Moving beyond Edward Said: Homi Bhabha and the Problem of Postcolonial Representation

The essay takes up the issue of postcolonial representation in terms of a critique of European modernism that has been symptomatic of much postcolonial theoretical debates in the recent years. It tries to enumerate the epistemic changes within the paradigm of postcolonial theoretical writing that be...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sumit Chakrabarti
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Lodz University Press 2012-11-01
Series:International Studies: Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/international/article/view/6882
Description
Summary:The essay takes up the issue of postcolonial representation in terms of a critique of European modernism that has been symptomatic of much postcolonial theoretical debates in the recent years. It tries to enumerate the epistemic changes within the paradigm of postcolonial theoretical writing that began tentatively with the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978 and has taken a curious postmodern turn in recent years with the writings of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha. The essay primarily focuses on Bhabha’s concepts of ambivalence and mimicry and his politics of theoretical anarchism that take the representation debate to a newer height vis-ŕ-vis modes of religious nationalism and Freudian psychoanalysis. It is interesting to see how Bhabha locates these within a postmodern paradigm.
ISSN:2300-8695