Without an axis in political economy, without an anchor in materiality, postcolonial politics is often the site for reproducing elite power and control, consolidating the power of capital.
I have expressed my skepticism toward postcolonial theory over the years, keenly aware of the ways in which an air ride to the US often serves to erase the oppressive positions that postcolonial academics often occupy within postcolonial societies and yet turn to playing the identity card as it conveniently works toward making careers.
I have personally found apolitical postcolonial politics to be rife with back-biting, self aggrandizement, sheer careerism, and the worst kind of opportunism. "Look I am so marginalized" is often the trope deployed by postcolonial academics to erase their oppressive positions that are rife with caste, class, and linguistic privilege (most postcolonial academics, because of class access, secure access to convent education left behind by the British).
I was therefore not at all surprised when I was sent an email by a colleague stating that this postcolonial academic who had secured a position because of the advocacy I had done for her had turned around to circulate the lies of the regime.
The regime had targeted me because my work on poverty was inconvenient to its carefully crafted public relations. The research that I was doing was revealing hunger, depression, and loneliness, portraying an image the regime worked hard to erase. The regime had targeted me because I spoke up against its organized efforts targeting a scholar-activist, signed a petition, and publicly vocalized my protest. I was the only University professor in the whole of the regime to have done so. I needed to be sent a message, and more importantly, others needed to be given the message.
After an organized witch hunt when the regime didn't have anything to pin on me, it started crafting made-up lies.
These made-up lies were ironically vocalized by the so-called queer cultural studies scholar. At one time, this queer cultural studies scholar cornered a staff in her room because she wouldn't buy the lies, and went on to tell the staff that I had run away with $100,000. The staff had no pathway to escape. The repression unleashed on staff was taken right off the brainwashing manuals of the regime. Staff who didn't buy into the lies had to leave or had to face greater repression.
That the postcolonial scholar would circulate the same lies of the regime then was also not surprising. From postcolonial politics to regime propaganda is a straight road when one is not anchored in any politics of material struggle or in any form of actual critical politics of transformative labour. To do the work of critical politics is to actually get out of the elite extractive spaces of abstraction in academia and actually seek to even speak with those at the margins in meaningful ways. Unfortunately, too many postcolonial scholars are content citing their Spivak over cocktails and martinis and theorizing this-and-that turn.
Yet, these lies planted by the regime and the lies circulated by the queer cultural studies poser or the postcolonial pretender catch up. People figure out the techniques of lying because of their incoherence. The communicative inversions are all too flimsy and give away their shoddiness, devoid of warrants, backing and evidence.
Ultimately, the turn to celebrating authoritarian repression in the voices of postcolonial academics is a product of the culturalism of much postcolonial theory, devoid of engagement with Marxist political economy.
I have expressed my skepticism toward postcolonial theory over the years, keenly aware of the ways in which an air ride to the US often serves to erase the oppressive positions that postcolonial academics often occupy within postcolonial societies and yet turn to playing the identity card as it conveniently works toward making careers.
I have personally found apolitical postcolonial politics to be rife with back-biting, self aggrandizement, sheer careerism, and the worst kind of opportunism. "Look I am so marginalized" is often the trope deployed by postcolonial academics to erase their oppressive positions that are rife with caste, class, and linguistic privilege (most postcolonial academics, because of class access, secure access to convent education left behind by the British).
I was therefore not at all surprised when I was sent an email by a colleague stating that this postcolonial academic who had secured a position because of the advocacy I had done for her had turned around to circulate the lies of the regime.
The regime had targeted me because my work on poverty was inconvenient to its carefully crafted public relations. The research that I was doing was revealing hunger, depression, and loneliness, portraying an image the regime worked hard to erase. The regime had targeted me because I spoke up against its organized efforts targeting a scholar-activist, signed a petition, and publicly vocalized my protest. I was the only University professor in the whole of the regime to have done so. I needed to be sent a message, and more importantly, others needed to be given the message.
After an organized witch hunt when the regime didn't have anything to pin on me, it started crafting made-up lies.
These made-up lies were ironically vocalized by the so-called queer cultural studies scholar. At one time, this queer cultural studies scholar cornered a staff in her room because she wouldn't buy the lies, and went on to tell the staff that I had run away with $100,000. The staff had no pathway to escape. The repression unleashed on staff was taken right off the brainwashing manuals of the regime. Staff who didn't buy into the lies had to leave or had to face greater repression.
That the postcolonial scholar would circulate the same lies of the regime then was also not surprising. From postcolonial politics to regime propaganda is a straight road when one is not anchored in any politics of material struggle or in any form of actual critical politics of transformative labour. To do the work of critical politics is to actually get out of the elite extractive spaces of abstraction in academia and actually seek to even speak with those at the margins in meaningful ways. Unfortunately, too many postcolonial scholars are content citing their Spivak over cocktails and martinis and theorizing this-and-that turn.
Yet, these lies planted by the regime and the lies circulated by the queer cultural studies poser or the postcolonial pretender catch up. People figure out the techniques of lying because of their incoherence. The communicative inversions are all too flimsy and give away their shoddiness, devoid of warrants, backing and evidence.
Ultimately, the turn to celebrating authoritarian repression in the voices of postcolonial academics is a product of the culturalism of much postcolonial theory, devoid of engagement with Marxist political economy.