Is your -ism stepping on my -ism? (Postcolonial version)

This recent edition of the Jacobin podcast features a discussion on What's Wrong with Postcolonial Theory? 07/04/2021 in which Indian scholar Nivedita Majumdar discusses the field of "postcolonial" thought:.

The discussion is fairly geeky. (More on Jacobin's perspective below.) But I'm posting it in part because it engages with the issues of postcolonialism in a helpful way, and also because "postcolonialism" is part of the list of "-ism" that the Republicans are currently eager to "cancel" under the rubric of the conspiracy narrative/moral panic about "critical race theory" (CRT). There actually is a slice of Constitutional law academic theory that understands itself as "critical race theory," but the version of CRT the Republicans are currently pimping is just the latest Republican euphemism for, "Scary Jews! Scary black people!"

Postcolonialism, as the discussion mentions, is heavily influenced by literary theory. But it builds on the perspective of writers like Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), an Algerian psychiatrist born on the French island colony of Martinique who wrote in his influential book, The Wretched of the Earth (Les damnes de la terre, 1961):

The colonist and the colonized are old acquaintances. And consequently, the colonist is right when he says he "knows ' them. It is the colonist who fabricated and continues to fabricate the colonized subject. The colonist derives his validity i.e., his wealth, from the colonial system.

Decolonization never goes unnoticed, for it focuses on and fundamentally alters being, and transforms the spectator crushed to a nonessential state into a privileged actor, captured in a virtually grandiose fashion by the spotlight of History. It infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of men, with a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is truly the creation of new men. But such a creation cannot be attributed to a supernatural power: The "thing" colonized becomes a man through the very process of liberation.

Decolonization, therefore, implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation. Its definition can if we want to describe it accurately, be summed up in the well-known words: "The last shall be first." Decolonization is verification of this. At a descriptive level, therefore, any decolonization is a success. (Quoted from the Richard Philcox translation, 2004)

Postcolonialism has become an increasing focus in history, focusing on the massive effects of the colonial project on both the colonized and the colonizers, as Fanon's quote above suggests. This perspective also informs our developing understanding of the dispossession of American Indians in the US version of "settler colonialism." Obviously, part of the history that Republican Christian nationalists and white supremacists don't want talk in schools and colleges, and is thus condemning under the CRT rubric. European rightwingers also regard study and understand of the actual history of European colonialism - which also includes the monstrous project the German Nazis pursued in eastern Europe during the Second World War.

Postcolonial theory also informs the understanding of racism, since it became an integral part of the colonial outlook. The colonizers inevitably regarded the colonized as Untermenschen, subhuman.

Historians of Germany are giving increased attention to German colonial practices, as illustrated by this 2021 issue of Spiegel Geschichte, titled "German Colonialism: The Repressed Crimes in Africa, China and in the Pacific."

Historians of the Holocaust are also giving more attention to the way German colonial practices in Africa in particular (Namibia, Tanzania, Burundi, Cameroon, Rwanda). Wolfgang Benz, for example, does so in his recent book, Vom Vorurteil zur Gewalt: Politische und soziale Feindbilder in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2020 [From Prejudice to Violence: Political and Social Concepts of the Enemy in History and the Present].

And the influence of postcolonial thinking is influencing European history more generally, e.g., "Colonialism: The World in Europe's Grip" (GEO Epoche 97:2019)):

Jacobin is a self-consciously democratic-socialist journal that in the US aligns broadly with broadly with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Left politics is notorious for factional quibbling. It's not really different from any other kind of politics in that sense, although since smaller political groups and organizations have fewer rewards to distribute in the form of either jobs or prestige compared to larger ones, left politics is also kind of notorious for factionalism and organization splits. It just comes with the territory. (On DSA, see also: Danielle Kurtzleben and Kenny Malone, What You Need To Know About The Democratic Socialists Of America NPR 07/26/2018)

The discussion in the podcast has a section where they talk about how postcolonial theorists often write in a relatively inaccessible way, in which the panel seems to not want to say the obvious, that this is largely an academic approach, which has more recently begun to inform grassroots activism.

Analysts and activists informed by a focus on the labor movement or socialist theory tend to be particular mindful of the way non-class-based "identity" issues can be exploited by the wealthy and their representatives in a divide-and-conquer political strategy against working people. (A classic example would be mine owners in West Virginia who hired African-Americans as strike-breakers when their segregated white workers went on strike.) And that is reflected in the podcast discussion, as well.

J Daniel Elam writes (Postcolonial Theory Oxford Bibliographies 01/15/2019):

Postcolonial theory is a body of thought primarily concerned with accounting for the political, aesthetic, economic, historical, and social impact of European colonial rule around the world in the 18th through the 20th century. Postcolonial theory takes many different shapes and interventions, but all share a fundamental claim: that the world we inhabit is impossible to understand except in relationship to the history of imperialism and colonial rule. ... It also suggests that colonized world stands at the forgotten center of global modernity. ... As it is generally constituted, postcolonial theory emerges from and is deeply indebted to anticolonial thought from South Asia and Africa in the first half of the 20th century. In the US and UK academies, this has historically meant that its focus has been these regions, often at the expense of theory emerging from Latin and South America. Over the course of the past thirty years, it has remained simultaneously tethered to the fact of colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century and committed to politics and justice in the contemporary moment. ... Postcolonial theory has influenced the way we read texts, the way we understand national and transnational histories, and the way we understand the political implications of our own knowledge as scholars. Despite frequent critiques from outside the field (as well as from within it), postcolonial theory remains one of the key forms of critical humanistic interrogation in both academia and in the world. [my emphasis]

Related to the highlighted comment and implied criticism about the geographical focus of postcolonial theorizing "often at the expense of theory emerging from Latin and South America," I'll mention that Jacobin carries informative and thought-provoking articles and tends to be well-written. They have a new Spanish version, Jacobin América Latina, which is based in Argentina - but seems to be standoff-ish about the most important and powerful left political movement in Argentina, Peronism and its dominant current associated in particular with current Vice President and former President, Cristina Fernández.

The traditional Socialist Party there ironically tends toward the conservative side. And Jacobin América Latina's coverage of Argentina tilts pretty heavily anti-Peronist. I don't know how close their perspective is to today's Argentine Socialist Party. But I'll note that prominent Argentine progressive thinkers like José Pablo Feinmann, Ricardo Forster, and Pacho O'Donnell have taken a much more favorable view of Peronism.

I do find the current reporting in both Jacobin journals as being informative about Latin American politics - if not so much about Argentine politics!