Applications of Post-Colonialism

Perhaps it is a strange thing to start a discussion on post-colonialism with an image from Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”.  What does a novella about a riverboat captain in the Belgian Congo, viewed by many post-colonialists as dehumanizing and racist, have to do with post-colonialism views of the Middle East?  It is worth presenting the scene where the narrator Marlow wonders and reflects on how “dark” and “uncivilized” Britain must have felt for the Romans.  Marlow remarks that the Romans must have felt the England’s swamps and moors represented a “darkness” similar to how Europeans (including Marlow) felt towards the Congo.  It is the metaphor of the Romans looking at the British in much the same way the Victorians often looked at the rest of the world that gives the scholar a powerful literary symbol for power relationships.

            Power relationships are a subject that Timothy Mitchell in Colonizing Egypt discusses in depth.  Drawing on the work of philosophers such as Michel Foucault and historians such as Edward Said, Mitchell characterizes a different view of colonialism through the case-study of Egypt.  For Mitchell, it is the European characterization of the Orient (and in particular by extension of his case-study that of Egypt) that determined the knowledge of the experts and scholars.  Having viewed the Orient as something out of a panorama, Europeans traveled to Egypt looking for the exact snapshot or photograph that would capture this knowledge.  When Europeans did not find what they wanted, they attempted to fit or bend their experiences to “accurately” fit the assumed knowledge of the time.  A cycle was born.  These interactions created a certain point of view or discourse of the image of the Orient (famously criticized by Said in his book Orientalism). 

            Going back to the Romans and London image, a place that held many of the aforementioned exhibitions and panoramas could have been characterized in the same way at one time.  For the Romans, their knowledge of Britain was created through discourses that depicted non-Romans as barbarians.  Even powerful enemies such as the Persians were lumped into the general category of “barbarians”.  This application of knowledge deriving from discourses is a foundation of Foucault’s philosophy as well as being a key component of post-colonialist historiography.  These discourses were used as justification for the exploitation and repression that often characterized colonialism throughout all eras. 

            The inherent problem with the topic of post-colonialism is of course its focus.  The name “post-colonialism” implies of course that its scholarly methods are applicable only within a certain time period and/or historical context.  Colonial exploitation is not solely a product of 19^th/20^th century Western influence.  Scholars must resist the temptation to focus on colonial interactions as having occurred at one point in the history of the world in a particular manner.  Using Foucault as the pivot of postcolonial theory, the philosophical ideas of power relationships can be extended across many different eras and contexts.  The principles of knowledge and power can be used to analyze anything from relationships between Ancient Greek City-States to contemporary power struggles within the context of the Middle East (through a collaborative study with dependency theory).  The biggest problem with post-colonialism is its name rather than its methods.  As a scholarly approach, it is a useful paradigm for viewing a common occurrence within history.

BDF