Postcolonialism as leftist firing squad and procrustean bed: a communicative take

ABSTRACT

As a point of departure for reconsidering the “troubled concept” of postcolonialism, Stephens proposes a cultural analysis in which Communication Studies, ethnographic approaches, and transnational Writing Studies are on speaking terms. This revisioning is routed through an aspirational “reclaiming” of communication, which would a) practice Bazerman’s ”disciplined interdisciplinarity”; b) use the positionality of what anthropologists call ”halfies.” Stephens recounts instances of ”editorial bullying” in which U.S. editors project postcolonial theory onto all Puerto Rican contexts. He then surveys recent Marxist critiques of postcolonialism. Finally he distills Mignolo's arguments for three openings leading away from essentialized, binary versions of postcolonial theory, and towards more historically grounded, ethnographically oriented approaches such as decoloniality.

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonialism
• communication studies
• ethnography
• decoloniality
• Puerto Rico
• writing studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Ralph Ellison, ‘Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,’ Partisan Review 24 Spring Ellison (1995). Quoted in Spring, On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley (Cambridge U, Stephens, 1999): 107.

2. One outcome of that Special Masters in Interracial Communication and Culture: Gregory Stephens, ‘Interracial dialogue in rap music,’ New Formations 16 (1992): 62–79.

3. Gregory Stephens, On racial frontiers: The communicative culture of multiracial audiences. University of California, San Diego, 1996. From this uniquely interdisciplinary communication program I learned to ‘always historicise’ (Tally, 2022).

4. Postnational: See (Duany, 2000; Miller, 1994; Soto-Crespo, 2009). Emergent bilinguals scholarship: Carla España et al. Halfies: Abu-Lughod, ‘Writing Against Culture,’ and Stephens, ‘Halfies, Half-Written Letters, and One-Eyed Gods.’.

5. Bounded culture: Brightman (1995).

6. Dell Hymes, ‘Introduction: towards ethnographies of communication 1.’ American anthropologist 66.6 (Stocking, 1966): 1–34.

7. Gregory Stephens, ‘Digital Liminality and Cross-Cultural Re-integration in the Middle East,’ The CEA Forum (Winter/Spring 2016).

8. Barton and Papen (2010). Key publications in Academic Literacies: (Lea and Street, 1998; Lillis and Scott, 2007; Paxton, 2012; Lillis, 2015).

9. Emergent bilinguals scholarship: see notes 4 & 17; Raymond Williams, ‘Structures of feeling’ (1977). Stephens (2019). Ingo Winkler and Mette Lund Kristensen, “Trapped in limbo; Academics’ identity negotiation in conditions of perpetual liminality,” Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal (2021); Sierk Ybema, Nie Beech, and Nick Ellis, ‘Transitional & perpetual liminality: An identity practice perspective,’ Anthropology Southern Africa 34.1–2 (2011): 21–29.

10. Gregory Stephens, Poetics of Indigenismo in Zapatista Discourse: Revisioning the Mexican Revolution through Mayan Eyes. Cambridge Scholars Press, 2019.

11. English’s crisis: for starters, Hairston (1992). Composition’s perpetual crisis: Gary Olson, ‘The Death of Composition as an Intellectual Discipline.’ Composition Studies 28.2 (2000): 33–41; Robert J. Connors, ‘The abolition debate in composition: A short history.’ Composition in the twenty-first century: Crisis and change (1996): 47–63.

12. Krista Ratcliffe, ‘Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and a Code of Cross-Cultural Conduct,’ College composition and communication 51.2 (1999): 195–224.

13. The field of communication is immense and hard to sketch. I work within a trajectory that can be traced to James Carey (2007). Mainstream communication theory posits the Carey socio-cultural branch as one of seven ‘Traditions in Communication Theory’:

1) Rhetorical

2) Semiotic

3) Phenomenological

4) Cybernetic

5) Social-Psychological (Vygotsky to Engeström, Cole, et al)

6) Socio-Cultural (ethnographic)

7) Critical (Craig, 1999)

See also (Graff’s, 2015) view of Communication as a ‘failed discipline’which is mid-way between the Humanities and the ‘hard sciences.’

14. Tim Mayers, ‘One simple word: From creative writing to creative writing studies,’ College English 71.3 (2009): 217–228. The relationship of CWS to Writing Studies’ use of learning outcomes: Gregory Stephens, ‘Food Stories as Embodied Writing: Practical Creative Writing Pedagogy,’ Wisconsin English Journal Fall Stephens (2017b); Gregory Stephens with Christian Fernandez, Andrés Padró, and Gabriela Ruiz, ‘Footnotes from the “Margins”: Outcomes-based Literary Nonfiction Pedagogy in Puerto Rico,’ Assay: A Journal of Non-fiction Studies (Spring 2020).

15. Lila Abu-Lughod, ‘Writing against culture,’ 466 ff.

16. Juan Agustín Márquez, director. The Last Colony. The Disinformation Company, 2015.

17. ‘Emergent bilinguals’ scholarship: In addition to España et al, cited above, see Ofelia García & Li Wei, Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Palgrave Macmillan, (Carla et al., 2019).

18. The experience of Paul Brians (2008) was similar to mine: “I was informed by the director of graduate studies that I could not [teach a class about South Asian literature] unless I retitled it ‘Postcolonial Literature’ because ‘that’s what it’s called now’.”

19. postcolonialism blinkered – see Chibber, Lazarus, Niaci, and Majumdar, for starters.

20. Refusal—S. Miller (2019), pp. 12–16; Jairo Fúnez-Flores, Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán, & James Jupp. ‘Editorial Introduction: Inter-epistemic dialogues with decolonial thought from Latin America & the Caribbean.’ Educational Studies 58.5–6 (2022): 575–80. ‘To begin to find a way out of … the epistemological-existential prison of coloniality [& the] “prison cage” of Eurocentrism, it is imperative to refuse modernity’s “door” of salvation’ (575).

21. This is a point made by Nivedita Majumdar in her Jacobin interview.

22. A good starting point for Marxist critiques of postcolonialism, and the defensive responses this has caused, are these two interviews on ‘The Jacobin Show’: Rescuing the Left from its obsession with culture: Vivek Chibber. The Jacobin Show (Feb. 13, 2022). ‘What’s wrong with Postcolonial Theory?–Nivedita Majumdar.’ The Jacobin Show (July 4, 2021).

23. ‘Dated’—Lazarus and Varma (2008), Niaci, ‘Postcolonial Theory and its Critics from Within’ (2021).

24. Adorno, Rolena. ‘Guaman Poma and His Illustrated Chronicle from Colonial Peru: From a Century of Scholarship to a New Era of Reading.’

25. Ruben Baart Maithri, ‘Max Liboiron: Pollution is Colonialism.’ Next Nature (April 5, 2021).

26. ‘Hailed’—interpellated: Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation) [1970].’ Cultural theory: an Anthology (2010): 204–22.