Essentialism
One of the central modes of representation is essentialism.
Diana Fuss says that essentialism
is most commonly understood as a belief in the real, true essence of
things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the 'whatness'
of a given entity. . . . Importantly, essentialism is typically defined
in opposition to difference. . . . The opposition is a helpful one in that
it reminds us that a complex system of cultural, social, psychical, and
historical differences, and not a set of pre-existent human essences, position
and constitute the subject. However, the binary articulation of essentialism
and difference can also be restrictive, even obfuscating, in that it allows
us to ignore or deny the differences within essentialism. (Essentially
Speaking [1989]: xi-xii).
As evidenced by the range of the critics quoted below, the term essentialism
spreads across multiple fields of study. The fact that this page exists
as part of a postcolonial studies web site points both to the broad-based
nature of postcolonial studies and to the debate on where the borders of
postcolonial studies should be drawn, if at all.
In
a specifically postcolonial context, we find essentialism in the reduction
of the indigenous people to an "essential" idea of what it means
to be African/Indian/Arabic, thus simplifying the task of colonization.
Nationalist and liberationist movements often "write back" and
reduce the colonizers to an essence, simultaneously defining themselves
in terms of an authentic essence which may deny or invert the values of
the ascribed characteristics (see discussions on reclaiming the term "Third
World," particularly in Chandra Mohanty's "Introduction"
to Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Mohanty,
Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres [1991] 1-47). Edward Said argues against
this inversion, suggesting that "in Post-colonial national states,
the liabilities of such essences as the Celtic spirit, négritude,
or Islam are clear: they have much to do not only with the native manipulators,
who also use them to cover up contemporary faults, corruptions, tyrannies,
but also with the embattled imperial contexts out of which they came and
in which they were felt to be necessary" (Culture and Imperialism
[1994] 16).
Salman
Rushdie describes essentialism as "the respectable child of old-fashioned
exoticism. It demands that sources, forms, style, language and symbol all
derive from a supposedly homogeneous and unbroken tradition. Or else"
("'Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist," Imaginary Homelands:
Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 [1991] 67). Wole Soyinka strikes a similar
note in his analysis of the potential pitfalls of an essentialist movement
such as Négritude, which "stayed within a pre-set system of
Eurocentric intellectual analysis of both man and his society, and tried
to re-define the African and his society in those externalized terms"
(Myth, Literature and the African World [1976] 129, 136).
While Rushdie
and Soyinka are right to point out the potential for locking oneself within
a framework set in place by the colonizers, other writers insist that some
subversive, empowering force can come from the employment of essentialist
strategies. While she recognizes the shortcomings, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak also pays a great deal of attention to what she
calls "strategic essentialism," as engaged in by the Subaltern
Studies group (see her essay "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,"
available from at least five different sources). Trinh T. Minh-Ha personalizes
this dilemma for us:
Every path I/i take is edged with thorns. On the one hand, i play into
the Savior's hands by concentrating on authenticity, for my attention is
numbed by it and diverted from other important issues; on the other hand,
i do feel the necessity to return to my so-called roots, since they are
the fount of my strength, the guiding arrow to which i constantly refer
before heading for a new direction. ("Writing Postcoloniality and
Feminism" in The Post-colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft,
Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin [1995] 268.
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
is certainly less troubled by this quandary. Ngugi complicates the issue
by placing the question of language
at the base of the debate: "[t]he choice of language and the use
to which language is put is central to a people's definition of themselves
in relation to their natural and social environment . . . by our continuing
to write in foreign languages, paying homage to them, are we not on the
cultural level continuing that neo-colonial slavish and cringing spirit?"
(Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature
[1986] 4, 26). Interestingly enough, where Ngugi would disagree with
Rushdie and Soyinka on issues of essentialism or authenticity, he also
differs on language: Ngugi has chosen to reject English for Gikuyu and
Kiswahili (in fact, Decolonising the Mind is Ngugi's "farewell
to English"), whereas Rushdie and Soyinka have chosen to write in
English.
These writers represent, at best, a mere cross-section of those who concern
themselves with questions of essentialism and authenticity. Ironically,
the very process of selecting these writers and these quotations depends
on the use of essentialism and representation. As Donna Landry and Gerald
MacLean, the editors of The Spivak Reader (1996), put it, one "cannot
simply assert, 'I will be anti-essentialist' and make that stick, for you
cannot not be an essentialist to some degree. The critique of essentialism
is predicated upon essentialism" (7).
Author: Brian Cliff, Spring 1996
Links
within this site
Postcolonial Studies at Emory
(Image of an "Homme Carrefour" from Donald J.
Cosentino's Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou [Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler
Museum of Cultural History, 1995].)
