The location of culture

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THE LOCATION OF CULTURE Homi K. Bhabha

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London and New York

First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Reprinted 1994

© 1994 Homi K. Bhabha Phototypeset in 10/12pt Palatino by Intype, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by Re�wood Books Printed on acid free paper

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bhabha, Homi K. The location of culture/Homi K. Bhabha. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Literature, Modem-19th century-History and criticism. 2. Literature, Modem-20th century-History and criticism. 3. Imperialism in literature. 4. Colonies in literature. 5. Developing countries in literature. 6. Culture conflict in literature. 7. Politics and culture. I. Title. PN761.H43 1993 808'.066001-dc20 93--10757 ISBN 0-415-01635-5 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-0540MJ (pbk)

For Naju and Kharshedji Bhabha

CONTENTS

ix

Acknowledgements

(Introduction: Locations of culture . ::.m...\Y_hi · a me>..rement @! .. . ·c.hs. omething,�-b.ew.s .it sp ".-� . . .. · v_'!!ent �m!=ulati.onof.the_bey.ond.Jhill ! � ll!!l ����� tg}!lt>. . . . . . lways and ever differently the bridge escorts the �ve dra · gering and hastening ways of men to and fro, so that they may get , o other banks .... The bridge gathers as a passage that crosses.'8 e very concepts of homogenous national cultures, the consensual or contiguous transmission of historical traditions, or 'organic' ethnic communities as the grounds of cultural comparativism are in a profound process of redefinition. The hideous extremity of Serbian nationalism proves that the very idea of a pure, 'ethnically cleansed' national identity can only be achieved through the death, literal and figurative, of the complex interweavings of history, and the culturally contingent border­ lines of modem nationhoo This side of the psychosis of patriotic fervour, I like to think, there is overwhelming evidence of a more transnational and translational sense of the hybridity of imagined com­ munities. Contemporary Sri Lankan theatre represents the deadly con­ flict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese through allegorical references to State brutality in South Africa and Latin America; the Anglo-Celtic canon of Australian literature and cinema is being rewritten from the perspective of Aboriginal political and cultural imperatives; the South African novels of Richard Rive, Bessie Head, Nadine Gordirner, John Coetzee, are documents of a society divided by the effects of apartheid that enjoin the international intellectual community to meditate on the unequal, assyrnetrical worlds that exist elsewhere; Salman Rushdie writes the fabulist historiography of post-Independence India and Paki­ stan in Midnight's Children and Shame, only to remind us in The Satanic Verses that the truest eye may now belong to the migrant's doubl� vision; Toni MQrrison's Beloved revives the past of�slavery and its·m.ur:. derous rituals of possession and self-possession, in order to project a contemporary fable of a woman's history that is at the same time the narrative of an affective, historic memory of an emergent public sphere of men and women alike. What is striking about the 'new' internationalism is that _the_move from the specific to the general, from the material to the metaphoric, is not a smooth passage of transition and transcendence. The 'middle passage' of contemporary culture, as with slavery its�:?!Li.§___(lp:r�!'!_Ss�f �acement and disjunction that does notlota:liie-experience. Increas.:

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i.nfl�en.ce. �Jl:u� mtet:ests ot'Western' theory necessarily collusiye_ w.!fu the hegelll()nic role of the West as a power blO;C.Lls _the.Jangu.age of !heory merely 11nother power ploy of the culturally privileged Western 20

THE COMMITMENT TO THEORY

elit�_ to_E_�duc�_�gigQ\U"se .of.the Other .that .reinforce_s .its-oWILpo�er­

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A large film festival in the West - even an alternative or countercultural event such as Edinburgh's 'Third Cinema' Conference - never fails to reveal the disproportionate influence of the West as cultural forum, in all three senses of that word: as place of public exhibition and discussion, as place of judgement, and as market-place. An Indian film about the plight of Bombay's pavement-dwellers wins the Newcastle Festival which then opens up distribution facilities in India. The first searing expose of the Bhopal disaster is made for Channel Four. A major debate on the politics and theory of Third Cinema first appears in Screen, published by the British Film Institute. An archival article on the important history of neo-traditionalism and the 'popular' in Indian cinema sees the light of day in Framework.3 Among the major contribu­ tors to the development of the Third Cinema as precept and practice are a number of Third World film-makers and critics who are exiles or emigres in the West and live problematically, often dangerously, on the 'left' margins of a Eurocentric, bourgeois liberal culture. I don't think I need to add individual names or places, or detail the historical reasons why the West carries and exploits what Bourdieu would call its symbolic capital. The condition is all too familiar, and it is not my purpose here to make those important distinctions between different national situations and the disparate political causes and collective histories of cultural exile. I w��.to �15.e my_stand on tile �Nf!:ing !!'!:'��. of .c\lltw"�l displacement .:-that �gn!QJ:!!lsi� Jmy...pmfound-ox:--..'.authentiC.:...sense.o£. a :natiQ!!!.(_@� .or .!in 'org;tnic' intellectual - and ask what the function of a committed theoretical perspective might be, once the cultural and of the postcolonial world is taken _ as the paradigrusTonf_tb�--J:\Ybrid moment of politic&£h3!'.S�.:..!!�_r.e_fu�.J;niDsformg!iQ!\.'!LY