well and who did have some standing with the P.L.O in its heyday- did have some impact because America genuinely does have a Zionist lobby which in turn influences a particular Israeli political party which sometimes acts mischievously. Indeed, level-headed Jewish American diplomats and statesmen have themselves blown the whistle on some of their crazier shenanigans.
Unfortunately, Said- a Christian peeved that the Episcopalians had turned their backs on their co-religionists in Palestine and Egypt- did not understand the politics of his own part of the world. History marginalised him just when a voice of sanity was required. But then, sanity wasn't exactly his strong suit.
Go thinks Bhabha and Spivak were 'picking up the mantle' from Said and that they constitute a 'second wave'. This is crazy. Bhabha, poor fellow, was stuck at Essex University and, purely by way of camouflage, started writing in an obscure manner. He was a nice Bombay boy- but a Parsee without any deep roots or connection to the sub-continent. Spivak, by contrast, was entrepreneurial and didn't let ignorance stop her rushing in where angels might fear to tread. She took up Subaltern shite in the manner in which she'd taken up Derridan shite. While the Left Front ruled her native Bengal it paid for her, as it paid for Amartya Sen, to appear some high brow sort of Commie without expending any intellectual effort on trying to try to make sense of that brand of tripe. Many Marxists in India and elsewhere faced a similar challenge. However, in obedience to Adam Smith's invisible hand, they retained their Professorships in worthless subjects and devoted themselves to writing incestuous shite.
Thus, there was no actual 'second wave'. There was only opportunism and careerism- Dipesh Charabarty actually has an Ahmedabad MBA!- and a small Globalized niche market for retarded whining about the occult hegemony of long dead white males.
It was the sedulous apes of this 'second wave' which fastened on Go's 'first wave' which had no previous existence.
True, Go mentions something called the Tricontinental Conference held in 1966. But it was an obvious Communist front- Kim Il Sung published an article in its journal!- and had zero impact.
Go doesn't care. He says-
Postcolonial thought, then, was born not only of anticolonial movements seeking national independence and political equality but also of attempts to chart entirely new ways of being and human belonging.Utter rubbish! It was about a small delusional coterie, some paid by the Soviets, pretending to be intellectuals on the one hand, and, on the other, a bunch of semi-literate retards slogging away to get tenure in worthless Departments. These guys didn't chart 'entirely new ways' of being worthless shitheads. They were fraudulent careerists or adventurers, nothing more.
This is why their writings—and the scholarly enterprise they helped to spawn— is rightfully referred to as post-colonial thought.By whom? Nobody reads these shitheads except shitheads teaching worthless subjects. There is no thought going on at all. In the old days, before the internet, it was possible for people like Homi Bhabha, or Gayatri Spivak, or Leela Gandhi (who claims that Becky Sharpe rejected Jos Sedley as a suitor!) to write stupid lies without a young reader being able to immediately confirm, using a Google search, that this bunch of shitheads are pathological liars with zero I.Q. Also, in the old days there was a sort of 'Aesthetic affirmative action' whereby White people were required to be nice to stupid ethnic nutjobs. Now, Brown people can verify for themselves that stupid nutjobs are worthless whatever their colour.
The word “postcolonial” does not connote that the legacies of colonialism are actually over. It does not designate a historical reality after colonialism.Wow! These guys are too stupid to understand that Colonialism is over! No wonder they can't contribute to the 'historical reality' of their native countries!
In the early 1970s, some scholars had, indeed, used the term “postcolonial” to refer to the historical phase or period after decolonization (Alavi 1972). “To describe a literary work or a writer as ‘postcolonial’,” notes Neil Lazarus (2011: 11), “was to name a period, a discrete historical moment, not a project or a politics.Nonsense! Dirigiste regimes begging for IMF money spoke of 'neo-colonialism'. This in turn meant that 'post colonial' thought had a particular purpose. However opposition to 'neo-liberalism' was a better bet because it could rely on bad Economics- a discipline which has gained in status through mathematizaion- rather than shite Sociology.
Go is not ignorant of the historical background. He writes-
Not only were many dictatorial regimes propped up by metropolitan countries, neoimperial forms of intervention through the mechanism of finance and institutions like the International Monetary Fund were underway and being perfected: new types of global discipline imposed upon fledgling Waves of Postcolonial Thought. All of this served to squash some of the utopian or at least liberatory visions and hopes of radical decolonization movements. “Postcolonial studies [of the second-wave],” Neil Lazarus (2011) suggests, “emerged as an institutionally specific, conjuncturally determined response to these global developments” (Lazarus 2011: 9–10).What Go is not saying is that dictatorial regimes- like Suharto's- were toppled by the IMF, greatly to the ire of people like Stiglitz who thought senile kleptocrats should be given money to provide their subjects with bread and circuses for ever and ever and ever coz that's like Human Rights innit?
However, people like Bhabha and Spivak and Leela Gandhi weren't motivated by opposition to 'neoliberalism' at all. They were careerists simply seeking to minimize their expenditure of intellectual effort while maximising their returns from parodic scholarship and worthless pedagogy.
The meaning of “postcolonial” in phrases such as postcolonial thought, postcolonial theory, or postcolonial studies is different. It refers to a loose body of writing and thought that seeks to transcend the legacies of modern colonialism and overcome its epistemic confines. It refers to a relational position against and beyond colonialism, including colonialism’s very culture. As Gandhi (1998: 4) notes, postcolonial studies is “devoted to the academic task of revising, remembering and, crucially, interrogating the colonial past,” but it only does so in order to overcome the legacies of that past. Postcolonial thought critiques the culture of empire in order to cultivate new knowledges, ways of representing the world, and histories that circumvent or transcend rather than authorize or sustain imperialistic ways of knowing.What new knowledges has Leela Gandhi produced? Saying Becky Sharpe refused to marry Joss Sedley because he worked for the East India Company is not knowledge. It is ignorance. Similarly, when Gayatri Spivak says India is named Bharat because Bharat was Rama's younger brother, she is not producing new knowledge. She is displaying extraordinary ignorance. It is true that these guys have become Professors at Ivy League. But only in shite subjects. They have destroyed the prestige of the Departments they populate. Their political impact is less than zero. They don't add value to any bandwagon they jump on. They subtract value.
This is not to say that some post-colonial thought has not had a political effect. Rajiv Malhotra type shitting on Western Indologists, has raised helped secure technocratic recruits and NRI funds for the Sangh Parivar. But Malhotra and his ilk aren't relying on 'Social Theory'. Rather, they fight (and lose) their battles on the basis of philology and archaeology and DNA studies.
At one time, it might have appeared that Po-Co theory was contributing to Global Literature. This was before it became apparent that Salman Rushdie was just a Public School boy on the make, cracking wise about towel-heads to get 'em good & riled. Now Rushdie is writing shite books about America- which he does know something about- the game is well and truly up.
Go concludes his worthless tome thus-
As the center of global gravity shifts away from the previous Anglo-European centered empires and toward other ones, and as voices from across the Global South rightfully demand to be heard, social science must cast off the legacies of the imperial episteme lest it crater under the oppressive weight of its own provinciality.The center of global gravity shifted a long time ago from Western Europe. America wasn't really an Imperialist country. Some 'Social Sciences'- like Economics increased in prestige by adopting mathematical methods. Sociology didn't and turned to shite. There are no voices 'from the Global South' demanding to be heard by professors of a wholly discredited subject. There may be some economic migrants from Africa or Asia who are too stupid to get a proper job and thus want to secure a berth in a worthless Department. So what? Sociology has already cratered because it was adversely selective of stupid shitheads. It didn't get any legacy from 'the imperial episteme' because Imperialism was a business not a charity for the mentally retarded.
Social science neglects the postcolonial challenge at its own peril. At the very least, if postcolonial thought is not the only way to globalize social theory, rejecting it outright forces social science to run afoul of its own self-stated mission to apprehend critically the world that confronts us. This not only would bode ill for social science, it might also be the death knell for postcolonial thought, whose future vitality could very well depend upon the very social science that some of its proponents mistakenly have underestimated.In other words, Sociology is shite and will disappear unless it allies with PoCo shite which will also disappear because it is actually Sociology's shite and never had anything to do with 'the Imperial episteme' (stuff to do with Naval doctrine and global specie flows) in the first place.
Although postcolonial thought and social theory emerge from distinct historical genealogies and social contexts, their continued relevance today and into the future requires not their persistent mutual opposition but rather their synthetic elaboration: a rising third wave of critical post-colonial knowledge that draws upon and elevates both.That needful 'rising third wave' will occur when Universities pull the flush on the two equally worthless turds Julian Go describes.
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