Stoler, A (2002). Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power (pp. 1-78). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Berry,E (2008). The Zombie Commodity: Hair and the Politics of its Globalization. Postcolonial Studies, 11 (1), pp. 63-84.
Bannerji, H (2000). The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender (pp. 1-86). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
Stoler starts off with a Georges Hardy quote: “A man remains a man as long as he stays under the gaze of a woman of his race” (p.1) that highlights the main themes of gender roles, racial segregation and virility, and sexuality (regulation/ vulnerability/ control) which will be the focus throughout the first three chapters. Stoler implies that Hardy’s quote suggested a prescription that was not practiced, and reminds us that “the colonial “gaze” was to be at once broad, reflexive, and intimate” (p.1) and very much ingrained in the regulation of sexuality.
Stolers analysis of colonial race, sexuality and gender and the control exerted upon these “identities” is based heavily on Foucauldian theory and very much links to the ideas of power and (sexual) regulation that we looked at last week. Looking to question why sexual politics (specifically surrounding inter racial relations) were a primary concern in colonial policy, Stoler uses her research of the Netherlands Indies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to “trace how frequently the political and personal were meshed, to identify what was created as private and public, and to ask what affections were perceived as cultural defections on colonial terrain (p.7). Stoler argues for a deeper historical engagement with the range of practices in which racism was produced (p.13) and calls to re-examine colonial ideas and to “challenge certain givens of colonial histories” (p.21).
Until the 20th Century colonial administrators had imposed marriage restrictions and “promoted” relationships between European men and native women. They believed local women could help European men become acclimatized to the native culture, language, etc and that they would be invaluable in not only doing the domestic work, but also in minimizing the need of prostitutes (as well as preventing male homosexual relations). However, in the early twentieth century white women were introduced into the colonies to control male sexuality by preventing “mixed race” children, and therefore enforcing certain divisions between colonizer and colonizee based on race. Stoler shows that women were also strictly controlled and that “a denser spread of European women did not inadvertently produce stronger racial divisions” (p.33), suggesting that white endogamy was a strategic policy used to counter the social and political “problem” of mixed-blood children who could potentially blur the line between the superior “white colonial” race and the inferior “native colonized” race.
We see examples of race and gender discrimination in the sections on eugenics, on medical discourse, on race-specific rape laws (which only prosecuted black men) and on the social and political dilemma of how to educate white children born outside of Europe. We see that sexual control was a “fundamental class and racial marker implicated in a wider set of relations of power” (p.45) that was at the “core of defining colonial privilege and its boundaries” (p.39). Stoler ends by suggesting that further investigation into sexual control might show that it was “an instrumental image for the body politic… and itself fundamental to how racial policies were secured and how colonial projects were carried out” (p.78).
I was surprised to enjoy this reading as much as I did, not having much previous experience with postcolonial theory, and wrongly assuming a lack of interest. Being interested in Foucault I really enjoyed that Stoler often seemed to work through a Foucauldian lens and I would love to spend time discussing how this can be a positive, and a negative, way of looking back at colonial history.
I was also interested in what seemed to be the many contradictions that colonial administrators presented to their staff… that what was “socially lauded at one time (was) seen as a political menace at another” (p.54) seemed to be a common theme and I feel that it must have been incredibly confusing to be a European man living and working under those changing rules.
I’m always interested in how the personal becomes so public, and how sexual control seems to seep into just about everything we discuss – although I am biased being obviously interested in sexuality and any attempt to regulate or control “it”. Reading about sex tourism and globalized sex markets (for Health 333) this week I kept thinking about how Hardy’s quote, discouraging the globalization of sexuality, often seems to still be prevalent to a certain extent today…
In both essays by Bannerji she looks at Canada, as a nation, in relation to multiculturalism, sexism, racism, and imperialism/ globalization through an “antiracist feminist Marxist” lens of analysis. She looks at the current political scene in Canada (as well as speaking about the U.S., Britain, and India) and speaks of the gathering strength of right wing politics, here in Canada and abroad. She looks at Western capital and third world labour and talks about the alienness or “otherness” of hidden labour, and uses Marx’s idea of “hidden struggles” to analyze cultural political identities. She argues that globalization is threatening liberal democracies, especially in third worlds, and says that “popular multiculturalism… must articulate itself through a politicized understanding of cultural representation using antiracist and feminist class politics” (p.5). Concentrating on the politics of historical and cultural reifications that have created our current racist capitalist state Bannerji suggests that we have to work within the realities of colonial and Canadian history to express the inequalities of class and gender and race.
Bannerji argues that Canada’s “official” multiculturalism actually sets apart “immigrants of colour”. She looks at the history of the language of “women of colour” and some of the problems that arise in surrounding discourse. Looking at the idea of “otherness” Bannerji shows how “Canadian” status is not obtained through official citizenship, as individuals are still labeled as immigrants and minorities and talks about the paradox of belonging and non belonging. She states that “the making of Canada is accomplished through the exclusion and marginalization of women” (p.67) and looks at gendered issues such as the regulation of motherhood both within and between white and non-white women and the idea that poverty is “feminized” by the state and media (p.71). Bannerji ends the second essay by stating that “by its very organization of social communities in “race” and ethnic terms, the state constantly creates “Canadians” and “others”… this “racist culture” is in a mutually constitutive relationship with the state” (p.72).
I found these two essays to be full of excellent examples of how the history of colonialism is so intertwined with our culture today. I also found it interesting to see how current issues in Canadian politics can be looked at and analyzed differently. I think that Bannerji is trying to articulate a critique in order to challenge our current cultural inequalities surrounding race, class, and gender – possibly to start a “social revolution” that she alluded to earlier. I could be reading this entirely wrong, but in her critique of current Canadian politics it sounded like she was condemning us to live in a racist sexist culture indefinitely…
Berry uses the example of Victoria Beckham’s hair extensions to show readers how the “female body has become part of multidirectional global flow” (p. 63) where the exchange of human hair has become a commodity in the global capitalist arena. Berry suggests that bodily products exist as much outside of bodies as within or on them (p.64) and shows how the Global West’s desire to express a “femininity” that needs to be produced and consumed might contribute to reinscribing colonial boundaries.
Berry looks at one of the largest multinational hair extension companies, Great Lengths International, who obtain all their hair from Indian Temples, (excluding any non-Indian hair in a “hierarchy of beauty and femininity” p.73) and who have patented “the world’s only pre-bonded extension system” (p.64). Berry suggests that in the sanitation/ depigmentation/ pigmentation process a de-ethnicization occurs in which “ethnic differences in looks are fabricated in the interests of both social control and commodity innovation” (p.79). Berry shows how hair has historically been associated with femininity, youth, sexuality, etc and that in self-governing their hair females may perceive an “incompleteness” that they can attain through consumption of third world hair and a sense of control over their own bodies. Berry talks about the invisible labour behind the hair-market and uses Marxist ideas and reification to analyse the transnational hair market. She looks at the idea of cultural cannibalism, as well as at the state of hair, between life and death (hence “zombie” commodity) and how saving the “life” fails as the hair extensions can never last forever.
Berry theorizes that the global hair trade might be read as post imperialism and that mixed emotions towards wearing the hair of an “other” might reflect the “conflicted nature of colonial desire” (p. 80).
I found Berry’s practical application of gender and race in colonial theory to be a very useful way to look at global hair trade, and a fun article in general to read. I would be interested to discuss the idea of cultural cannibalism and Luce Irigary’s suggestion that it “implies an adoration and absorption of the other precisely because one identifies with the other” (p.77) as I really like this idea but am not sure that I understand it correctly…
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7 comments:
Once again I’ll start with a nod to Nat, good job. I too was surprised that I enjoyed Stoler’s work as much as I did. Honestly, I was not looking forward to this week’s readings, or perhaps more accurately, this week’s subject matter. Something about postcolonial theory rubs me the wrong way, but I’ll get to that in a bit when I talk about Berry’s article.
The fact that Stoler uses a Foucauldian lens to look at the system of colonialism is really interesting. Nat suggests that we ask the question: is Foucauldian theory a positive or negative tool in the examination of colonial history? I agree, we should discuss this question in class. I’ll start the ball rolling on that question by stating that I think it is very much a positive way to interpret and view colonialism. Stoler suggests that the domains of the intimate figured “so prominently” in the politics of colonialism, and that these domains help us identify what Foucault called the “microphysics of colonial rule.” To me, that microphysics of colonial rule unearths a colonial politics that seems completed centered on and infatuated with sex. Underneath the obvious economic reasons for European powers to reach out for resources and labour is a seedy underworld of sexual and race politics that seemed to preoccupy the colonial mind. But, as Stoler points out, “the colonial” is not someone who we can look back at, point to and say, “there’s a colonial and over there is the colonized.” The definition of colonizer and colonized was constantly in flux, ever changing over time and place.
The “colonizer” was the focus of Stoler’s talk that I attended with Kat last Thursday. (Kat, hopefully you can help me out with the details of the talk) She argues that the colonial, or the colonizer, is not someone or something that you can point to and identify as such; there isn’t one archetypical subject that can be considered “a colonial.” Colonials were different subjects with different politics across time, place and space. From there she argues that because there is no one colonial figure we need to be careful not to think we know what we will find when we look back and study colonialism. Also, Professor Geoff Smith posed an interesting question to Dr. Stoler that we could talk about this Tuesday if we have time. With the impending US election coming and the relative popularity of the John McCain and Sarah Palin ticket, he asked Dr. Stoler if she thought that Americans were just plain stupid, or colonized? She quite simply stated, I think they’re colonized. It blew me away.
Getting back to my original statement that something about postcolonial theory rubs me the wrong way, I will turn to Esther Berry’s article on hair as a global “zombie commodity.” First off, part of my initial problem with postcolonialism is that the subject of colonialism disturbs me. Like Stoler shows, the system of colonialism seemed to be concerned more with the politics of sexuality and race than anything else. Simply put, colonialism conjures up images of rape, sexual servitude and completely unjustifiable power relationships and legal frameworks and that’s really why I don’t find colonialism a particularly fun topic.
However, Berry’s article continued to “rub me the wrong way” in a completely different way because I just don’t buy into certain aspects of her argument and think she’s over-theorizing the international trade of hair. On one level I agree that the international hair industry shows the continuation of an unequal economic relationship between the first and third worlds. However, when she says that by “wearing human hair extensions, the body of the other is absorbed into the self; save for its sacred strands, it no longer exists,” she starts to lose me. (p.72) I think Berry reads too much into Victoria Beckham’s statement when she states that Beckham describes herself as “half Beckham, half Babushka.” (p. 72) The problem being that Beckham perhaps knows that her hair come from a Russian prisoner, but other people who encounter Beckham do not, nor do other consumers of hair extensions necessarily know where the hair comes from. In this way, I don’t think that the consumers of hair extensions are so actively consuming the otherness of the third-world subject. I don’t know, hopefully we can hash this out in class.
Nat and Marty, I was wondering, could you clarify what you mean by using Foucault to do this kind of analysis as “positive, and negative”? Do you mean effective versus non-effective? Are you speaking to something valuable but with problematic implications? Sorry to focus on technicalities, I just think I might be missing something that is obvious to everyone else.
Marty, colour me confused with your remarks from Ann Stoler’s lecture. Now, I’m going to preface this by saying that her talk was my first real exposure to post colonial theory (well, not really, I took the diasporas class in women’s studies, but we dealt more with trauma, psychoanalysis, and fiction), and there were whole portions of her lecture that went over my head. However, I understood her response to that question to be a flat out “no” to the oversimplification of colonizers and other leaders in power the left archetypes as evil as either “stupid” or “colonized.” I found her to be quite chastising of the question. If I see you in the office before class maybe we can try and figure out where the discrepancy in our interpretations comes from.
I am wondering if I fully grasp what Marty is saying about the majority of people encountering Beckham, as well as the majority of persons consuming Russian hair not knowing where the product comes from. I feel like we can get to what you are asking by combining Lukac’s reification and Marx’s fetishization of labour. Maybe??? I’m not sure quite how yet because I don’t know if I understand the question, but those feel like good starts to me.
Marty’s comments about postcolonism and sexual violence really resonated with me. I was struck especially with pages 44-45 where Stoler discussed how sex is used as a metaphor to describe the power imbalances and abuses in colonial history. Sex is persistently worked into English metaphor (and it’s not just me talking about Foucault’s intellectual masturbation!). I also think it is interesting that sex is used metaphorically in, what I would describe as, quite distasteful ways. I am thinking especially of the reemergence of “rape” in common vernacular to describe doing well on something, “I totally raped that exam” (an interesting juxtaposition to getting fucked by an exam, creating the dichotomy of fucked and rapist; implying sex is never consensual). This also applies to my problematic conflation of masturbation with useless self-indulgence. I know that sex permeates our language all the time, and we all know that much of English profanity surrounds sex, and that’s traced to Victorian erotophobia (though I am oversimplifying). What I am asking is why do we use rape as a metaphor to describe all the world’s degradation? Why do we continue to bind sex to suffering, or in rapes new found metaphorical home: conquering, overpowering, or in the case of an exam achieving something one probably worked quite hard for?
Why is it culturally more permissible to talk about “raping an exam” than “I totally colonized it”? On the one hand it implies that we construct rape as one of the worst things imaginable in the way it acts as a metaphor for all things awful (colonization, cultural genocide, pollution). On the other hand it makes colonization and these other things it stands in for unspeakable, we cannot name them for what they are.
Kat, I can see where your confusion stems from with the Foucault question after re-reading my comment. I don't see how using Foucault could be "negative" at all, so I guess I should re-frame the question to more of a discussion question of sorts. Something like: how does Stoler use Foucauldian theory, and what is truly Foucauldian about her approach. I was just trying to get us talking about Foucault again, that's all.
About the answer Ann Stoler gave at the lecture... I really thought she loved the question posed by Professor Smith and agreed with him that Americans aren't "stupid" so to speak, but rather "colonized" in a way. Colonized as in they've had a neo-liberal economic and political agenda forced on them, or made to think it's normal....or something like that. She said "bravo, bravo" after he posed the question and went on to talk about how she agreed with him and how her work is meant to shed light on today's political climate as well. I don't know? Maybe she liked the question but didn't think Americans are "colonized" so to speak. But I really think that's what she said. I know a lot of people who were there so I'll ask some of them what they thought of that particular question and answer exchange. Perhaps we could ask Prof. Smith too?
hi all, i won't be contributing to the blog this week. see you in class. - K
I’m with Marty on not really swallowing Berry’s article on hair extensions and the appropriation of transnational identities. I too think she’s reading too heavily into Beckham’s comments about being partly ‘Babushka’ because her hair came from a Russian inmate. In reading her article, the argument seemed a little contrived in attempting to prove a racist, colonial legacy in the women who wear these hair extensions.
Beckham’s comments do have ethnic implications, as her hair did come from a Russian prisoner, but is this really an appropriation of a third world identity? The article positions the Great Lengths hair company as racially exploiting the Indian hair market: sanitizing it, removing the pigments and preparing it for re-dying by the customer. Yet if Russian hair is the hottest on the market, what racial identities are actually being exploited by Beckham? The hair is after all coming from one white girl to another; where is the transnational exotic appropriation?
In her conclusion Berry states that “the excessive nature of human hair extensions is omnipresent no matter how much one tries to eradicate this excess through hygiene and marketing...”[80] I can see an anti-capitalist argument here, but this hair extension scenario is only an arms length from something like “Cuts for Cancer” where donors shave their heads or cut off 10 inches of hair to be made into wigs for sick people. Are these recipients anyhow appropriating the transnational or racial identities of the hair donator? Is the Beckham scenario only pejorative because of the amount of money she is paying for the hair? Is it because she is healthy and does not need a hair donation? Is it only the physical wearing of the hair that is the appropriation?
I think capitalism is the confounding variable here, not racist exploitation. Obviously this topic treads racial boundaries because it is bought and sold by various ethnicities, but I don’t believe it is the central tenant of hair extensions making them fundamentally racist or colonial in nature. As a further point of order, since when is Russia a third world country? Wasn’t the three world system build around communist nations being the 2nd world? And since then has Russia not increased its standard of living beyond 2nd or at least 3rd world status?
Soler’s article on the other hand I found fascinating. The lens of sexual control being at the fore of colonialism is not something you would readily imagine. Her article was very convincing in illustrating a Foucaultian sense of power and control through sex, a topic we discussed earlier this term. Particularly convincing was the outlined blatant vacillation by those in power of what was moral and proper with reference to concubines, marriage and prostitutes. A lot of discussion topic from these readings, even without the Canadian article by Bannergi.
Thanks, Nat, for your summary and thanks to everyone for the interesting questions you raise. It seems that somewhere along the way the Bannerji reading was lost, so that some of you had it in your packet and some of you did not (unless Nat dug it out from the library?). We can talk about it in class, perhaps, but for now I will stick to the Stoler and the Berry.
It seems to me that there are a number of tasks we need to undertake, which include:
1) A discussion of the origins and purpose of postcolonial theory.
2) A consideration of the place of Foucault in the postcolonial "canon." Stoler is a crucial figure here because an earlier book, Race and the Education of Desire, offers a prolonged engagement with Foucault's claim that racism was born in late-nineteenth century Europe. Other scholars tend to apply Foucault's theories without questioning the historical assumptions on which they are built, but Stoler begins her analysis with such questions and is able to show how the history of sexuality in modern Europe cannot be disentangled from the history of colonialism. Most significantly, she argues that Europe's gender and sexual regimes were constituted by colonial discourses and practices, not that the latter were an effect of the former as Foucault suggests. Needless to say, she still finds him extremely useful. What her work highlights, beyond the key empirical insight about the relationship of the "heart" of empire to the colonies, is the importance of historicizing our theory--a point we should definitely pursue.
3) Some clarification about the place of class in both Stoler's and Berry's respective projects. Stoler argues that white women were encouraged to move to the Netherlands East Indies not simply because of racial anxieties, but also because of class fractures and tensions. As Kat points out, Berry is interested in the hidden labour that constitutes the global trade in hair, as well as the way that ethnic differences are commodified and consumed.
4) A discussion about what constitutes "reading too much into" X or Y cultural phenomenon. Does Berry read too much into Beckham's claim, or does she offer the story up as a starting place from which to analyse the global trade in hair? Marty and Andrew both raise interesting questions about the consciousness of the consumer who purchases the hair extensions, but I wonder to what extent that matters to Berry's analysis? And, if it doesn't matter, is her analysis still of some use?
5) Both Kat and Marty (with reference to Geoff) suggest the importance of thinking about the language we use to categorize and describe particular behaviors. I'm not sure where exactly to take this discussion, but it seems ripe for further analysis.
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