The Concept of Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse: A Perspective from Literary
Criticism
Author(s): Hernan Vidal
Source: Latin American Research Review , 1993, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1993), pp. 113-119
Published by: The Latin American Studies Association
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Copyright 1993 by Latin American Research Review
COMMENTARY AND DEBATE
THE CONCEPT OF COLONIAL AND
POSTCOLONIAL DISCOURSE:
A Perspective from Literary Criticism*
Hernan Vidal
University of Minnesota
Periodically, Latin American literary criticism discusses new themes
that, on reaching some degree of generalization, indicate possible direc-
tions for longer-term research. For example, a concern has emerged lately
about defining and applying the term postmodernism to Latin American
symbolic production. In essence, promoting these discussions means creat-
ing intellectual events that tacitly promise to introduce new theoretical
and methodological dimensions to our field, perhaps generating studies
that may enrich it. Hence, reflecting on the way in which these labels are
adopted ought to be a matter of professional responsibility. Years ago we
saw the efforts and resources spent on transferring the term magical real-
ism from painting to literary criticism and its meager legacy. Today seems
to be the turn of colonial and postcolonial discourse. Discussing this concept
takes on special importance in the current circumstances, when we as
intellectuals find ourselves caught up in a double crisis. On one hand is
the crisis affecting the status of literature as an institution and academic
literary criticism as a profession. On the other hand, we must face up
without excuses to the extreme violence generated by neoliberal capital-
ism and the political vacuum left by the collapse of the socialist bloc.
Hence the acknowledged eclipse or waning of the narratives of human
*Translation from Spanish by Sharon Kellum was funded by the Tinker Foundation.
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l.atin American Research Review
redemption, which not long ago lent a utopian sense to Latin American
political struggles. These two factors should be a part of critical reflection
on the concept of "colonial and postcolonial discourse."
Thanking Patricia Seed for the platform of discussion that she has
offered us, my own reflection will take as a point of departure a review
essay entitled "Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse," published by LARR
in 1991 (in volume 26, number 3). In her essay, Seed elevates the group of
works reviewed to the category of noteworthy intellectual accomplish-
ment. Given the prestige of this publication of the Latin American Studies
Association, it is possible that Seed's review essay may thus contribute to
institutionalizing what she considers a new "intellectual movement." I
will point out the implications of this construct by placing it within an
outline of what, in my judgment, has been the recent evolution of Latin
American literary criticism. I will begin my argument with this outline
and close by discussing the need to study the symbolic production of
marginalized groups. What I hope to accomplish here is to profile more
clearly the problems raised by introducing the critical category of "colo-
nial and postcolonial discourse."
The current crisis in Latin American literature as an institution and
literary criticism as a profession must be seen in the context of its origins.
In Latin America, both the institution and the profession arose out of a
long process that began soon after the nineteenth-century revolutions for
independence, in which literature acquired the rank of official high cul-
ture with the task of shaping master narratives of national identity. These
works were gradually disseminated via the educational system, with the
aim of consolidating the loyalty of the people to the new nation-states. The
use of various literary genres as components of these master national
narratives was closely related to a process that is still affecting us today:
the liberal struggles over the linking of the local economies to the interna-
tional capitalist market that had been forming over the past century. A
symbolic universe was thus founded that has continued to articulate the
changes and permutations of elements throughout history. These changes
and permutations have given a distinctive profile to the literary projects of
different social sectors that have sought to become dominant in our coun-
tries. Throughout this process, certain works were favored by academic
literary criticism and were exhibited as monuments of Latin American
cultural development. This canon has been the raw material and the pro-
fessional raison d'etre of our literary criticism. Its origin is therefore found
in a conception of literature as a tool for social construction and an indirect
weapon in political struggles. In contrast to this older function, it is quite
evident that literature today is a narrow and irrelevant fringe within offi-
cial culture. With its limited circulation, literature cannot compete with
the mass media in the symbolic constituting of social identities that seek
to modify the cultural models of each nation. As proof, let us note that
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COMMENTARY AND DEBATE
after the narrative of the Boom, we as a profession have had problems in
continuing to canonize literary texts with the same organic clarity.
We must take into account nevertheless that this understanding of
literature as a social instrument has witnessed "technocratic deviations"
since the mid-1960s. They were the consequence of the attempts to mod-
ernize Latin American capitalism, an effort intensified by the Alliance for
Progress. That program represented the U. S. response to the challenge of
the Cuban Revolution. Literary criticism was affected as a field by the
scholarships for study abroad made available to Latin American univer-
sity personnel. Thus the theoretical and methodological baggage of Latin
American literary criticism was enriched by the importation of North
American New Criticism, Russian formalism, German phenomenology,
and French structuralism. Later came archetypal criticism based on psy-
choanalysis, various semiotic trends, and the theory of reader reception.
Thus cycles of renewal of Latin American literary criticism were initiated
based not on the social problems of the cultures being studied but rather
on the new critical theories periodically introduced into the publishing
market. This kind of literary criticism has either tended to reinforce the
study of the monuments of the literary canon by applying the new ap-
proaches or sought to canonize new works that responded best to them.
Beginning in the 1970s, however, efforts were taking hold and ex-
panding toward a return to the social understanding of literature. All this
was a consequence of the cultural problems introduced by the Cuban
Revolution, the militarized populism in Peru in 1968, the fascist dictator-
ships in the Southern Cone, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the civil war
in El Salvador. The theoretical bases of this literary criticism expressed
various modalities of historical materialism such as the Frankfurt School,
Georg Lukacs, Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Fredric
Jameson, and especially the implications of Latin American dependency
theory for analyzing culture. In my judgment, the most important contri-
bution of this kind of literary criticism was setting as its goal direct contribu-
tions to the cultures from which its material for study comes, addressing
itself to the academic establishment only as a very secondary interlocutor,
which in extreme cases did not matter at all. According to this view, the
literary critic was supposed to abandon the identity of technical analyst of
privileged texts in order to take on the identity of producer of culture from
a consciously defined political position. In another direction, highlighting
the cultural problems of these societies gradually went beyond the study
of literature as the exclusive domain of literary criticism. This critical trend
created conditions for expanding the professional field in the direction of
the ideological study of the mass media, music, rituals of daily life, the
logic of cultural discourses, intellectual history, and the administrative
institutions of cultural production. In yet another direction, it appears to
me that this understanding of the artifacts of culture as human construc-
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Latin American Research Review
tion created the original conditions for defining more precisely a feminist
literary criticism focused on the problem of sexual genders as social pro-
duction. This literary criticism finally evolved into a "culturology," under-
stood here as the study of the ways in which symbolic production in gen-
eral empowers social agencies of historical transformation. Literary
criticism thus moved closer to symbolic anthropology, sociology, and
political science.
During the last few decades, these two modalities of development
of Latin American literary criticism-the one technocratic and the other
culture-oriented-have tended toward a frank enmity. One indication is
the fact that the literary critical technocracy tends to congregate at the
meetings of the Modern Language Association, while the culturalists gravi-
tate toward the Latin American Studies Association. To my mind, this
enmity is symptomatic of the fact that literary criticism has not managed
to become a paradigmatic discipline, in the sense defined by Thomas Kuhn.
In other words, we as a profession have not been characterized by orient-
ing our work according to analytic and interpretative paradigms that set
research tasks for the longer term. In paradigmatic disciplines like the
natural and social sciences, research tends toward continuity and an accu-
mulation of topics and knowledge that either authenticate or discard the
basic hypotheses. It is obvious that in comparison with the sciences, no
basis exists for thinking that literary criticism can or should turn itself into
a paradigmatic discipline. I am sure that many academic literary critics
would consider that the mere idea of thinking about a paradigmatic con-
tinuity in the profession would imply a dangerous limitation on academic
freedom and freedom of thought. This understanding of freedom finds its
optimum expression in a technocratic approach that keeps going by em-
phasizing technical novelty and not Latin American social needs. Just as
in the past we had theoretical models like those of Roman Ingarden and
Claude Levi-Strauss, today there are the models of Roland Barthes, Jacques
Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jean-Francois
Lyotard, and Michel Foucault. On the contrary, the closest impetus to a
paradigmatic continuity has been the culturally oriented literary criticism
because of its preoccupation with the meaning of the great historical junc-
tures in Latin America for symbolic production in general.
Now to return to the question of colonial and postcolonial discourse
and Patricia Seed's review essay. Within the historical parameters just
outlined, creation of this category as an area of research can be under-
stood as an effort to unify terms that, whether consciously or uncon-
sciously, endow technocratic criticism and culturally oriented criticism
with some degree of affinity that they have not previously had. Actually,
Seed attributes the formulation of this research area to a basically tech-
nical concern that stems from recognizing the implications of the work of
Lyotard, Barthes, Derrida, Deleuse, Guattari, Foucault, and Richard Rorty:
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COMMENTARY AND DEBATE
In reflecting on the linguistic framework in which the politics of colonial rule have
been elaborated, writers have observed the limitations of European political dis-
courses as well as the way in which the polysemic character of language has
enabled natives of colonized territories to appropriate and transform the colo-
nizers' discourses. A related critique of the language of independence movements
and postcolonial nationalism, referred to as postcolonial discourse, has been
examining how popular discourses, high literature, and political pamphleteering
have all constructed anticolonial and nationalist vocabularies. (P. 183)
Starting with the technical concerns, Seed establishes the political agenda
of these works that deconstruct colonial discourse: "The aim of the cri-
tique in each of these disciplines is different-economic relations of au-
thority, cultural relations of authority (the canon), conventional political
relations of authority. But the basic target of critique remains the same-
the relations of authority in colonial and postcolonial states-and it is thus
an enterprise of cultural and political criticism being carried out in a reso-
lutely postcolonial era" (p. 200).
The unification of terms I refer to can be seen when the trajectory of
technically oriented renovation finally results in a political concern, as
described by Seed. Yet it would be necessary to dispel many doubts on
this score. For example, Seed names only one literary critic within the
group of works that she examines. Certainly one case alone is not enough
to found a "movement" in this discipline. Nevertheless, if her description
is correct and really involves a more significant number of literary critics,
perhaps the category of "colonial and postcolonial discourse" signals the
entrance into cultural criticism of a sector of researchers who previously
were characterized by excluding the political. The rapprochement of both
groups could contribute positively to a certain continuity of efforts with a
paradigmatic semblance. Nevertheless, it is necessary to raise two objec-
tions to the manner in which Seed argues this seemingly new category.
The first objection has to do with the perspective in which this
unification is visualized. Given that it is being conceived of as a technical
innovation, such unification conveys the image characteristic of techno-
cratic literary criticism: the presumption that when a new analytic and
interpretive approach is being introduced, the accumulation of similar
efforts in the past is left superseded and nullified. The past as inescapable
fact seems to rise up again, supposedly out of nothingness and disguised
in a new jargon. This idea of the obsolescence of the past is suggested in
two key passages in the conclusion of Seed's review essay:
Both the colonial and postcolonial discourse movements signify a revival of pol-
itics and its return to the center of intellectual debate after decades of being
relegated to a secondary position in the predominantly social and cultural realms
of history, anthropology, and literary theory ... But the concern with language
and rhetoric, the ethics and strategies of representing anthropological others, or
those of representing historically distant cultural others are crucial and unprece-
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Latin American Research Review
dented questions with which this new work on politics must contend. We do not
repeat the past, as Santayana claimed, we only reinvent it continually. (P. 200)
Leaving aside the questionable separation of the social, cultural, and polit-
ical dimensions, my first objection is that in the effort to call attention to
the new label of "colonial and postcolonial discourse," which originated
in Hindu cultural studies following independence after World War II, cate-
gories cannot be ignored that have been firmly established for more than
twenty years in historiography and Latin American literary criticism re-
garding specific social conditions. I refer here to the concepts of depen-
dency and ideological analysis. In fact, Beatriz Pastor, the only Latin Ameri-
can literary critic mentioned by Seed, had already made earlier forays into
the ideological analysis of literature. Furthermore, Pastor is far from asso-
ciating her work with the ideas of Lyotard, Barthes, and Derrida.
My second objection is that an awareness of the political dimension
in cultural analysis and interpretation cannot be reduced to the textual
deconstruction of authority under the guise of a crisis in the notion of
social subjectivity Seed takes this position in pointing out two of poststruc-
turalism's attractions for critics of colonialism. The first is the "questioning
of traditional humanism 'by exposing its hero-the sovereign subject as
author, the subject of authority, legitimacy, and power.'" The second attrac-
tion she describes is poststructuralism's "dislodging the author's 'intention'
or 'original meaning' from a central role, allowing literary critics and oth-
ers to consider the ways in which the text is appropriated and used by
different textual communities" (p. 184). The absolutism of this judgment
ignores the fact that the most important advances of recent studies of
Latin American literature as a social phenomenon have been achieved by
stressing the ways in which literary representation has contributed to
constructing massive agents of social transformation. In this regard, I
want to make it clear that it is not a matter of favoring construction over
deconstruction because both are key moments in recognizing the cycles of
dependency that have characterized Latin American history. This point
becomes evident when we focus on the social problem of greatest signifi-
cance currently facing contemporary Latin American societies: the socio-
economic marginalization of large sectors of national populations as a
consequence of neoliberal economic policies imposed militarily during the
last few decades.
As is well known, socioeconomic marginalization is characterized
by chronic unemployment and underemployment. This outcome is com-
pounded by the limited political significance of these sectors. It stems
from their incapacity to create organizations that can appeal effectively to
the state and the political system in demanding redress. Even so, their
large numbers are a threat to social stability. Hence the governments of
neoliberal bent as well as opposition parties and institutions of social
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COMMENTARY AND DEBATE
welfare are all concerned with influencing the organizations of solidarity
created by the marginalized themselves. This tendency affects the artistic
and symbolic production with which these sectors organize their own
public sphere in order to articulate their economic, social, and political
interests. This is the reason why culturalist literary criticism has recently
reoriented itself toward studying the institutional organization and pro-
duction of workshops on poetry, theatre, handicrafts, body language, and
religious and feminist consciousness-raising associated with creating this
public sphere for the marginal. Implicit in these studies is the imperative
of introducing comparative parameters that may exert ideological pres-
sure on the meaning of the work of great contemporary authors favored
by the official culture. Thus the study of the construction of a social subjec-
tivity becomes a necessary previous step to deconstructing the canonical
authority of the official culture. By taking such a step, we would achieve a
much richer understanding of the historic dynamics of the national cul-
tures than if we pay attention only to deconstructing the monumentality
of their canonical texts.
In closing, I think we must be grateful for opportunities for an
exchange like this. They help us define our own identity and thought
amidst multiple divergent voices. I believe that part of the truth is in each
voice, while the whole truth is in the framework of conflict among all of
them.
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