The Constraints of Chibber’s Criticism
A Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Benita Parry in
Current site
Google Scholar
A position joining critical theory with the Marxist critique of imperialism informs the following discussion on the perceived shortcomings of Chibber’s study in its avowed claim to disavow postcolonial theory. Chibber’s insistence on reading Subaltern Studies as postcolonial theory is unsustainable in that it fails to address the epistemological premises of a theory adopted and not initiated by the project. Whereas Chibber does ably contest assertions made by Subaltern Studies concerning the special conditions of India halting capitalism’s universalising drive, his concentrated but narrowly-focused and repetitive criticism disregards prior work contiguous to his own specialism as well as disciplines other than the social sciences. Thus the explanatory power of Uneven and Combined Development in understanding the internal conditions of societies conscripted into capitalism is cast aside, as are the resources of Marxist cultural criticism in writing a metanarrative of these consequences in all of their aspects: economic, social, cultural and experiential – omissions that paradoxically are to the fore in postcolonial theory.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Adorno Theodor , Benjamin Walter , Bloch Ernst , Brecht Bertolt & Lukács Georg , Aesthetics and Politics , (New Left Books , London 1977 ).
-
Amin Samir , Accumulation on a World Scale , (Monthly Review Press , New York 1974 [1970] ).
-
Anderson Kevin B. , Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies , (University of Chicago Press , Chicago 2010 ).
-
Anderson Perry , Considerations on Western Marxism , (New Left Books , London 1976 ).
-
Anderson Perry , '‘Modernity and Revolution’ ' (1984 ) I (144 ) New Left Review : 96 -113 .
-
Anderson Perry , The Origins of Postmodernity , (Verso , London 1998 ).
-
Arnold David , '‘Gramsci and Peasant Subalternity in India’ ', in Vinayak Chaturvedi (ed), Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial , (Verso , London 2000 ).
-
Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen & Diana Loxley (eds), Europe and Its Others , (University of Essex , Colchester 1985 ) two volumes .
-
Crystal Bartolovich & Neil Lazarus (eds), Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies , (Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 2002 ).
-
Bhabha Homi , '‘“Why Can’t A Civil Society Activist Become A Minister?”: Prachi Pinglay-Plumber Interviews Homi K. Bhabha’ ' (2014 ) Outlook India , January available at: <http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?289111> .
-
'‘Postcolonial Studies between the European Wars’ ' (2002 ) 2002 .
-
Brennan Timothy , Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right , (Columbia University Press , New York 2006 ).
-
Brenner Robert , '‘Marxism: Crisis or Renewal?’ ', in Erik Olin Wright, Andrew Levine & Elliot Sober (eds), Reconstructing Marxism: Essays on Explanation and the Theory of History , (Verso , London 1992 ).
-
Cabral Amilcar Handyside Richard , Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts , (Monthly Review Press , New York 1972 ).
-
Chakrabarty Dipesh , '‘Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change’ ' (2012 ) 43 (1 ) New Literary History : 1 -18 .
-
Chatterjee Partha , '‘Subaltern Studies and Capital’ ' (2013 ) 48 (37 ) Economic and Political Weekly : 69 -75 .
-
Vinayak Chaturvedi (ed), Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial , (Verso , London 2000 ).
-
Chibber Vivek , '‘How Does the Subaltern Speak?’ ' (2013 ) 10 Jacobin interview with Jonah Birch available at: <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/04/how-does-the-subaltern-speak/> .
-
Davidson Neil , '‘From Deflected Permanent Revolution to the Law of Uneven and Combined Development’ ' (2010 ) 128 International Socialism available at: <http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=686> .
-
Dussel Enrique , '‘Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of Modernity’ ', in Fredric Jameson & Masao Miyoshi (eds), The Cultures of Globalization , (Duke University Press , Durham, NC 1988 ).
-
Fabian Johannes , Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object , (Columbia University Press , New York 1983 ).
-
Gopal Priyamvada , '‘Reading Subaltern History’ ' (2004 ) 2004 .
-
Gramsci Antonio Hoare Quintin & Nowell-Smith Geoffrey , Selections from the Prison Notebooks , (Lawrence and Wishart , London 1971 ).
-
Habermas Jürgen , '‘Modernity: An Unfinished Project’ ', in Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves & Seyla Benhabib (eds), Critical Essays on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity , (The MIT Press , Cambridge, MA 1997 ).
-
Harootunian Harry , History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life , (Columbia University Press , New York 2000 ).
-
Heideman Paul , '‘A Note on Chibber, Chatterjee, and Guha’ ' (2013 ) Marxist Marginalia , May available at: <https://herrnaphta.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/a-note-on-chibber-chatterjee-and-guha/> .
-
Horkheimer Max & Adorno Theodor Cumming John , Dialectic of Enlightenment , (Verso , London 1979 [1944] ).
-
Jameson Frederic , '‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital’ ' (1986 ) 15 Social Text : 65 -88 .
-
Jameson Frederic , Postmodernism, or: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism , (Verso , London 1991 ).
-
Jameson Frederic , A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present , (Verso , London 2002 ).
-
Jameson Frederic , '‘The End of Temporality’ ' (2003 ) 29 (4 ) Critical Inquiry : 695 -718 .
-
Jani Pranav , '‘Marxism and the Future of Postcolonial Theory’ ' (2014 ) 92 International Socialist Review available at: <http://isreview.org/issue/92/marxism-and-future-postcolonial-theory-0> .
-
Kaiwar Vasant , 'Book Review: Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference by Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India by Ranajit Guha ' (2004 ) 12 (2 ) Historical Materialism : 189 -247 .
-
Kang Liu , Aesthetics and Marxism: Chinese Aesthetic Marxists and their Western Contemporaries , (Duke University Press , Durham, NC 2000 ).
-
Larsen Neil , '‘Imperialism, Colonialism, Postcolonialism: An Introduction’ ' (2001a ) Larsen 2001c .
-
Larsen Neil , '‘Marxism, Postcolonialism and The Eighteenth Brumaire’ ' (2001b ) Larsen 2001c .
-
Larsen Neil , Determinations: Essays on Theory, Narrative and Nation in the Americas , (Verso , London 2001c ).
-
Lazarus Neil , '‘The Fetish of “the West” in Postcolonial Theory’ ' (2002 ) 2002 .
-
Lazarus Neil , The Postcolonial Unconscious , (Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 2012 ).
-
Neil Lazarus (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies , (Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 2004 ).
-
Lazarus Neil & Varma Rashmi , '‘Marxism and Postcolonial Studies’ ', in Jacques Bidet & Stathis Kouvelakis (eds), Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism , (Brill , Leiden 2008 ).
-
Löwy Michael , The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development: The Theory of Permanent Revolution , (Haymarket Books , Chicago 2010 [1981] ).
-
Mamdani Mahmood , Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism , (Princeton University Press , Princeton 1996 ).
-
Mariátegui José Carlos Basadre Jorge , Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality , (University of Texas Press , Austin 1971 ).
-
Parry Benita , '‘Liberation Theory: Variations on Themes of Marxism and Modernity’ ' (2002 ) 2002 .
-
Prakash Gyan , '‘Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism’ ' (1994 ) 99 (5 ) The American Historical Review : 1475 -1490 .
-
Rosenberg Justin , '‘Basic Problems in the Theory of Uneven and Combined Development: A Reply to the CRIA Forum’ ' (2009 ) 22 (1 ) Cambridge Review of International Affairs : 107 -110 .
-
Rosenberg Justin , '‘Basic Problems in the Theory of Uneven and Combined Development. Part II: Unevenness and Political Multiplicity’ ' (2010 ) 23 (1 ) Cambridge Review of International Affairs : 165 -189 .
-
Rosenberg Justin , '‘The Philosophical Premises of Uneven and Combined Development’ ' (2013 ) 39 (3 ) Review of International Studies : 569 -597 .
-
Said Edward , Culture and Imperialism , (Chatto and Windus , London 1993 ).
-
Sarkar Sumit , '‘The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies’ ', in Writing Social History , (Oxford University Press , New Delhi 1997 ).
-
Schwarz Roberto , John Gledson (ed), Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture , (Verso , London 1992 ).
-
Schwarz Roberto Gledson John , A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism , (Duke University Press , Durham, NC 2001 ).
-
Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty , '‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ ', in Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture , (Macmillan , London 1988 ).
-
Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty , A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present , (Harvard University Press , Cambridge, MA 1999 ).
-
Spivak Gayatri Chakravorty , '‘Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital’ ' (2014 ) 27 (1 ) Cambridge Review of International Affairs : 184 -203 .
-
Taylor Chris , '‘Not Even Marxist: On Vivek Chibber’s Polemic against Postcolonial Theory’ ' (2013 ) Of C.L.R. James , April available at: <http://clrjames.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/not-even-marxist-on-vivek-chibbers.html> .
-
Trotsky Leon , History of the Russian Revolution, Volume One , (Victor Gollancz , London 1965 [1930] ).
-
Vaughan Megan , Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness , (Polity Press , Cambridge 1991 ).
-
Viswanathan Gauri , Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief , (Princeton University Press , Princeton, NJ 1998 ).
-
René Wellek (ed), Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays , (Prentice Hall , Upper Saddle River, NJ 1961 ).
-
Wood Ellen Meiksins , '‘Back to Marx’ ' (1997 ) 49 Monthly Review 2, available at: <http://monthlyreview.org/1997/06/01/back-to-marx/> .
-
WReC [Warwick Research Collective] , Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World Literature , (Liverpool University Press , Liverpool 2015 ).
-
Young Robert , '‘Postcolonial Remains’ ' (2012 ) 43 (1 ) New Literary History : 19 -42 .
-
3
Davidson 2010.
-
7
Anderson 1976, pp. 29, 30, 49, 74.
-
8
Anderson 1998, pp. 65, 66, 97.
-
9
Gopal 2004, pp. 139–61, 141, 142. In his all-too-short introduction to Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial Vinayak Chaturvedi has condensed the dynamics of the project: after fending off the accusation made by Indian Marxists of failing to engage with the long tradition of Marxist scholarship on peasant rebellion, prominent participants under the influence of Foucault during the mid-1980s became disenchanted with the search ‘for an essential structure to peasant consciousness’ and aspired to confront ‘subaltern critiques of all traditions which appeared to adhere uncritically to the “Enlightenment project” ’; later in the decade, there was ‘a shift towards critical theories of discourse which challenged Enlightenment thought’. Chaturvedi (ed.) 2000, pp. xi, xiii.
-
12
Kaiwar 2004, pp. 189–247, 209–10, 221–2.
-
13
Prakash 1994.
-
14
Viswanathan 1998.
-
15
Young 2012, p. 28.
-
16
Harootunian 2000, pp. 62–3; see also endnote 4 (p. 163).
-
17
Amin 1974. See also Dussel 1998.
-
18
Mariátegui 1971.
-
19
Cabral 1972.
-
23
Chatterjee 2013, p. 10.
-
24
Chakrabarty 2012, p. 4.
-
30
Spivak 1999. Such work offered propositions written in syntactically knotted prose and calculated to shock the unreconstructed left, while a daring stance of assaulting both conservatives and radicals attracted a wide circle of epigones and captivated untold numbers of students prone to imitating their cryptic styles. As an example, Spivak wrote of her intention to transcend the humanist limitations of Said’s Orientalism through executing ‘a Derridian move on Said’s Foucauldian reading of colonialism as a discursive practice’, proposing instead that ‘the abstract, textualist notion of deconstruction’ be equated ‘with a principle of anticolonialist/antimperialist subversion’ (cited in Larsen 2001b, p. 64). For a taste of transcendent-post-postcolonial style, see Bhabha 2014.
-
31
Larsen 2001a, pp. 64–5, and 2001b, pp. 28–9.
-
34
See Arnold 2000.
-
36
Gopal 2004, p. 157.
-
38
Löwy 2010, pp. 52, 68.
-
42
Jameson 1986.
-
43
Jameson 2003.
-
44
Jameson 1991, p. 307. As Perry Anderson long ago pointed out when commenting on Marx writing from the 1840s onwards, ‘Marx’s own conception of the historical time of the capitalist mode of production . . . was of a complex and differential temporality, in which episodes or eras were discontinuous from each other, and heterogeneous within themselves’ (Anderson 1984, p. 101). See also Anderson 2010.
-
46
Schwarz 1992, pp. 3, 29, 41; Schwarz 2001.
-
48
Horkheimer and Adorno 1979, p. 93. Jürgen Habermas has posited it as an unfinished project, requiring the reconstruction of a public sphere in which the critical reason that represents the best of the ‘democratic tradition’ might prevail, and not the instrumental reason of much modern practice. See Habermas 1997.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1547 | 133 | 15 |
| Full Text Views | 383 | 12 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 268 | 24 | 0 |
The Constraints of Chibber’s Criticism
A Review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Benita Parry in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
A position joining critical theory with the Marxist critique of imperialism informs the following discussion on the perceived shortcomings of Chibber’s study in its avowed claim to disavow postcolonial theory. Chibber’s insistence on reading Subaltern Studies as postcolonial theory is unsustainable in that it fails to address the epistemological premises of a theory adopted and not initiated by the project. Whereas Chibber does ably contest assertions made by Subaltern Studies concerning the special conditions of India halting capitalism’s universalising drive, his concentrated but narrowly-focused and repetitive criticism disregards prior work contiguous to his own specialism as well as disciplines other than the social sciences. Thus the explanatory power of Uneven and Combined Development in understanding the internal conditions of societies conscripted into capitalism is cast aside, as are the resources of Marxist cultural criticism in writing a metanarrative of these consequences in all of their aspects: economic, social, cultural and experiential – omissions that paradoxically are to the fore in postcolonial theory.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1547 | 133 | 15 |
| Full Text Views | 383 | 12 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 268 | 24 | 0 |