[Bs pushed 2000 ty Routledge 2 ark Shusce, Mien Pak, Abingdon: Oxon, OX RN Second eon published 2007 Simultmeously published inthe USA nd Canada iy Roulecge 20 Madison Avene, New York, NY 10016 “This eon publed in the Talo Franc e-Library, 2007 “To purchase your own copy of hit o ny of Tylor & Francs or Rose's celletion of thoutands of eBook plese goto worw.cBockstretndcoslk” Roe angi of th Tylor © Fran Grou, inf Busines 1 2000, 207 Bil Ader, Gareth Gifts and Helen Tilin Allsghs rreeved. No pat of ths bole may be repsnced or reproduced or ulved a any fos: oe by aay erent mechanic, ‘tather eats iow known o: hear ivented, including ‘oocopying tnd recording orb ay inition soesge ‘or ersten, without peren in wing ‘fom the publaber ish iba Catalin in Paton Dea A calogue record for th book s seulble fom the Beith Libary inary of Cons Catling in Pubaton Date “Aoherof Bul S46 Post colonial tae the key concep / Bal Adherof, ‘Gareth Grits 4 Helen Tin, ~ 20d ef Previous ed published under tile Key concep in poecalonil tudes ‘Simaltneotny published nthe USA ana Cansds by Rowedge™ Tneludes bogriphied eferences anode 1. Colonier-Dictionaties, 2. Declonistion-Dicionai 5, Poncolnishan-Dictonsses, 41m stiader-Dictonane 5, Race teins Dioner 1. Geifti, Guse 1948> IL. Tin, Tce. TH. AShcof. Bil, 1946—- Key concept in pos-colonol ses TV. Tie Tazast 2008 BS 30d? 2007018708 ISHN 0-203-93547-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN YO: 4S 428564 (A) ISBN, (415128956 ISBIN10 0-205-49987-5 (eK) ISBNS 978-0-815-42656-9 Ob) ISBNS 97420-415=12855-2 98) ISBNTS 978-0-203-49974 (eb)POST-COLONIAL STUDIES The Key Concepts Second edition Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin JQ Routledgehence justify the imperil enterprite. Race thinking and colonialism are imbued with the same impetus to draw a binary distinction between ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’ and the same necessity for the hierarchization fof human types. By translating che fact of colonial oppression into a justifving theory, however spurious, European race thinking initiated ‘4 hierarchy of human variation that has been difficult to dislodge. Although rice isnot specifically an invention of imperialism, it quickly became one of imperialim’s most supportive ideas, because the idea of superiority that genersted the emergence of ace as 4 concept adapted ‘easily to both impulses of the imperial mission: dominance and enlightenment, In this respect, ‘racism’ is not so much 4 product of the concept of rave asthe very reason for its existence. Without the underlying desire for hierarchical categorization implicit in racism, ‘race’ would not exit. Racism can be defined ae: way of thinking that considers a group's unchangeable physical characteristics to be linked in a direct, causal ‘way to psychological or intellectual characteristics, and which on this basis distinguishes between ‘superior and ‘inferior’ racial groups. Physical differences did not always represent an inferiority of culture or ‘even a radical difference in shared human characteristics. In the period of the Crusades, the racial difference of black Affican Coptic saint- swatrior St Maurice is clearly recorded without prejudice in a statue in Magdeburg Cathedral which shows him to be a black Aftican, even including bis facial lineage cuts (Davidson 1994: 330). Buc with the tise of Buropean imperialism and the growth of Orientalism in the nineteenth century, the need to establish such a distinction between superior and inferior finds ite most ‘scientific’ confirmation in the dubious analysis and taxonomy of racial characteristic. "Race’ is first wsed sn the English language im 1508 in a poem by ‘William Dunbar, and shrough che seventeenth and eighteenth cen tries it remained essentially a literary word denoting a cas of persons or things. It was only in the late eighteenth century that the term ‘came to mean a distinct category of human beings wath physical characteristics transmitted by descent. Humans had been categorized bby Europeans on physical grounds from the late 1600, when Frangoie Bernier postulated a number of distinctive categories, based largely fn facial character and skin colour. Soon a hierarchy of groups (not yet termed races) came to be accepted, with white Europeans at the top, The Negro or black Affican category was usually relegated to the bottom, in part because of black Africans” colour and allegedly ‘primitive’ Culture, but primarily because they were best known to Eropeane ae saves. 181RACE ‘As these dominant European traditions ssiociated with the mod- cernist movement at the end of the nineteenth and early ewenticth centuries became questioned and challenged, Western artists, such as caso, often deliberately sought to eproduce the innocence and “child like’ qualities of primitive art, This was, im part, a repudiation of their own culture and did not necessarily involve an affirmation of the validity and difference of the cultures they employed as signifiers of the liberating force of the primitive. The signs of the primitive continued to be juxtaposed with icons of Western art, reinforcing the binary of primitive (savage) and modern (civilized), even as it sought to dismantle the claims of the latter, Thus, for example, in Picasso’ famous and influential extly painting Les Demoselles d’Avignon (1907), the classical Greek icon of the thive Grace: in the grouping of the young women is justapored agsine the image of an African misk which replaces the fice of one of them. Such a juxtaposition may seek to dismantle the status of the classical tradition but does not necessarily affirm the value of the alter/native tradition it employs For these reasons, primitivism remains a problematic concept, and fone that most post-colonial studies have teated with caution as a descriptive category, whilt recognizing that the artistic and social movements it describes have had powerful historical links with colonialist and postecolonialist discourses. urther wading: Arae and Rito 1995; Barkan ad Bush 1995; Consentine 2000; Dring 1994; Harrion etal, 1993; Hiller 1991; Rhodes 1994; Rubin 198%; ‘Torgovnick 1990, RACE ‘Race’ is a term for the clasification of human beings into physically, biologically and genetically distinct groups. The notion ofrace assumes, fiealy, that humanity is divided into unchanging nacural types recognirable by physical features that are transmitted ‘through the blood! and permit distinctions to be made between ‘pure’ and ‘mixed’ races. Furthermore, the term implice that the mental and moral behaviour of human beings, as well as individual personality, ideas and capacities, can be related to racial origin, and that knowledge of that origin provides a satisfactory account ofthe behaviour Race is particularly pertinent to the rite of colonialism, because the division of human society in this way is inextricable fom the need of colonialist powers to establish a dominance over subject peoples and 180‘The simple clarity ofthis view of race, more or less ated on colour, swat superseded by the implications of Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859) Natural selection naw offered a mechanism for species alteration either the superior races might be contaminated through contact with the inferior, or deliberate human intervention miglht maximize the benefits of selection and advance the emergence of pare races Tn either ‘cue, the fondamental assumption of the hierarchy of races remained secure, Darwin's contribution was to provide the theory of race with a ‘mechanism of change inthe idea of natural selection, and consequently, to offer the possibilty for planned racial development (eugenics) ~ 2 «central tenet ofthe school of thought that came to be known as Soctal Darwinian Social Darwinism, in both ite postive and negative implications concurred readily with imperial practice, particularly the paradoxical dualism that existed in imperialist thought between the debacement and the idealization of colonized subjects. On the one hand, the debasement of the primstive peoples could find in Social Darwinism a justification for the domination and at times extinction of inferior races 3s not only an inevitable but a desirable unfolding of natural lw. On the other hand, the concept of racial improvement concurred with the ‘civiiging mission’ of imperial ideology, which encouraged colonial powers to take up the ‘white man’s burden’ and raise up the condition of the inferior races who were idealized a¢ child-like and malleable. The assumption of superiority thus supported by scientific racial theory ‘could pursue it project of world donsnation with impunity, ‘The later perception of blacks as helpless beings in need of care, protection and advancement was quickly overtaken in the nineteenth ‘century by the former view of them as primitive and indolent savages, ar colonial expansion found the need for increasing supplies of labour to service its enterprises. The evangelical anti-slavery impulse that had achieved the abolition of slavery in the 1830s began to give way to a virulent form of racial hostility. Thomas Cazlyles notorious Ocasional Discourse on the Nigger Question (1849) vigorously propounded the right to coerce the ‘indolent’ black man into the service of colonial plantation agriculture, and by the 1870, before the lat phase of imperial expansion into Africa, sch prejudice, supported ait was by Social Darwinism, had virtually overshadowed liberal brands of thought on issues of race. ‘The usefulness of the concept of race in both establishing the innate superiority of imperial culture as approached st zenith, and at the same time lumping together the inferior races under its control,can be seen in the example of English commentary on the ‘races’ of Britain itself ~ particularly the Irish In early writings although the Irish were initially 183RACE Innmantel Kant’ wie of the German phrase for “ices of mankind! ia his Obsertions om the Fling of the Beau and Sublime (1768) wae probably the frst explicit use ofthe tm in the sense of biologically or physically diinctive categories of human beings. Kant’ stress on an intitve, non-rational form of thought ‘allowed the Romantics Co posit the notion of an unchanging inner essence within human beings’. an esence that found expression through the seve of “race (Malik 1996.77). Debates about whether human variation was caused by descent oF envionment raged throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries But with the ascendancy ofthe biological sciences, tn the late nineteenth century, descent emerged 25 the predominant model. Ie was encapsulated in the tansition of ‘ace’ fom signifying sn ats hterary sen, a line of descent that 3 group debined by historical contin tots sctentific sense of ‘race's a zoologically or biologically defined group. Despite it allegedly scientific grounding and application, the term “race’has always provided an effective means of establishing the senplest model of human variation ~ colour difference. Colour became the means of distinguishing between groups of people and of identifying the behaviour to be expected of them. In 1805, the French anatomist Cavier, who wae particulaly significant inthe development of ‘race’ ehcory postulated the existence of three major ‘races the white, the yellow and the black. The division of the whole of humanity into dhree such arbitrarily designated genetic groups seems s0 vague to be ently useless fr any kind of analyss, bu the concept bas resained influential forthe ideological reason that ths typology rested upon a gradation from superior to inferior. Cuvier’ typology of race infia~ enced such works at Charles Hamilton Smith’ (1848) The Natural History of the Honan Spedes; Robert Knox's (1850) The Raw of Mar Couns de Gobiness (1853) Esai ur inigalié der Races humsines, and Note and Gliddon’ (1854) Thper of Mankind. The assumptions underlying this racial typology, though continually conteadicted by actual observation, have remained stubbornly persistent to the present day, even when the categories are more elaborately defined a ‘eauca~ roid’, ‘mongoloid’ and ‘negroid’. These assumptions are: first, that ‘variation: in the constitution and behaviour of individuals were to be explained as the expression of diferent biological types second, that differences berween these types exphined variations in human cultures; third, that the distinctive nature ofthe types exphined the superiority of Europeans and Aryans im pasticular; and fourth, that the fiction between nations and individuals of diferent type emerged fom inmate characteristics 182Conference on Native Races in British Possessions held in 1887 atthe time of Queen Victoria’: Golden Jubilee. By the late 1890s many popular works began to appear, lustrating with lavish detail the nature and diversity of human races and the implicit superiority of the whie [Anglo-Saxon races and civilization, Despite the appearance of greater scientific rigour, the description of the negroid bad not advanced much put the tereotype compounded by Cativle. "The twentieth century has seen great swings in the theoretical attitude to race, but the term continues to hold 2 resent sway in the ordinary thinking of people throughout the world. The 1911 Universal Races ‘Congress held in London was a major demonstration of kberal thought and the promotion of ‘monogenist' ~ the idea that there was “only fone species of man living on earth today’. But the oniversalist creed ofthe Victorian liberal tradition was considerably shaken by the First ‘World War and the emergence of colonial nationalism which eroded confidence in the power of reason ¢o ensure a growing unsty between different races in a single world onder (see Rich 1986: 49). In the eatly decades of the twentieth century, ‘race’ continued to acquire a legitimacy through the ‘scientific’ study’ of racial vatiation, but the horror lf the Sevond World War and the slaughter of millions of Jews, Slavs, Poles and gypsies on racial grounds led to the 1951 Unesio Statement of the Nature of Race and Racial Difference which pointed out that race, ‘even from a strict biological standpoint, could at most refer to a group ‘with certain distinctive gene concentrations. The statement aserts that ‘mental characteristics should never be included in such clasifications and that environment is far more important than inherited genetic factors in shaping behaviour. However, in the 1960s there was an upsurge in biological thinking shout human behaviour once again, with writers auch ae Lorenz, Andry and Morris asserting that individual behaviour was largely controlled by ancient instinets that could at best be modified by culture, This Jed the way for an upsurge in race thinking in popular science an the 1970s: Bysenck’s Race Intelligence and Education (1971), Richardson and Spears Race, Culture and Ineligence (1972), Baxter and Sansom’ Rae land Socal Diference (1972) indicate some of a wide range of popular book: that maintained the centrality of ‘race’ in debates about inuman variation, At the same time, the neo-biologism of the 1960s led to a much more rigorous development in the 1970s with the emergence of socio-biology, which views all individual behaviour, and cultures themaclves, as the ead products of biological selection processes. ‘These developments lent an at of legitimacy to race thinking, which al:o analytes behaviour and performance in biological terme, and the 185RACE seen tobe physically much the sume as the English, Irish culture was seen as alion and threatening. Rich (1986) tries the process fom 1617 when Pynes Moryson found the language of the Irish crude, if indeed it was a language at all, their clothing almost animal-like and their bchav- tous shocking. Edmund Spenser refers to the ‘bestial Irishmen’, while William Camden in 1610 recounted the profanity, cannibalism, musicality, witchcrult, violence, incest and glattony of the ‘wilde and very unciill’ Irish. In this description the Irish sound remarkably like Afficans ar described by nineteenth-century English commentators Indeed, by 1885, John Beddoc, president of the Anthropological Institute, had developed an ‘index of Nigrescence’ that showed the people of Wales, Scotland, Cornwall and Ireland to be racially separate {om the British, More speciically, he argued that those fom Western Ireland and Wales were ‘Africanoid’in theirjutting jaws’ and ‘ong lity nostril’, and thos originally immigrants of Aftica (Srwed 1975:20-1) Bizarce though this might seem, it is a consumate demonstration of the exclusionary impetus of imperialism that operates so energetically an the concept of race. The linking of the Irish and Welsh with Aftica demonstrates remarkably clearly how imperial ideology operates to exclude and smurginalize colonized peoples, whether in Britain or the Empite. Such 4 tacial hierarchy wae integral to the extension of the Empire, Kipling’ notorious formation, in the poem ‘Recessional’ (1897: 328-825), of the non-Caucasian races as ‘Tess breeds without the law’ may stand asa classic instance: If, drunk with power we loose ‘Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, Such boasting: a: the Gentiles wre ‘Or lesser breeds without the Law ~ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget ~lest we forget ‘The most energetic period of imperial expansion in the lat decades of the nineteenth century saw’ a rapid increase in anthropometric investigation oftace differences, Disputes about the form of racial ‘types hhad raged throughout the cencury,butby 1886 antheopologiss in Britain hhad reached a general consensus on the ‘cephalic index’ the discrimination of racial entity in terms of skull shape. Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, measured 9,000 people at the International Iealth Exhibition in London in 1884,and the anthropological interest in race in the imperial context wat reinforced at an Anthropological 184‘Cooppan 1999; Fanon 1961; Frankenberg and Mani 1995; Gilroy 1996; Gunew 1997; Husband 1994; Malik 1996; Melntwef 2000; Mariot 2000; S Mishra 1998; Olion and Worsham 1999; Rich 1986; Ross 1982; H, Seot 2002; Sharpe 2000 RASTAFARIANISM. [A black nationalist religion that emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s, Is ggeneses are complex and include slave belief’ in the soul's return after death to Affica fiom exile in the Caribbean, ‘Together with the vision= ary black restieutive politics of Marcus Garvey and the Bthiopeanism of Leonard Percival Howell, Rastafarianism drew its inspiration from the Old Testament prophecy that ‘Princes shall come out of Egypt: [Ethiopia shall soon stetch forth her hands unto God’ (Psaltn 68:51). In 1930, Ras Tafari, great grandson of King Saheka Selasie of Shoa, was crowned Negus of Ethiopia, taking the name Haile Selassie, meaning “Mighty of the Trinity’ To this tide was added “King of King’ and ‘Lion of the Tribe of Judah’, which placed him in the legendary line of King Solomon (Barrett 1988: 81). Celebrating the coronation of Rat ‘Tafar a Hale Selassie, Jamaican Rastafarans initially looked forward to a literal repatriation to their African ancestral homelands through the agency of the Ethiopian Emperor. Increasingly, however, Afican repatriation was regarded less ar a tera return than a figurative one: a reclaiming by Jamaicans of their African ancestry, a heritage system atically denigrated under davery andin European colonialist ideologies Initially a movement of the Jamaican underclass, astafarianisin soon spread to sections of the middle class and to intellectuals, and across the Caribbean. It gained increasing popularity in other areat ofthe world, largely through the mussic and Iyrics of Reggae star Bob Mazley in the 1970s and 1980s, where its language and belief were co-opted in the fight against a wide variety of oppressions, both racial and economic [Ruastafariane have always been acutely aware of the crucial connections between language and power. and in the cause of ricial reatitution have lisrupted the rules of English grammar to refuse the “objective cae’ (ve. ‘that which i acted upon’ by eradicating the personal pronoun ‘mie'and insisting on ‘T'no matter what the demands of conventional granmat Further reaing:Basret 1977, 1988; Campbell 1985; Cashmore 1979, 1983; Chevasnes 1997; Charke 2000; Collins 2000; Gossai and Mute 2000; Hodges 2000; King and Jensen 1995; King and Bays 2008; Miles 1978; Murtell and. Spencer 1998; Oosthuizen 1993; Owens 1976; Pollard and Neteford 2000; Savishinky 1999; Somerson 1999,RACE relation between sociobiology and modern racism hat been examined by Baker (1981) Tess sgofican that academic debate during these decades sustained race rather than ethnicity as the censee of discussion. The sense of permanency that a dubious biological explanation offered, though an, inexorable genctic determination and tansmision, consolidated the concept of race at thie time, rather than the more complex concept of ethnicity with ite inherent plasticity and it bai in cular. Yet the 1970: and 1980s saw the gradual growth of interest and sevearc into ethnicity, groweh that perhaps has not been reflected in popula thinking. In practic, race may bea major constitutive factor in deter= ng, ethnic categories, Dut to revive the idea thats s somehow ‘objective’ and les socially constructed than ethnicities founded on religious linguistic oF other more obviously culturally determined factors isto ft recognize that race i culeura ther than a biological phenomenon, the product of historical processes not of genetically determined physical differences ‘The most important fact about race was, as Fanon was the fist to notice.that however lacking in objective realy racist dew such as back~ nest’ wor the psychological force of hei construction of elf meant that they acqited an objective existence in and throug the behaviour of people. The self-imager and seif-constracton that ach social pressure cxerted might be tnsnitted fiom generstion fo genertion and thas the “fact of blackanes'camte to have an objecave determination not only racist behaviour and institutional practices, but more insidious inthe psychological behaviour of the peoples so constructed, This Fanonist stress on the objective psychological fact of race a a determining par of the social proces of constructing individual zel-perception: has been part ofthe response of many black commentators to the claim by critice such as Appush that perceptions of race have acted only negatively in determining post-colonial responses to European domination, However fictional race may be shown to be as an abjective category. ss power 2s a discursive formation comans unabated “Ths fraught and volatile trm, rae’, continus to hold centee stage while the theories on which concepts of race were evtablished have Inecome more and more blurred. In this way reaitance becomes ess nd lessable to didodge the vague and untenable concept ofrace tue Race an the time of neo-colonialis is just as vague and just as resilient at vwasat the beginning of te history of European imperialism. Tis pethaps ‘up to the concept of ehniy to change the direction ofthe debate Purher reading: Baxter and Sansom 1972; Bremen 1990; Chrisman 2003 185MISSIONS AND COLONIALISM beats the imprint of deste, These low domsins, parently expelled at ‘Other’ return as the objects of nostalgia, longing and fascination’ (Gtallybrass and White 1986-191), Paradoxically,then, race is seen a5 the marker of civilization, and racial purity its pre-eminent pre-condition, ‘Yee if eivilization mst be spread, then the road to the one mast lead to the decline ofthe other. That is, 8 Gobineau exprested it, Tanixtures of blood are, to a certain extent, beneficial to the mass of mankind, if they rise and ennoble it, this is merely 2 the expense of mankind itself, ‘which is suanted, ahased, enervated, and humiliated in the persons of noblest sons’ (Gobineau 1853-5: 1,410, translated by Young). Purr reading: Anderson 1991; Fitz 2002; Gobiness 1858-3, 1856: Lemire 2002; Moore 2000; J.D. Smith 1991; Young 1995, MISSIONS AND COLONIALISM ‘The tole of missions and missionaries in the development of coloniza- tion wat crucial. Inthe words of one historian “The explosive expansion of Christianity in AGica and Asia during the lit ewo centuries con stitutes one of the most remarkable cultural transformations in the bitory of mankind. Because it coincided with the spread of European economic and cultural hegemony, it tends to be taken for granted at a reflex of imperialism’ (Etherington, 2005: 1), Asa result for along while Doth imperial historians and radical evisers of theit work ether sgnoted altogether or radically simplified the complex role religion (See religion and the post-colonial) and their instrument, the Christian missions played for good and bad in the spread of empite. In the last few years we Ihave seen a growth of studies of missions, which have treated the role they played with a new seriousness and which have detailed their mportance in the story of colonization ‘These new studies emphasized that although the story of Euzo- “American expansion and the sory of missions are deeply intertwined. the relations between them are far more complex than has often bbeen suggested, Radical critics of missions who argue that misions are the forerunners of more dicect control. (First the missionary, then the Consul, and tlast che invading army’ Habson 1938:204)) see mission aries as conscious precursors of imperialism, They forget the role missionaries also played in acting a a buffer between bash government policy and indigenous peoples, and expecially between settlers and indigenes in settler colonies. In fact, the role of missions in providing education, and so increasing literacy, was construed 25 a dangerous act 18process of colonization that i being enacted in the narrator's mimicry and cultural understanding. The mimicry of the pore-colomial subject therefore always potentially destabilizing to colonial discourse, and locates an area of considerable political and cultural uncertaingy in the structure of imperial dominance Further reading: Bhabha 19844, 1994; Castro-Klatén 1999; Hugin 1994 1897; McQuillan 2002; Pary 1987, MISCEGENATION “Miscegenation, the sextal union of different races, specifically whites with negroes (OED) bu always haunted European colonizers and their settler descendants (sce apartheid). Colonialist practice was obsessed synth the products of sich unions, particularly in those areas where Dlack and white had also been further hierarchized as slave and fice Ninetcenth-century slave-owners developed extensive codifications of the vatious divisions of admixture resulting fom miscegenation, French colonizers for example, developed no fewer than 128 differing degrees of pigmentation to distinguish between the children of mixed rice relations. Since the maintenance of absolute difference between Europeans and others, colonizers and colonized, was cracial to military and administrative contol, miscegenation raised the constant spectre of ideological (and sometimes external) destabilization of smperial power Yet, a theorists uc as Bhabha have suggested, the very process of insisting om racial difference may mask + hidden and opposite {atcination, asthe colonizer sees a menacing ambivalence in the way: in which the colonized is both like and unlike. Av some critics have argued, the fear of miscegenation thus stems from a desire to maintain the separation between civilized and savage, yet that binary masks a profound longing, occluding the idea of the inevitable dependence of fone on the exittence of the otter One of the earliest theorists of race, Gobineau, expressed this ambivalence in his long and influential exay ‘Essai sur l'inegalté dee races humaines', emphasizing, as Robert Young notes, that there i a positive as well as a negative feature to racial admixtare which ‘accords ‘with the consistent tendency for the positive to intermingle with the negative, growth with degeneration, life with death’ (Young 1995:115). “Young also note that in this espect Gobineat looks forward to modern ideas concerning the tendency of the socially repressed to return symbolically citing Stallybrass and Whites argument that ‘disgust aways 127MARGINALITY Being on the margin, marginal. The perception and description of experience at ‘marginal’ isa consequence of the binaristic structure of various kinds of dominant discourses, such as patriarchy: imperialism and ethno-centrism, which imply that certain forms of experience xe peripheral. Although the term carrie: a misleading geometric implication, marginal group: do not necessarily endorse the notion lof a fixed centre, Structures of power that are described in terms of ‘centre’ and ‘margin’ operate in reality, in a comple, diffuse and multi faceted way The marginal therefore indicates a posiionality that is best defined in terms of the limitations ofa subject's access to power. However, marginality asa nou is related tothe verb ‘to marginale’, and in thie tense provides a trap for those involved in resistance by ite :usumption that power i a faction of centrality: This means that such resistance can become a process of replacing the centre rather than deconstructing the binary structure of centre and margin, which is 2 primary feature of post-colonial discourse, Marginality unintention= ally reifies centrality because itis the centre that creates the condition ‘of marginality. In simple terms we could ask ‘Who are the marginal” "Marginal to wat?” We might be tempted to reply spontancowsly “imperialism marginalizes, the colonized people are marginalized’. But they are neither all marginalized nor aluuys marginalized, Imperialism cannot be reduced to a structure, geometry of power that leaves some particular races on the margin. It continuous, processual, working. ‘through individuals as well as upon them. Itreproduces ivelf within the very idea of the marginal. Therefore, despite sts ubiquity a: a term to indicate various forms of exclusion and oppression, the use ofthe term always involves the risk that it endorses the structure that established ‘the marginality of certain groups in the first place Purier reading: Ganew 1994; Jordan and Weedon 1995; Orgun 2000; Spivak 19, MESTIZO/MESTIZAJE/METISSE ‘These terms, respectively Spanish and French in origin, semantically register the idea of a mixing of raves and/or cultures. fnitially, they ‘emerged from 3 colonial discourse that privileged the idea of racial purity and justified racial discrimination by employing the quasi- scientific precursors of physical anthropology to create a complex and mtMULATTO From the Spanish word for ‘young mule'(1595),refering tothe progeny of a European and a negro (OED). The term is sometimes used interchangeably with mestizo/mestizaje/métisse to mean a mixed or miscegenated society and the culture it cteates, However, is usage is usually confined to the classifications of miseegenation employed in racist save discourse, specifically referring to a slave who is one half white. MULTITUDE ‘This isthe word used by Hardt and Negri to describe the location of the forces ofberstion that are opposed to, but are themselves an integral part of Empire. The multitade, like Empire itself, is a concept that twanscends geographical, historical and class boundaries, butin which the utopian hope of iberation is completely and optimistically focased.‘The zeason for this is that the multitude is not simply at oppressed viction of Empire but is a part of Empire itvelf, The authors see Empire as composed of two phenomena, a juridical structure and “the plaral mulutude of productive, creative subjectivities of globalization’ (2001. 60). The significant ching about the mukitude is that i ie not merely negatively oppositional but is itself the source of new subjectivities that ‘work cowards the ‘liberation of iving labour’ ‘he multitude exists in a constant ambivalent relationship wath Empite, "The de-tersitorilizing power of the multitude is the productive force that sustains Empire and at the same time the force that calls for and makes necessary ite destruction. (61). Another way of putting this is that the multitude, ‘whose province isthe local, is both the field of operstion of globalization and the origin ofits transformation and hence the agent ofthe potential {destruction of Empire because Empite cannot exist without it arther reading: Hard and Negi (2001) NATION LANGUAGE Edward Kamau Brathwaite’ term for culturally specific forms of Caribbean English, Brathwaite sees nation language as heavily inl enced by the African heritage in Caribbean cultures, and contends that while the language used in, for instance, Jumaica, may be English in terms of its lexical features, ‘in its contours its rhythm and timbre, its 133COUNTER-DI OURSE COUNTER-DISCOURSE ‘A term coined by Richard Terdiman to characterize the theory and. practice of symbolic resistance, Terdiman examines the means of pro= ducing genuine change against the ‘capacity of established discourses to ignore oF absorb would-be subversion’ (1985: 13) by analysing nineteenth-century French writing. He identifies the ‘confrontation [between constituted reality and ite subversion’ the very locus at which | cltural and historical change occurred (13). ‘Terdiman’s work focused exclusively on French literature, but his term bas been adopted by post-colonial critics to deseribe the complex ‘ways in which challenges to a dominant or established discourse (pecifcally those of the imperial centzs) might be mounted from the periphery, always recognizing the powerful ‘absorptive capacity’ of imperial and neo-imperial discourses, Ara practice within post- colonialism, counter-discourse has been theorized less in terms of historical processes and literary movements than through challenges posed to particular texts, and thus to imperial ideologies inculeated, stabilized and specifically maintained through texts employed in colonialist education system The concept of counter-discourse within post-colonialiem tha: ako raises the issue of the subversion of cancnical texts and their inevitable reinscription in this proces of subversion, But Terdiman's general addtess to this problem is also useful here, in that an examina luon of the ways in which these operate as naturalized controls exposes their ‘contingency and permeability’. Thus, such challenges are not simply mounted against the text a such bat address the whole of that iscursive colonialist field within which imperial texts ~ whether anthropological, historical, literary or legal - function in colonized contexts uote reading: Slemon 1987x; Terdiman 1985; Tin 1987, 1995, CREOLE ~ sce PIDGINS/CREOLES “The English term ‘creole’ is derived from the Portuguese Crioult (Spanish crllo) meaning ‘native’, via the French egole, meaning indi= genous. ‘Creole originally referred to a white (man) of European descent, born and sased in a topical colony. The meaning. was later extended to include indigenous natives and others of non-Euzopean origin. The term was subsequently applied to certain language: spoken 50METONYMIC GAP largely fictional taxonomy of racial admixtures (mulatto, quadroon, ‘ctaroon, etc) Mestiza differs from Creole and ftom mitise in so far as its usage reflects the olde, large-scale Spanish and Portuguese settlement oftheir South American and Meso-American possessions This early settlement led to an intensive cultural and racial exchange between Spaniards and Portuguese settlers and the native Indians in many eases prior to the influence of black Agican slaves upon this cultural mélange, The relatively early date ofthis colonizing process, and the equally early date at which Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas achieved their independence, means chat in Latin American cultural discourses the idea of mestizo is much moze developed! as 4 positive ‘national cultural sign, a a sign of shared if disputed indigeneity. ‘Both termi have gradually moved ftom a pejorative toa postive ara, as they have begun to reflect a perception in these cultures that mis cegenation and interchange between the different cultural diasporas had produced new and powerful synergistic cultural forms, and that these cultural and racial exchanges might be the place where the most energized aspects ofthe new caltutes reside, These terms have not been sased widely to describe arpecte of cultures outside the Caribbean, the Americas and the Indian Ocean regions. The dominance of the use of creole as a generic term in linguistics and in wider cultural studies as wells in general discourse stems from its early adoption into English as the standard term, though English writers have occasionally used ‘mestizo to indicate some of the special nuances discussed above, The use of the Spanish term mestizaje has also become prevalent, particularly in Latin American studies, and is wed to describe the cultural processes attendant to along history of miscegenation by emphasizing hetero geneity and transculturation. Mestizaje is cmployed most commonly sn culeural and linguistic analyses to denote plurality and ia key feature ‘of Latin American regionalist discourse Funke reading: Alonso 2004; Chanady 1995, 2003; Comejo Polar 1997, Comejo Polar and Denis 2004s, 2004b; Echeverria 1998; Glisant 1981, 1989; Hirss 1983; Hldcbrant 1992; Klor de Alva 1995; Miller 2008; Morais 2002; Pésex Torzes 2006, Vilnovs 1977 METONYMIC GAP ‘This ie term for what is arguably the most subtle form of abrogation. ‘The metonymic gap ie that cultural gup formed when appropriations 12CREOLIZATION environment and to each other’. Akhough ‘the scope and quality of this response and interaction’ are ‘dictated by the circumstances of society’ foundation and composition’, they produce a tonlly ‘new construct” (197419), Brathwaite stresses that cxeolization is not a product but a process incorporating aspects of both acculturation and sintexculturation, the ‘former referring .. to the process of absorptioa of one culture bby another; the latter to 2 more reciprocal activity, a process of inter- mixture and enrichment, each to each’. In his Jamaican case study, Brathwaite traces the ways in which the processes of creolization began as a result of savery: and therefore in the fist instance involving black and white European and AGican, in a fixed superiority/inferiority relationship, tended first to the culturation of white and black to the new Caribbean environments; and, atthe same time, because of the terms and the conditions of slavery, to the acculturation of black to white norms There was atthe same time, however, significant interculturation going on between these two elements (Braithwaite 1971-11) Ceeolization, as described by Brathwaite, is specific to, and is best understood in the context of, Caribbean history and societies. But Brathwaite’ model of creolization can be compared with, and be seen to be doing some of the same work discusied under the rubric of ‘hybridization’, though creolization has generally received more historically specific discussion, Robert Young terms an “unconscious hybridity, whore pregnancy gives birth to new forms of amalgamation rather thas contestation’ or ‘the French métissage, the imperceptible process whereby two or more cultures merge into a new mode” as «xeolization, in conteast to a Bakhtinian hybridity which he regards as more ‘contestatory’ (1995: 21). Further reading: Berman 2008; Bongie 1998; Brathwaite 1971, 1981, 1995, 10954; Colie 1995; Gates 1991; Lang 2000; Menuni 1965; Simmons. MeDorald 2008; Young 1995 5bby Creoles in and around the Caribbean and in West Africa, and then ‘moze generally to other languages of similar type that had arieen in similar circumstances (see Romaine 1988: 38). From the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, however, the ‘most common use ofthe term in English was to mean "born inthe West Indies’, whether white or negto, Although, therefore, the term had ‘no connotation of colour (OED), it increasingly conjured,in European cyes,the ‘threat’ of colonial miscegenation. Historically, and today, the word has been wsed.in quite diferent ways by different societies. As the Caribbean historian Edward Brathwaite in Peru the word was used to refer to people of Spanish descent who were bora in the New World. In Brazil, the term was applied to Negro slaves born locally In Louisiana the terma was applied to the white francophone population, while im New ‘Orleans it applied to maalatoes. In Sierra Leonse, ‘creole’ refers to descendants of former New World slaves, Maroons and ‘Black Poor’ from Britsin who were resetled along the coast and especially in Freetown, and who form social éite distinct Gom the Afsican population. In Trinidad, it refers principally to the black descendants of dives to distinguish them from East Indian immigrants, When used with reference to other native gxoups,an adjectival prefix ~ French creole, Spanish creole ~is Used. In Jamaica, and the old settled English colonies, the word was used it its original Spanish sense of exiollo: born into, native, committed to the area of living, and it was used in relation to both white and black, tee and slave. (Brathwaite 1974: 10) CREOLIZATION “The process of intermixing and cultural change that produces a exeole society: While the creolization processes might be argued to be going fon throughout the world, the term has usually been applied to ‘new world’ societies (particularly the Caribbean and South America) and more loosely to those post-colonial societies whose present ethnically or racially mixed populations are a product of European colonization, According to Edward Brathwaite, creolization isa culttral proces" ~ ‘material, poychological and spiritual ~ based upon the simulus/response of individuals within the society to their [new] 51the exoticiam of multiculturalism or the verity of cultures, but fon the inscription and articulation of culture's hybnidiy (Bhabha 1994-58) Ieis the ‘in-between’ space that carrie: the burden and meaning of ‘cule, and this is what makes the notion of hybridity so important Hybridity has Gequently been wsed in post-colonial discourse to sean sitaply cross-cultural ‘exchange’. This wie of the term has been widely criticized, since it usually amples negating and neglecting the imbalance and inequality of the power relations it references. By stressing the transformative cultural, nguistic and politcal impacts on both the colonized and the colonizer, thas been regarded as replicating assimilationist policies by masking or ‘whitewashing’ cultural differences The idea of hybridity alto underlies other attempts to stress the mutuality of culsares in the colonial and port-colonial process in expree= sions of syacreticty, cultural synergy and transculturation. The criticism ofthe term referred to above stems from the perception that theories that stress mutuality neassarly downplay oppositionality, and increase continuing post-colonial dependence. There is, however, noth- ing in the idea of hybridity as such that suggests that mutuality negates the hierarchical nature of the imperial process or that it involves the idea of an equal exchange, This is however, the way in which some pro~ ponent: of decolonization and anti-colonialism have interpreted its carrent usage in colonial discourse theory Itas aso been subject to critique as part of a general disatistction with colonial discourse theory on the part of critics such as Chandra Talpate Mohanty. Benita Parry and Aijaz Ahmad, These critiques stress the textuslist and idealist basis of sich analysis and point to the fact that they neglect specific local differences ‘The assertion of ashared post-colonial condition such as hybridity has been seen as patt of the tendency of discourse analysis to de-historicize and de-locate cultures from their temporal, spatial, geographical and linguistic contests, and to lead co an abstract, globalized concept of the textual that obscures the specificities of particular eulsural situations Pointing out that the investigation of the discursive construction (of colonialism does not seck to replace or exclude other forms such ashistorical, geographical, economic, military or political, Robert Young suggests that the contribution of colonial discourse analysis, sn which ‘concepts such as hybridity are couched, provides 2 significint framework for that other work by cmphacising thatall perspectives on colonialim share and have 109HYBRIDITY social discriminations, racial prejudices and humanistic values more or less intact. Further reading: Bharacha 1997; Grumsct 1988, 1991; Olson and Worsham 1999; San Juan 1995; Viewanathan 1989 HYBRIDITY ‘One of the most widely employed and most disputed terms in post- colonial theory, hybridity commonly refers to the creation of new transculeural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization, As used in horticulture, the term refers to the cros-breeding of two species by grafting or cross-pollination to form a third, ‘hybrid species Hybridization takes many forms linguistic, cultural, politcal, racial, ete Linguistic exampler include pidgin and creole langwages, and there echo the foundational ate ofthe term by the linguist and cultural ‘theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, who used itto suggest the disruptive and teans- figuring power of mulivocal language situations and, by extension, of mulivocal narratives. The idea of a polyphony of voices in society 4s implied also in Bakhtin’ idea of the carnivalesque, which emerged in the Middle Ages when 'a boundless world of humorous forms snd manifestations oppoted the official and serious tone of medieval ecclesiastical and feudal culture’ (Holquist 1984° 4) ‘The term “hybridity’has been most recently associated with the work. of Homi K Bhabha, whose analysis of colonizer/colonized relation: stresses their interdependence and the mutual construction of their subjectivitiee Gee mimicry and ambivalence) Bhabha contends that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in a space that he calls the ‘Third Space of enunciation’ (1994:37), Cultural identity aways ‘emerges in this contradictory andl ambivalent space, which for Bhabha makes the claim to a hierarchical ‘purity’ of cultures untenable, For him, the recognition ofthis ambivalent space of cultural identity may help us to overcome the exoticism of eultural diversity in favour of the recognition of an empowering hybridity within which cultural difference may operate It is significant that the productive capacities of this Third Space have a colonial or postcolonial provenance. For a walling nness to descend into that alien territory ... may open the vay to conceptualizing an imtemational culture, based not on 108science in the «plit between the incompatible coexisting logics of classical and quantum physic’ (26).In this sense, asin much elee in the structuralist and poststructuralst legacy, the concept of hybridity emphasizes atypically ewentieth-century concern with relations within a field rather than with an analysis of discrete objects, seeing meaning athe produce of such zelations rather than as intrinsic to specific events or object ‘While assertions of national culture and of pre-colonial traditions have played an important role in creating anti-colonial discourse and in arguing for an active decolonizing project, theories of the hybrid nature of post-colonial cule assert a different model for resistance, locating this in the subversive counter-discursive practices implicit in the colonial ambivalence itelf and so undermining the very bast on which imperialist and colonialist discourse raises its claims of superiority. Further reading: Bakhtin 1981, 1994; Bhabha 1994; Kraniauskas 2004; Pari 2004; Radhakrishnan 2000; Ramsazani 2001; Smith 2004; Stoneham 2000; ‘Young 1995; for opposing views se Ahmad 1992; 5, Mthts 1995; Pary 1987 Seayeh 2000, IMPERIALISM Im its mose general sense, imperialism refers to the formation of an empite, and, as such, has been an aspect of ll periods ofhistory in which one nation hat extended its domination over one of several neigh= bouring nations, Edward Said uses imperialism in this general sense to mean ‘the practice, theory, and the attitudes of 2 dominating, metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory’, Guid 1998:8),a process distinct fiom colonialism, which is ‘the implanting of setements on a distant territory’, However, there is general agreement that the word imperialism, a8 4 conscious and openly advocated policy of aquiing colonies for economic, strategic and political advantage, did not emerge vuntil around 1880, Before that date, the term ‘empire’ (pazticularly the British variety) conjured up an apparently benevolent process of Enropean expansion whereby colonies azed rather than were acquired Around the mid-nineteenth century the term imperialism’ was used £0 describe the government and policies of Napoleon HI, self-styled ‘emperor’, and by 1870 was used disparagingly in disputes beeween the political parties in Britain, But fom the 1880s imperialism became dominant and more tranuparently aggresive policy among:t European states for a variety of political, cultural and economic reaton amHYBRIDITY to deal with 3 common discursive medium which was also that of colonialism itself... Colonial discourse analysis can therefore look at the wide variety of texts of colonialism as something mare than mere documentation oF ‘evidence’ (Young 1995: 163) However, Young himself ofers 3 number of objections to the indis- criminate wie ofthe torm. He notes how intivenil the term ‘hybridity wwar in imperial and colonial discourse in negative accounts of the "union of disparate races ~ accounts that implied that unless atively and persistently cultivated, such hybrids would inevitably revert to theit ‘primitive’ stock, Hybridity thus became, particulaly atthe turn of the century part of a colonialist discouzze of racim, Young, drs out attention to the dangers of employing a tem so rooted in a previows set of racist assumptions, but he alzo notes that theresa diference between unconcios processes ofhybrid mixture, or creolieation, and 2 conscious and politically mosiated concern withthe deliberate dis~ ruption of homogeneity, He notes that for Bakhtin, for example, hiybriduty is politicized, made contestatory, so that st embraces the subversion and challenge of division and separation, Bakhtin’ hybrid- ay iets different points of view against each other in a conthictaal sxractore, which retains “a certain elemental, organic energy and ‘openendedness"* (Young 1995: 21-22). ese thie potential of hybridiry to reverse ‘the structures of domination in the colonial situation (@3), which Young recognizes, that Bhabha ako articulates, ‘Bakhtin’ intentional hybrid bat heen transformed by Bhabha snto an active moment of challenge and resstance agunst a dominant colonial power depriving the imposed imperialist cultare, act only ofthe authority that thas for so long imposed politically offen through violence, but ven of ts ovin clans to authenticity’ (23) ‘Young, does, however, warn of the unconscious process of petition involved in the contemporary use of the term. According to hima, when talking about hybridity. contemporary cultural discourse cannot cucape the connection with the racial categories of the past in which hybridity bad auch a clear racial meaning, Thezefore “deconstnicting soch exientialist notions of race today we may rather be repeating the [fixation on race in the] pat than distancing ourselves fiom i, oF providing a cxtique of i (27). Ths isa subde and persuasive objection to the concept, However, more positively, Young aso totes that the tenan indicates a broader insistence in many twenticth-ceatury disi- plines, from physics to genetics, pon a double logic, which goes spit the convention of rational either/or choices, but which is repeated in 110to break what Frantz Fanon referred to asthe ‘ontogenie’ seal of white normativity’. The most formal modern recognitions of the category include the use of the term white within the discriminatory legisla- tion associated with apartheid. Bur US scholarship has also pointed to the growth of the term in multicultural societies such as the US, where racialitt groups defending the possiblity of ‘whites’ becoming 4 minority swamped by ricial admixture have employed the term whiteness asa rallying call. Barly commentators on this phenomenon, sch ar Roederer and Fill himself, have always been cautious of the term ‘whiteness studies’ feeling that ‘a critical rush to whiteness would be symptomatic of the very problem of hegemony [such studies] sought to demolish’ (Hill 20042). For this reason Hill for example, has ‘emphasized that the task i to uncover the power of the term in 8 world ‘where official and unofficial typologies of racial and ethnic identity are moving rapidly to a position where isolated racial categories are being dismantled, for example in crucial instruments where social control and self-asription collie, such as the National Census. While this may seem tobe a development progressive thinkers might applaud, Fill shows how in practice it can lead to the diminishing of the power of such racial groups as Advan Americane or Latinos a effective social forces and political lobbyists, Beyond the:e practical sues he the more crucial epistemological sues which haunt all auch categories. Ae Hill Jhae aummarized this ‘The ambivalent prospect of an end to whiteness haunts progressive scholarship on rice as much as i haunts the paranoid visions of white-collar racist: on the other side of the ethnographic looking-glass, For both groups, ironically, ‘whiteness both gone and stil very much here, And ifsuch 4 body of discourse called whiteness studies actually exists there isa sense that the blind proliferation ofthis work creeps towards an ugly metamorphosis that will keep it from progressive goals (Hill 20042:9) Hill concludes, 'Peshaps whiteness stadies might better be dubbed after whitenes studies, thus keeping the temporary irony of ite absent presence at the foreftont and in play’ (bid). esamanner ofinguity I find revealing, one that secretly knows {hat critical knowledge sustains the phantarmagoric form of the very thing it wants to deconstruct. That we feel shame about sich knowledge and try to hide rather than mobilize ts 221WHITENESS adjustments in small economies do more for Will Street bankers than for poor farmers. The response of the IMF to the Asian Financial (Crisis for instance was to impose ‘cookie cutter’ SAPs (Structural Adjustment Packages), which forced debtor nations to behave in exactly the opposite way that the US behaved when ie entered recession 2001. Michel Chossudovsky in The Globalization of Poverty shows that “World Bank and IMF programmes create economic strit-jackets that do more to impoverish the recipients and cast them in the yoke of international division of labour than to promote economic growth, Meant to balance national budgets, ectify market imbalances and make the economy mare competitive the unexpected effect of these policies has often been to impoverish the working and middle classes and cause economies to plunge into serious economic depression due to shrinking internal demand. Father reading 2002 sudowsky 1997; Ramo 2004; Stighte 2002; Williamson WHITENESS ‘Although Race has been a dominant feature of social construction since the late eighteenth century itis significant that whitenes ay a defining racial category bas only recently emerged in the range of chromatic ideas of hunan difrence. Since European and later ‘American races occupied the dominant pole inthe bitaresofrce in the postsavery era and Aftican, Asian and Amerindian peoples were the majority constituents of the subaltemn poe, the category white was, effecvely occluded, naturalized as an aways already-gven category fins which other aces could be distinguished and so not needing to be consisted ina specific way a a separate race grouping n fat of course, ike all chounatic typologies the terms employed in these rac discourses: black, brown, red, yellow and so forth were designed to homogenize the complexities of diference which exist within the single human species Buttheeategary of white as aspcial ore, snce itis netted set apart by its force asthe normative Recent citeal accounts have sought to expose ths fale naturliring ofthe category by investigating the different ways whiteness has been employed as a social discriminator. These vary greatly in different places and times, though all seck to construct a unified grouping © oppove against those others which the whites seck to exclude and contol. Mike Fil has summarized this first wave of work on the topic [av an attempt] 220cerlier Christian traditions of anti-slavery advocacy and social reformism. Religion has re-emerged in recent times at a force which may create new forms of discrimination against groups such as Muslims, though these are often masked as attacks only on fundamentalist minorities. ‘The identification of ‘white’ national values with Christianity by those who peddle these simplistic models of seligion and ste role in the formation of national cultural identities poses a threat of further social divisions along lines which collapse religion and race into new discriminatory signifiers of difference Burr reading: Burrows 2006; Fil 1997; Hill 2004s; Hill 200%; Mobaneam 2007; Roediger 2002; Young 190. WORLD SYSTEM THEORY [A theory of the operation of the world economic, social and political system, formulated by Immanuel Wallerstein (19743; 1974b). The chief avsertion of this theory is that the capitalist system has been the world ‘economic system since the sixteenth century and that one cannot tlle about economies in terms of the nation-state, nor of ‘society’ in the abstract, nor of tages’ of development, hecatse each society is affected by: indeed is a part of, the capitalist world economy. eas only with the emergence ofthe modern world economy in sixteenth-century Europe that we saw the fall develop- ‘ment and economic predominance of market trade. This wae the system called capitalism. Capitalism and world economy (Chat is,a single division of labour, but multiple polities and cultures) are obverse sides ofthe same coin. One does not cause the other (Wallerstein 1974b: 391), ‘World system theory emerged asa refutation of modernization theory, which tended to (a) concentrate on the nation-state, (b) assume that all countries follow a similar path of growth, (c) disregard transnational structures and (@) base explanations on ahistorical ideal types. The proposition of one world capitalist system in operation since the sixteenth century radically affects how we view not only world ‘economics but aso national politics, clase, ethnicity and international relations in general. For instance, the theory rejects the concept of a ‘ociety’ asa unit of analysis in favour of two systems of production: 228WHITENESS contradictions, and that folks exploit such shame across the political spectrum, is the worse part of the whiteness studies game. What people who continue to write on whiteness tend not to realize is that they too are writing from a position thats inherently self-effacing, since their object of study disappears ‘the moment they start working, then comes back, but in ways shat are unwanted of unexpected. It that ghostly encounter vith absence I alluded to before. Rather than just scary oz ampolitic, ind in this hour of ruin a tse bit of hope, That ‘white folk are 2 astin an epistemologicaly ftal position goes to the very root ofthe concept of potential (Hill 20046) In this respect whiteness studies faces a problema similar to that which hhaunts many contemporary acidemic fields, including post-coloni studies itself that is that its existence aa field of study preserves the very concept (colonialism) it seeks to dismantle. Although whiteness is a category which is grounded in racist dis courses and practices also impinges on discourses of elass and gender {Gee feminism and postcolonialism and transcultural feminism), ‘Whiteness has frequently been employed in territories a: diverse ss South Africa, Australia and the US ar a means of recruiting the economically disadvantaged segments of the so-called waite population tosupport national or social programmes which are to their disadvantage sn that they divert their attention om the actual causes oftheir poverty in the broader economic practices of capital, Parties which enphasize ‘family values’ and thus the need to protect the ‘traditional roles ofthe genders have alto embraced racist discourses ‘which emphasize the threat changes to gender patterns pore to so-called “core national values’, which values they identity with those of the cultural groupings which have embraced the signifier of ‘whiteness, eg. the emergence of just such an alliance of practices in groupings stich as One Nation in Australia, which enjoyed a brief electoral stecess im many areas in the late 1990s, In the US the recently emerged fundamentalist Christian groups, while aserting their lack of politcal or racial bias (Tes not a black thing, or a white thing, its a Jesus ching’) have often been racially discriminatory as well as politically conserva- tive in their actual practice. They have often shown litle regaed for the alleviation of minority-group poverty, manifested in their overt opposition to ‘welfie' or support for programmes of reform of the ongoing effects of racial bias in educational and training opportunities, ‘employment patterns, etc, In this regard they have moved away fom 22