“They talk to me about civilization, I talk about proletarianization and mystification.” --Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (in Postcolonial Criticism, ed. Gilbert, Stanton and Maley, Routledge, 1997, page 82)
By mystification Césaire means something good on his terms, the discovery of ontological depth below the “thingification” of the colonized person.
People who pit postcolonial theory against OOO had better take note of this.
Discuss.
PS: two of my awesome Ph.D. students, Diana Leong and Nikki Moore, are working on this.
Pramod K. Nayar's chapter "The Imperial Sublime, 1750-1820,” from his book English Writing and India, 1600-1920, inadvertently does some OOO too, though in the guise of some basic deconstructive maneuvers. A big part of my Master's thesis culminated in a rereading of Nayar through OOO.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting too how we can think about postcolonial theory's link to psychoanalysis--& the subject/ object dualism it explores. The object can be cast through OOO in such fascinating ways.
ReplyDeleteAlso Fred Moten. Just read "Preface for a Solo by Miles Davis" for a class here. All about how the "objectified" object sounds and moves, and thus rebels. So glorious.
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