A Way Out of the Contradictory Foundations of Colonial and Postcolonial Difference
Paulus Pimomo
Abstract
Colonialism resulted in two contrary journeys for European colonists: one physical and the
other internal. A journey outward to other parts of the world was accompanied by a contrary
journey inward, so that what Joseph Conrad said of the sailor who never leaves his home, the
ship, while circumnavigating the earth, may also be said of the colonists. They sailed and
explored other places not to find cultures they might learn from and adapt to, but to establish
themselves and extend their culture there. This contradictory outward/inward movement of
modernity, exemplified by colonialism, became the inevitable inheritance of the postcolonial
world, in which the nation-states arrangement of the world comes marked by the contrary forces
of globalization and nationalism. I illustrate and critique the colonial legacy of traveling without
leaving one’s cultural home, and the postcolonial response to that legacy, with help from
literary and historical texts on colonial encounters, postcolonial theory, and analytical concepts
from Giorgio Agamben. I argue for a mode of inter-cultural relationship based in imaginative
literature.
Key Words: Achebe, Agamben, Aime Cesaire, colonialism, emptiness, postcolonial theory,
Requerimiento, Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha.
*****
1.
State of Exception under Colonialism
Western politics and ethics need a new foundation, according to Giorgio Agamben,
because they rest on a regulatory system subtended by the contradictory role of a Sovereign
figure whose position, both inside and outside the law, allows him to subvert the purpose of the
system through the exercise of extraordinary powers to suspend the laws that limit his reach. In
effect, what the provision for exceptional sovereign/executive power does is normalize its
exercise, thus creating a state of perpetual emergency in which rights may be abrogated and a
banality of violence, terror, and injustice can and do prevail.1 In a state of exception, executive
“decrees, provisions, and measures that are not formally laws nevertheless acquire their ‘force,’”
thus separating “force of law from the law,” thereby causing “acts that do not have the value
(valore) of law acquire its ‘force’”2 Applying the implications of valorizing non-legislated acts,
law that “floats as an indeterminate element,”3 Tina Rahimy comments: “Using undemocratic
fear for safety’s sake, issued for collective survival, national and international laws have created
spaces outside themselves as a place of absence of these very laws.”4 If this is true of today’s
world, it was also the case during colonialism and examining the way in which colonial rule
attained its overarching power can add to our understanding of the antecedents of today’s states
of exception.
2
The European colonial project was inaugurated by a text, Requerimiento, the Requirement, an
edict written by Palacios Rubios in 1513, and proclaimed by colonists, in Spanish, to the Native
peoples of the New World. The message was to surrender their lands and freedom and convert to
Christianity, or else: “we shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and
shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and their Highnesses; we shall take
you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them.”5 In the mind of the
invading Europeans, reading the Requirement gave them plenary power over the “barbarous
nations,” a power they claimed in the name of King Fernando and Queen Juana, who were
appointed by the Pope, who was himself appointed by God to be “Lord and Superior of all the
men in the world [….] and to judge and govern all Christians, Moors, Jews, Gentiles, and all
other sects.”6
In other words, the Requirement invoked an absent law as though it existed in order to create a
space for new laws on the basis of the said absent law, so as to invest the new laws with the
force of law in the act of the absent law’s enunciation. In the always already globalized world of
the Requirement (for it ordained one Christendom/Kingdom under God, the Pope, and their viceregal European rulers), not just Aboriginal people of the New World but all peoples outside of
Christendom were potential targets of terrorism and enslavement. The power structure of God’s
Empire on earth was intended for global reach not unlike the global networks multinational
corporations, in league with elite nation-states, have devised in today’s world. Historical and
technological differences are real but the control structure is essentially the same, and the
consequences are not just economic. Commenting on Agamben’s point about the threat posed by
the state of exception in the 21st century, Tina Rahimy aptly observes that in “a globalized world
every citizen is potentially terrorized from the outside in.”7 In effect, then, the Requirement
rendered outsiders to Christendom into insiders, who then became the potential homo sacer of
the forthcoming empire-polis; their availability as excluded insiders would ensure the fullness of
Sovereign power.
2.
Discourse of Colonizer/Colonized Relationship
The communication framework under the Requirement was one in which only one party
had the right to speak. The other was to listen and obey. The colonizer’s right to speak came
from the divine edict. That it was written by a man for God was only a small detail. What
mattered was that the edict gave the colonizer fullness of presence in the New World – that was
the plan at any rate. American poet Wendell Berry has a poem that helps illustrate the irony of
the colonizer’s position in the colony. A man on vacation decided to film his trip down the river:
“He showed/ his vacation to his camera, which pictured it/ preserving it for ever/….even as he
was having it/….But he/ would not be in it./ He would never be in it.”8
The colonist and Berry’s vacationer are in the same boat. The colonist is the adventurer as well
as the recorder/narrator of the colony that he helps found, but he is not a part of it. He is above it
as an invader. He would never be in it the way the Native peoples are. He is a part of the engine
of colonization, as well as the hand that holds and guides the narrative technology
(writing/camera), but he will not be able to see himself because he has turned his camera and
narrative view away from himself. He is a tool in the narrative of empire whose frontiers he
helps expand. He records what he wants, calling it the reality of the colony. But unlike Berry’s
vacationer who is alone, the colonizer has company. The colonized snatches the camcorder and
3
aims it back at the colonizer. This is what postcolonial intellectuals mean when they talk about
the “empire writing back to the center.”9
Postcolonial theory has grouped the forms of writing-back into two broad categories: abrogation
and appropriation. ‘Abrogation is a refusal of the categories of the imperial culture [….]
Appropriation is the process by which the language is taken and made to “bear the burden” of
one’s own cultural experience.”10 West Indian writer Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism
and A Tempest are as good examples of abrogative writing as any in the anti-colonial literary
tradition. In a rewrite of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, Cesaire has Caliban, the deposed
owner of an island in the New World, protesting the name given him by colonizer Prospero:
Caliban: It’s the name given me by your hatred, and everytime it’s spoken it’s an insult
[….] Call me X. That would be best. Like a man without a name. Or, to be more precise,
a man whose name has been stolen. You talk about history . . . well, that’s history, and
everyone knows it! Every time you summon me it reminds me of a basic fact, the fact
that you’ve stolen everything from me, even my identity! Uhuru!11
And Discourse on Colonialism opens with the following indictment:
A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent
civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a
stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a
dying civilization.12
A significant early example of the second type of writing-back, a self-appropriative move on the
part of the colonized in their dealings with Europeans, was Red Jacket (1756-1830). He was a
Native-American Senecan who was voted Chief of a six-nation confederacy and came to be
called Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha (He That Keeps Them Awake).13 He was a leading voice for
preserving indigenous beliefs and traditions. In 1805, when Christian missionaries came to make
converts among his people, he addressed them in a public meeting. He made three main points
and a conclusion: First, about land. White people have repeatedly deceived Native people. They
first asked for “a small seat” among us. Now “You have got our country, but you are not
satisfied; you want to force your religion on us.” Secondly, religions. “You say that you are right
and we are lost,” that “there is but one way to worship the Great Spirit.” “How do we know this
to be true?” And “if there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?”
Thirdly, the Great Spirit knows best and does right. He gave us “a different religion,” “which
was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. We worship in that
way.” Lastly, “We do not wish to destroy your religion, or to take it from you. We only want to
enjoy our own.”14
Anti-colonial discourse is replete with a variety of protest writings in the vein of Aime Cesaire’s
as well as creative, self-defining works like Red Jacket’s. Others, like Homi Bhabha,15 have
argued that the colonial encounter engendered anxiety in the colonial master, creating in him a
sense of ambivalence that altered the exercise of power. From this perspective, colonial
discourse was fraught with unpredictable rhetorical effects on both sides which produced in the
long run a hybrid language. Still others argue that the participants in the anti-colonial discourse
4
have all come from the elite classes, to the exclusion of subaltern groups that can neither write
back nor express themselves to be heard. Gayatri C. Spivac raises this issue in “Can the
Subaltern Speak?”16 Then there are others like the Kenyan-born novelist-scholar Ngugi wa
Thiong’o,17 who, after decades of abrogating and appropriating English, decided that it was
necessary for him, in the interest of democracy and diversity, to do his writing in his native
Kikuyu language. His radical move was based on the conviction that empowering the native
languages of the world and de-privileging imperial languages would advance democracy and
diversity. Chinua Achebe has no trouble promoting democracy and diversity in his work, but
unlike Ngugi, he accepts the fact that history has made English an African language, the same
way history has made English the language of most of the world. So, according to Achebe, a
writer committed to democracy should be writing in English rather than in his/her native
language for the simple reason that English is a powerful tool for disseminating ideas and
information: “And let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to
do unheard of things with it.”18 And it is with one of Achebe’s short stories that I wish to begin
the last section of this paper.
3.
Imaginative Way out of the Colonial/Postcolonial Tautology
Achebe’s “Dead Men’s Path”19 is a story about an African young man, Michael Obi, who
has excelled in the colonial education system and has just been appointed headmaster of a school
that needs rescuing when the story opens. Obi and his wife, Nancy, set two goals for the school:
improving the academic standards and beautifying the compound.20 But there is a problem. A
path from the village to the burial ground runs through the school, which Obi promptly closes.
The village leader meets with Obi and explains why the road must be kept opened. It is the
sacred path that links the dead, the living, and the future generations of the village. It is their
lifeline: “The whole life of this village depends on it. Our dead relatives depart by it and our
ancestors visit us by it. But most important, it is the path of children coming in to be born." To
this the Headmaster replies: “The whole purpose of our school is to eradicate just such beliefs as
that. Dead men do not require footpaths. The whole idea is just fantastic.” The village priest’s
parting words to Obi are: “What I always say is: let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.”21
The story can be read in different ways. One would be to see the progressive, rationalist Michael
Obi as a counterfoil to the Requirement-colonialist of divine commission. But it is more
interesting to see how similar their difference really is – in the way each claims superiority for
his beliefs against those of the supposed barbaric people. The Requirement-colonist claimed
superior human identity based on his relationship to the fullness of God’s presence in the
world.22 He was the human synecdoche of divine plenitude on earth. And surrendering to him
was the only way the barbaric people could gain access to God’s plenitude. Although African,
Michael Obi’s wholehearted embrace of colonialism has won him access to the same privileged
knowledge, of which he is now also a conduit. But in his case, faith in divine fullness has been
replaced by faith in science and western ideas of progress, which he zealously imposes on the
village.
There are two points to mark here. The first concerns Obi’s and the village priest’s positions. The
story suggests rejecting Obi’s position not because it is too rational, but because it is not rational
enough. He has no capacity for self-reflexive thinking, no imaginative sympathy for beliefs that
are different from his. On the other hand, the village priest’s argument for peaceful co-existence
5
between the village and the school shows him to be rational in the way he approaches fantastic
beliefs. Beliefs are beliefs, he seems to say; what really matters is their function in society. If the
sacred path helps engender a sense of community even beyond the grave, and closing it down
destroys community, then the rational and realistic thing to do is to keep it open. For all his
faithfulness to traditional beliefs as the village priest, his belief in the path seems more like a
meta-belief than a belief. Were it not so, he would have argued for the exclusive existence of the
path. It is different with Michael Obi’s beliefs, secular as they are. His are beliefs, pure beliefs,
like the religious ones were to the Requirement-colonist, pure in their essentialist observance
with little regard to their effect. And Obi’s obstinacy suggests – and this is the crux of the story -that no meaningful relationship can occur with people like them, because of the assumption
about human beings they bring to the relationship. The Requirement-colonist and Obi believe
that human identity is a matter of simple moral/rational arithmetic from the get-go, a fullness of
presence or a lack thereof, instead of identity being a fluid, dynamic process of becoming in a
realm of relational co-existence. Belief in the divinely-valorized European presence, and a
supposed corresponding lack in the rest of the world, led to over five hundred years of European
colonialism and produced a non-post postcolonial world of nation-states in which the most
powerful among them jockey for the weightiest presences on the world’s stage, competing to
create spaces outside themselves to fill their supposed necessary presence. The result is a world
in which states of exception are the norm. The way out of this dysfunctional situation points in
the direction of a new concept of human identity (outside of the colonial/postcolonial tautology
of moral/rational fullness) upon which new structures of relationship may be founded.
(Non)Conclusion: “Emptiness” Approach to Human Relations
Emptiness as a descriptor of human identity is not an absence, but it is the opposite of the
colonist’s concept of identity as a fullness of presence ab initio (from the start). The Buddhist
concept of emptiness is a way of being in the world which begins with the awareness that
“[T]hings and events are ‘empty’ in that they do no possess any immutable essence, intrinsic
reality or absolute ‘being’ that affords independence.”23 But this is a subject for another paper.
1
N
Notes
See Giorgio Agamben, Homer Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen.
Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA., 1998; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive.
Homo Sacer III. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Zone, New York, 2002; The Coming Community, Trans.
Michael Hardt, Minnesota University Press,1993.
2
G. Agamben, State of Exception, Trans. Kevin Attell. University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 38.
3
Ibid.
4
Tina Rahimy, “Expression of Exceptions, Exceptions of Expressions: Of Fragmented Language as
Political Discourse,” p.109. http://www.Inter-Disciplinary.Net.
5
www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/contact_2007/requerimiento.html.
6
Ibid.
7
Tina Rahimy, “Expression of Exceptions, Exceptions of Expressions: Of Fragmented Language as
Political Discourse,” p.109. http://www.Inter-Disciplinary.Net.
8
“The Vacation,” The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998, p.
157.
9
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in PostColonial Literatures, Routledge, New York,1989.
10
Ibid., p.38.
11
Aime Cesaire, A Tempest, UBU Repertory Theater Publications, New York, 1969, Act 1, scene 2,
p.15.
12
Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. Joan Pinkham, Monthly Review Press, 1972, p. 9.
13
The confederacy consisted of the Seneca, Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Tuscaroras.
14
“1805 Oration of Red Jacket,” in Literature, Race, and Ethnicity: Contesting American Identities,
Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr. (ed.), Longman, New York, 2002, p. 54.
15
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge, London, 1994. Robert Young, Colonial
Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. Routledge, London, 1995.
16
Gayatri C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice,” in Wedge, Vols.7/8
(Winter/Spring), 1985.
17
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “English: As Language for the World?” The Yale Journal of Criticism 4 (1990),
pp. 271-293.
18
Chinua Achebe, Hopes and Impediments, Doubleday, New York,1988, p. 74.
19
Chinua Achebe, “Dead Men’s Path,” Literature, 4th ed., R.S. Gwynn (ed.), Pearson/Longman, New
York, 2009, pp. 235-238.
20
This detail is reminiscent of the two goals of classical western education – Roman writer Horace’s
“docere et delectare” (to instruct and to delight). Achebe has clearly this reference in mind here.
21
Chinua Achebe, “Dead Men’s Path,” p. 237.
22
The fullness of God’s presence as manifested in the Christian God’s self-assertion in the Old
Testament, “I am that I am” (Exodus 3: 14, The Bible); and in the New Testament: “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All the things came into being
through him, and without him not one thing came into being,” The Gospel according to John, 1: 1-3.
23
Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. Morgan
Road Books, New York, 2005, p. 47.
Bibliography
Achebe, Chinua, “Dead Men’s Path,” Literature, 4th ed., R.S. Gwynn (ed.), Pearson/Longman, New
York, 2009, pp. 235-238.
___, Hopes and Impediments, Doubleday, New York,1988.
Agamben, Homer Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford
University Press, Stanford, CA., 1998.
___ , Remnants
of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Homo Sacer III. Trans. Daniel HellerRoazen, Zone, New York, 2002.
___ , State of Exception, Trans. Kevin Attell. University of Chicago Press, 2005,
___ ,The Coming Community, Trans. Michael Hardt, Minnesota University Press,1993.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in PostColonial Literatures, Routledge, New York,1989.
Berry, Wendell, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1998.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture, Routledge, London, 1994.
The Bible, New Revised Standard Version.
Cesaire, Aime, A Tempest, UBU Repertory Theater Publications, New York, 1969.
___ , Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. Joan Pinkham, Monthly Review Press, 1972.
Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. Morgan
Road Books, New York, 2005.
.
Rahimy, Tina, “Expression of Exceptions, Exceptions of Expressions: Of Fragmented Language as
Political Discourse” in http://www.Inter-Disciplinary.Net.
Red Jacket (Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha), “1805 Oration of Red Jacket,” in Literature, Race, and Ethnicity:
Contesting American Identities, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr. (ed.), Longman, New York, 2002.
Spivak, Gayatri C., “Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice,” in Wedge, Vols.7/8
(Winter/Spring), 1985.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “English: As Language for the World?” The Yale Journal of Criticism 4 (1990),
pp. 271-293.
Young, Robert, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. Routledge, London, 1995.