PHL323H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Bourgeoisie, Hindu Law, Thought Experiment
Finishing up Fanon
Colonising bourgeoisie fosters old rivalries from before colonisation
Inhibits national unity
○
•
Unity can only be established in deviance of the colonised bourgeoisie
•
So can we skip this phase?
We need revolutionary action to answer this question
○
Kind of a non-answer
○
Then gives on to give the exact answer we can't give
○
We can do this through decentralisation
○
•
The very idea of a centralised administration is a colonial idea
As is the notion of a capital city
○
Rather the government should directly represent the views of the masses, not as funneled through a capital city
○
•
We shouldn't patronise the people that fought for their independence
The back-country should be emphasised
○
Not just politically, but in the psyche of the population itself
○
People in the more developed regions shouldn't look down on the people in less developed regions
○
(internal colonialization)
○
Brasilia failed because it was still the seat of a centralised government, and stopped being back-country all together
○
All Brasilia is good for is a road through the jungle to get to the back-country
○
•
As the capital city is a physical center, the leader is a psychological center of a country
•
On Violence in the International Context
Relationship between formerly colonised nation and coloniser/international community?
Moral debt
○
So in the thought experiment of the dude that trashed your house and left, when you see him again, are you going to just
wave and say hi?
○
•
Economic debt??
Yes, because they stole raw materials
○
Coloniser has benefited hugely
○
•
Analogy of the abusive relationship
•
One way they can discharge the economic debt is through aid
Movement of money, food, technology, expertise, etc.
○
•
Raises metaphysical question - is it such an easy cut and dry exchange?
Some of the stolen raw materials went into the infrastructure, education, etc. of the colonising nation
○
So they are entitled to some of the dividends of their investment
○
•
Precedent in this idea, namely in the reparations Germany paid to Israel in WWII
Stolen art returned in reparations
○
•
Not a generous action, but the repaying of a debt
Formerly colonised shouldn't be grateful
○
•
Aid from non-colonising nations still counts because the first world benefits from stolen capital on a whole
Whenever a country is in a position to provide aid to another, it has at some point benefited from stolen capital
○
•
In the best interests of the whole of mankind to raise everybody up as much as possible
Doesn’t matter who took the stuff, what matters is that we are now unequal
○
•
In the colonising nation's best interests to help the colonised nation because the colonised nation is now a market for the
colonising nation's best interests
The two are economically interdependent
○
You can't sell a gadget t someone that has no money
○
Teach a man to fish, feed a man for life, and give them the means to buy your stuff
○
•
Postcolonialism and Intersectional Resistance
Spivak - Can the Subaltern Speak?
Originally a lecture that was written up•
Main question: can formerly colonised people really be heard by their former colonisers
What about formerly colonised people that are also members of other marginalised groups (women, lower classes, etc.)
○
•
Answer: not if the former colonisers don't explicitly acknowledge their position as former colonisers
Even then, it might still further colonialism
○
•
Alliance politics - how can distinct groups ally with each other for resistive purposes?
Is this even possible?
○
Possibility of internal colonisation
Where one population colonises another, but none are 'foreign'
§
○
•
Subaltern = people that are socially, politically and geographically excluded from the dominant power structure
Denied a voice
○
•
Concerned with postcolonial studies
How should academics behave?
○
But we are also interested in the role of non-academics
○
•
Euro-American postcolonial studies is itself complicit in colonial power relations
We can't hear the voices of colonised people unless we better understand subaltern people through postcolonial studies
○
•
The very doing of postcolonial studies from a Western perspective makes it difficult or even impossible to understand subaltern
people
"view from nowhere"
○
Critique of the subject actually inaugurates a subject
○
•
Calls the subject matter an Other
But they also have a 'Subject' - the theoretician using the theory
○
Subject-matter of a theory is informed by the nature of the Subject
○
•
Idealism = the subject-matter is wholly informed by the Subject•
Realism = the subject matter is independent of the subject
What the subject can learn about the other
○
Metaphysical status or epistemic access?
○
•
Observations that academics make about the other is theory-laden - informed by which theory it is being taken to confirm or
falsify
•
Argues in two stages:•
Cites Foucault and Delouse and objects to specific details of their approaches
They neglect the fact that they are making this attempt from the (white male) Western perspective
○
1.
Cites example of Victorian England's perspective on the Indian sati of widow suicide
White men saving brown women from brown men
○
2.
D+F neglect western perspective for reasons•
D and Guattari don't take into account connections between desire, power, and subjectivity
Prevents them from giving an adequate theory of a person's ideology or interests and thus of subaltern's interests
○
•
Foucault neglects influence of material conditions of the production of a theory of ideology•
Parasubjective coined by Spivak
Western philosophers assume that their own perspectives of western culture can be applied to very different groups
○
•
Mechanical connection between desire and interest
Always operating in the same way for all people
○
•
As opposed to textual - influenced by larger environment
We must widen our view to incorporate the larger context
○
•
Marxists want to assume the proletariat is homogenous
Workers regarded as workers
○
Workers are individuals that fall into lots and lots of different groups
○
This ends up ignoring their intersectional differences
○
And thus intersectional concerns
○
•
Also saying that Marxists read Marx misinterpreted Marx's theory entirely
Not working to create undivided subject
○
•
Extends other of postcolonial theory in general - it is heterogeneous not homogenous
Theorists fail to take this into account
○
•
Epistemic violence - wide-scope violence
When western intellectuals don’t take details of subaltern groups into account
○
Active undermining of non-western epistemic methodologies
○
Can result from representation fallacy
○
•
E.g. British-Indian education system•
Specific case studies, not universal examples
Considered crown jewel of British empire
○
Reformed education system to make them more English
Colonised bourgeoisie basically
§
Culturally English Indian people
§
○
This is to replace Indian perspective with British
Epistemic violence
§
○
•
4 components of Hindu law:•
Sruti (the heard)1.
Smitri (the remembered)2.
Sastra (the heard-from-another)3.
Vyavahara (the performed in exchange)
These clearly can't be put into an Anglo-European legal system
○
Round peg is square hole
○
Epistemic violence
○
4.
Western thought can be palimpsestic - overwrite non-Western ways of thinking
Epistemically violent thought
○
•
Alliance politics = process of allying with another political group
We must at the very least be careful with allying with other groups
○
In danger of silencing that group if approaching allying without awareness of their goals
○
•
We are in danger of mingling epistemic violence with subaltern goals•
Phenomena of widow sacrifice
Burning widow alive upon the husband's funeral pyre
○
Non-universal, not fixed by class or caste
○
British people stopped this process without asking for the consent of the Hindu people
○
Because they were Victorian English they thought no one would ever want to do this
○
White men saving brown women from brown men
○
White women didn't produce a counter-narrative
○
Only counter-narrative - they didn't want saving/they wanted to die (Indian nativist argument)
○
Silences the subaltern, no voice to sati women
○
Woman as an object of protection, not a person with agency
○
•
How could they give them a voice
Could come from paying attention to discussions of sanctioned suicide and rites of the dead
○
The knowing subject comprehends the insubstantiality of identity
○
Knowing such limits is the strongest form of agency - but is itself an annihilation of agency
○
Choosing to be a part of the world around you is the strongest possible form of agency
○
Looks contradictory to western minds
○
We have to recognise the women's narrative that they have applied to their own situation
○
Plausibly: the more intersectional a subaltern group, the more narratives need to be recognized for alliance politics to
occur rightly
○
Story of capital logic & western story
○
Shouldn’t be about saving or about property
○
•
Lecture 5
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
3:15 PM
Finishing up Fanon
Colonising bourgeoisie fosters old rivalries from before colonisation
Inhibits national unity
○
•
Unity can only be established in deviance of the colonised bourgeoisie
•
So can we skip this phase?
We need revolutionary action to answer this question
○
Kind of a non-answer
○
Then gives on to give the exact answer we can't give
○
We can do this through decentralisation
○
•
The very idea of a centralised administration is a colonial idea
As is the notion of a capital city
○
Rather the government should directly represent the views of the masses, not as funneled through a capital city
○
•
We shouldn't patronise the people that fought for their independence
The back-country should be emphasised
○
Not just politically, but in the psyche of the population itself
○
People in the more developed regions shouldn't look down on the people in less developed regions
○
(internal colonialization)
○
Brasilia failed because it was still the seat of a centralised government, and stopped being back-country all together
○
All Brasilia is good for is a road through the jungle to get to the back-country
○
•
As the capital city is a physical center, the leader is a psychological center of a country
•
On Violence in the International Context
Relationship between formerly colonised nation and coloniser/international community?
Moral debt
○
So in the thought experiment of the dude that trashed your house and left, when you see him again, are you going to just
wave and say hi?
○
•
Economic debt??
Yes, because they stole raw materials
○
Coloniser has benefited hugely
○
•
Analogy of the abusive relationship
•
One way they can discharge the economic debt is through aid
Movement of money, food, technology, expertise, etc.
○
•
Raises metaphysical question - is it such an easy cut and dry exchange?
Some of the stolen raw materials went into the infrastructure, education, etc. of the colonising nation
○
So they are entitled to some of the dividends of their investment
○
•
Precedent in this idea, namely in the reparations Germany paid to Israel in WWII
Stolen art returned in reparations
○
•
Not a generous action, but the repaying of a debt
Formerly colonised shouldn't be grateful
○
•
Aid from non-colonising nations still counts because the first world benefits from stolen capital on a whole
Whenever a country is in a position to provide aid to another, it has at some point benefited from stolen capital
○
•
In the best interests of the whole of mankind to raise everybody up as much as possible
Doesn’t matter who took the stuff, what matters is that we are now unequal
○
•
In the colonising nation's best interests to help the colonised nation because the colonised nation is now a market for the
colonising nation's best interests
The two are economically interdependent
○
You can't sell a gadget t someone that has no money
○
Teach a man to fish, feed a man for life, and give them the means to buy your stuff
○
•
Postcolonialism and Intersectional Resistance
Spivak - Can the Subaltern Speak?
Originally a lecture that was written up•
Main question: can formerly colonised people really be heard by their former colonisers
What about formerly colonised people that are also members of other marginalised groups (women, lower classes, etc.)
○
•
Answer: not if the former colonisers don't explicitly acknowledge their position as former colonisers
Even then, it might still further colonialism
○
•
Alliance politics - how can distinct groups ally with each other for resistive purposes?
Is this even possible?
○
Possibility of internal colonisation
Where one population colonises another, but none are 'foreign'
§
○
•
Subaltern = people that are socially, politically and geographically excluded from the dominant power structure
Denied a voice
○
•
Concerned with postcolonial studies
How should academics behave?
○
But we are also interested in the role of non-academics
○
•
Euro-American postcolonial studies is itself complicit in colonial power relations
We can't hear the voices of colonised people unless we better understand subaltern people through postcolonial studies
○
•
The very doing of postcolonial studies from a Western perspective makes it difficult or even impossible to understand subaltern
people
"view from nowhere"
○
Critique of the subject actually inaugurates a subject
○
•
Calls the subject matter an Other
But they also have a 'Subject' - the theoretician using the theory
○
Subject-matter of a theory is informed by the nature of the Subject
○
•
Idealism = the subject-matter is wholly informed by the Subject•
Realism = the subject matter is independent of the subject
What the subject can learn about the other
○
Metaphysical status or epistemic access?
○
•
Observations that academics make about the other is theory-laden - informed by which theory it is being taken to confirm or
falsify
•
Argues in two stages:•
Cites Foucault and Delouse and objects to specific details of their approaches
They neglect the fact that they are making this attempt from the (white male) Western perspective
○
1.
Cites example of Victorian England's perspective on the Indian sati of widow suicide
White men saving brown women from brown men
○
2.
D+F neglect western perspective for reasons•
D and Guattari don't take into account connections between desire, power, and subjectivity
Prevents them from giving an adequate theory of a person's ideology or interests and thus of subaltern's interests
○
•
Foucault neglects influence of material conditions of the production of a theory of ideology•
Parasubjective coined by Spivak
Western philosophers assume that their own perspectives of western culture can be applied to very different groups
○
•
Mechanical connection between desire and interest
Always operating in the same way for all people
○
•
As opposed to textual - influenced by larger environment
We must widen our view to incorporate the larger context
○
•
Marxists want to assume the proletariat is homogenous
Workers regarded as workers
○
Workers are individuals that fall into lots and lots of different groups
○
This ends up ignoring their intersectional differences
○
And thus intersectional concerns
○
•
Also saying that Marxists read Marx misinterpreted Marx's theory entirely
Not working to create undivided subject
○
•
Extends other of postcolonial theory in general - it is heterogeneous not homogenous
Theorists fail to take this into account
○
•
Epistemic violence - wide-scope violence
When western intellectuals don’t take details of subaltern groups into account
○
Active undermining of non-western epistemic methodologies
○
Can result from representation fallacy
○
•
E.g. British-Indian education system•
Specific case studies, not universal examples
Considered crown jewel of British empire
○
Reformed education system to make them more English
Colonised bourgeoisie basically
§
Culturally English Indian people
§
○
This is to replace Indian perspective with British
Epistemic violence
§
○
•
4 components of Hindu law:•
Sruti (the heard)1.
Smitri (the remembered)2.
Sastra (the heard-from-another)3.
Vyavahara (the performed in exchange)
These clearly can't be put into an Anglo-European legal system
○
Round peg is square hole
○
Epistemic violence
○
4.
Western thought can be palimpsestic - overwrite non-Western ways of thinking
Epistemically violent thought
○
•
Alliance politics = process of allying with another political group
We must at the very least be careful with allying with other groups
○
In danger of silencing that group if approaching allying without awareness of their goals
○
•
We are in danger of mingling epistemic violence with subaltern goals•
Phenomena of widow sacrifice
Burning widow alive upon the husband's funeral pyre
○
Non-universal, not fixed by class or caste
○
British people stopped this process without asking for the consent of the Hindu people
○
Because they were Victorian English they thought no one would ever want to do this
○
White men saving brown women from brown men
○
White women didn't produce a counter-narrative
○
Only counter-narrative - they didn't want saving/they wanted to die (Indian nativist argument)
○
Silences the subaltern, no voice to sati women
○
Woman as an object of protection, not a person with agency
○
•
How could they give them a voice
Could come from paying attention to discussions of sanctioned suicide and rites of the dead
○
The knowing subject comprehends the insubstantiality of identity
○
Knowing such limits is the strongest form of agency - but is itself an annihilation of agency
○
Choosing to be a part of the world around you is the strongest possible form of agency
○
Looks contradictory to western minds
○
We have to recognise the women's narrative that they have applied to their own situation
○
Plausibly: the more intersectional a subaltern group, the more narratives need to be recognized for alliance politics to
occur rightly
○
Story of capital logic & western story
○
Shouldn’t be about saving or about property
○
•
Lecture 5
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
3:15 PM
Finishing up Fanon
Colonising bourgeoisie fosters old rivalries from before colonisation
Inhibits national unity
○
•
Unity can only be established in deviance of the colonised bourgeoisie•
So can we skip this phase?
We need revolutionary action to answer this question
○
Kind of a non-answer
○
Then gives on to give the exact answer we can't give
○
We can do this through decentralisation
○
•
The very idea of a centralised administration is a colonial idea
As is the notion of a capital city
○
Rather the government should directly represent the views of the masses, not as funneled through a capital city
○
•
We shouldn't patronise the people that fought for their independence
The back-country should be emphasised
○
Not just politically, but in the psyche of the population itself
○
People in the more developed regions shouldn't look down on the people in less developed regions
○
(internal colonialization)
○
Brasilia failed because it was still the seat of a centralised government, and stopped being back-country all together
○
All Brasilia is good for is a road through the jungle to get to the back-country
○
•
As the capital city is a physical center, the leader is a psychological center of a country•
On Violence in the International Context
Relationship between formerly colonised nation and coloniser/international community?
Moral debt
○
So in the thought experiment of the dude that trashed your house and left, when you see him again, are you going to just
wave and say hi?
○
•
Economic debt??
Yes, because they stole raw materials
○
Coloniser has benefited hugely
○
•
Analogy of the abusive relationship•
One way they can discharge the economic debt is through aid
Movement of money, food, technology, expertise, etc.
○
•
Raises metaphysical question - is it such an easy cut and dry exchange?
Some of the stolen raw materials went into the infrastructure, education, etc. of the colonising nation
○
So they are entitled to some of the dividends of their investment
○
•
Precedent in this idea, namely in the reparations Germany paid to Israel in WWII
Stolen art returned in reparations
○
•
Not a generous action, but the repaying of a debt
Formerly colonised shouldn't be grateful
○
•
Aid from non-colonising nations still counts because the first world benefits from stolen capital on a whole
Whenever a country is in a position to provide aid to another, it has at some point benefited from stolen capital
○
•
In the best interests of the whole of mankind to raise everybody up as much as possible
Doesn’t matter who took the stuff, what matters is that we are now unequal
○
•
In the colonising nation's best interests to help the colonised nation because the colonised nation is now a market for the
colonising nation's best interests
The two are economically interdependent
○
You can't sell a gadget t someone that has no money
○
Teach a man to fish, feed a man for life, and give them the means to buy your stuff
○
•
Postcolonialism and Intersectional Resistance
Spivak - Can the Subaltern Speak?
Originally a lecture that was written up
•
Main question: can formerly colonised people really be heard by their former colonisers
What about formerly colonised people that are also members of other marginalised groups (women, lower classes, etc.)
○
•
Answer: not if the former colonisers don't explicitly acknowledge their position as former colonisers
Even then, it might still further colonialism
○
•
Alliance politics - how can distinct groups ally with each other for resistive purposes?
Is this even possible?
○
Possibility of internal colonisation
Where one population colonises another, but none are 'foreign'
§
○
•
Subaltern = people that are socially, politically and geographically excluded from the dominant power structure
Denied a voice
○
•
Concerned with postcolonial studies
How should academics behave?
○
But we are also interested in the role of non-academics
○
•
Euro-American postcolonial studies is itself complicit in colonial power relations
We can't hear the voices of colonised people unless we better understand subaltern people through postcolonial studies
○
•
The very doing of postcolonial studies from a Western perspective makes it difficult or even impossible to understand subaltern
people
"view from nowhere"
○
Critique of the subject actually inaugurates a subject
○
•
Calls the subject matter an Other
But they also have a 'Subject' - the theoretician using the theory
○
Subject-matter of a theory is informed by the nature of the Subject
○
•
Idealism = the subject-matter is wholly informed by the Subject•
Realism = the subject matter is independent of the subject
What the subject can learn about the other
○
Metaphysical status or epistemic access?
○
•
Observations that academics make about the other is theory-laden - informed by which theory it is being taken to confirm or
falsify
•
Argues in two stages:•
Cites Foucault and Delouse and objects to specific details of their approaches
They neglect the fact that they are making this attempt from the (white male) Western perspective
○
1.
Cites example of Victorian England's perspective on the Indian sati of widow suicide
White men saving brown women from brown men
○
2.
D+F neglect western perspective for reasons•
D and Guattari don't take into account connections between desire, power, and subjectivity
Prevents them from giving an adequate theory of a person's ideology or interests and thus of subaltern's interests
○
•
Foucault neglects influence of material conditions of the production of a theory of ideology•
Parasubjective coined by Spivak
Western philosophers assume that their own perspectives of western culture can be applied to very different groups
○
•
Mechanical connection between desire and interest
Always operating in the same way for all people
○
•
As opposed to textual - influenced by larger environment
We must widen our view to incorporate the larger context
○
•
Marxists want to assume the proletariat is homogenous
Workers regarded as workers
○
Workers are individuals that fall into lots and lots of different groups
○
This ends up ignoring their intersectional differences
○
And thus intersectional concerns
○
•
Also saying that Marxists read Marx misinterpreted Marx's theory entirely
Not working to create undivided subject
○
•
Extends other of postcolonial theory in general - it is heterogeneous not homogenous
Theorists fail to take this into account
○
•
Epistemic violence - wide-scope violence
When western intellectuals don’t take details of subaltern groups into account
○
Active undermining of non-western epistemic methodologies
○
Can result from representation fallacy
○
•
E.g. British-Indian education system•
Specific case studies, not universal examples
Considered crown jewel of British empire
○
Reformed education system to make them more English
Colonised bourgeoisie basically
§
Culturally English Indian people
§
○
This is to replace Indian perspective with British
Epistemic violence
§
○
•
4 components of Hindu law:•
Sruti (the heard)1.
Smitri (the remembered)2.
Sastra (the heard-from-another)3.
Vyavahara (the performed in exchange)
These clearly can't be put into an Anglo-European legal system
○
Round peg is square hole
○
Epistemic violence
○
4.
Western thought can be palimpsestic - overwrite non-Western ways of thinking
Epistemically violent thought
○
•
Alliance politics = process of allying with another political group
We must at the very least be careful with allying with other groups
○
In danger of silencing that group if approaching allying without awareness of their goals
○
•
We are in danger of mingling epistemic violence with subaltern goals•
Phenomena of widow sacrifice
Burning widow alive upon the husband's funeral pyre
○
Non-universal, not fixed by class or caste
○
British people stopped this process without asking for the consent of the Hindu people
○
Because they were Victorian English they thought no one would ever want to do this
○
White men saving brown women from brown men
○
White women didn't produce a counter-narrative
○
Only counter-narrative - they didn't want saving/they wanted to die (Indian nativist argument)
○
Silences the subaltern, no voice to sati women
○
Woman as an object of protection, not a person with agency
○
•
How could they give them a voice
Could come from paying attention to discussions of sanctioned suicide and rites of the dead
○
The knowing subject comprehends the insubstantiality of identity
○
Knowing such limits is the strongest form of agency - but is itself an annihilation of agency
○
Choosing to be a part of the world around you is the strongest possible form of agency
○
Looks contradictory to western minds
○
We have to recognise the women's narrative that they have applied to their own situation
○
Plausibly: the more intersectional a subaltern group, the more narratives need to be recognized for alliance politics to
occur rightly
○
Story of capital logic & western story
○
Shouldn’t be about saving or about property
○
•
Lecture 5
Wednesday, February 8, 2017 3:15 PM
Document Summary
Colonising bourgeoisie fosters old rivalries from before colonisation. Unity can only be established in deviance of the colonised bourgeoisie. We need revolutionary action to answer this question. Then gives on to give the exact answer we can"t give. The very idea of a centralised administration is a colonial idea. As is the notion of a capital city. Rather the government should directly represent the views of the masses, not as. We shouldn"t patronise the people that fought for their independence. Not just politically, but in the psyche of the population itself. People in the more developed regions shouldn"t look down on the people in less (internal colonialization) Brasilia failed because it was still the seat of a centralised government, and stop. All brasilia is good for is a road through the jungle to get to the back-country. As the capital city is a physical center, the leader is a psychological center of a country.
