Moving beyond Edward Said: Homi Bhabha and the Problem of Postcolonial Representation

Authors

  • Sumit Chakrabarti Department of English, Rabindra Bharati University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/v10223-012-0051-3

Keywords:

Postcolonialism, representation, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, postmodernism, Third World/First World, mimicry, religious nationalism, ambivalence

Abstract

The essay takes up the issue of postcolonial representation in terms of a critique of European modernism that has been symptomatic of much postcolonial theoretical debates in the recent years. It tries to enumerate the epistemic changes within the paradigm of postcolonial theoretical writing that began tentatively with the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978 and has taken a curious postmodern turn in recent years with the writings of Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha. The essay primarily focuses on Bhabha’s concepts of ambivalence and mimicry and his politics of theoretical anarchism that take the representation debate to a newer height vis-ŕ-vis modes of religious nationalism and Freudian psychoanalysis. It is interesting to see how Bhabha locates these within a postmodern paradigm.

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Author Biography

Sumit Chakrabarti, Department of English, Rabindra Bharati University

Sumit Chakrabarti teaches in the Department of English, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, India. He was a Visiting Faculty in the Department of British and Commonwealth Studies, University of Lodz, Poland. He was also a United States, Department of State sponsored academic visitor at The Commonwealth Centre for the Humanities and Society, the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA from June to August, 2009. His chief academic interests are postcolonial studies and culture theory.

 

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Published

2012-11-01

How to Cite

Chakrabarti, S. (2012). Moving beyond Edward Said: Homi Bhabha and the Problem of Postcolonial Representation. International Studies. Interdisciplinary Political and Cultural Journal, 14(1), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.2478/v10223-012-0051-3

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Articles