Page 158 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

ContCultural Theory Text Pages 4/4/03 1:42 PM Page 149

The cultural politics of difference

argued against the entire postcolonial argument on the grounds
that it substitutes textualism for activism and nation for class
(Ahmad, 1992, pp. 92–3). Moreover, in Ahmad’s view, much of
the intellectual legitimacy attaching to postcolonial theory
actually derived from its deep complicity with the structures of
social privilege enjoyed by ‘First World’ and ‘Third World’ intel-
lectuals and by ‘Third World’ ruling classes. ‘The East’, he wryly
observed, ‘seems to have become, yet again, a career—even for
the “Oriental” this time, and within the Occident too’ (p. 94). Any
commentary on these debates from a ‘First World’ source is open,
by a roughly similar logic, to the accusation of its own complic-
ity in the profits of imperialism. But let us here hazard the
observation that such textualist politics as post-structuralism
enjoins do generally function much as Ahmad argues: to defer
activism and to bestow the spurious illusion of political radical-
ism on what is in fact an almost entirely conventional academic
activity. Doubtless, the possibilities for activism are peculiarly
circumscribed for a Palestinian exile in New York. Doubtless,
professors of literature are professionally obliged to have a pre-
occupation with problems of textuality, and doubtless Said and
Spivak are as entitled to their profession as Ahmad is to his.
Doubtless, Said’s more popular writings (Said, 1986; Said, 1979)
also attest to a more activist political intention than Ahmad
appeared to allow. But whatever these particular qualifications,
the more general logic of post-structuralism does indeed seem
to lead in the direction to which Ahmad points. As Eagleton has
observed: ‘Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of
theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of ’68... blending
the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical
melancholia of its aftermath’ (Eagleton, 1992, p. 6).

Postcolonialism in settler societies
That this is so becomes particularly apparent in the more recent
appropriations of postcolonial theory by ‘First World’ intellec-
tuals. These are increasingly premised on the dubious assumption
that the settler societies of the Americas and Australasia can be
meaningfully assimilated to the formerly colonised societies of

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