COMMENT
Theory as politics
SHELLEY WALIA
|
An engaging, participatory involvement with theory can make a difference in society.
|
A formidable history stares us in the face; worlds in collision necessitate the upsurge of `an absolute truth'.
TO be or not to be a theory specialist. That is the principle concern of a world ridden by problems of subjectivity, of degradation of human labour and an ever-growing chasm between the elite and the poor. One wonders if one can really reject the schools of post-structuralism or, for that matter, any of the "postist" ways of looking at the world, Western or the Third World. The rejection of totalisation, of objectivity, of the singular power of master narratives, has at least lent an impetus to students of cultural theory to face up to the problematic nature of geographical space, of capitalist strategies of hegemony and of the deconstruction of the human subject, not forgetting the underlying concepts of slippage or absence that enables a reader to grasp the importance of what remains unsaid more than what is said. Emancipatory politics, combined with the rejection of the notion of the "centre, origin or the end" initiated a revolutionary fervour in the minds of the students of cultural studies. But what seemed to be steeped in radical critique gave way to political apathy. The spark of theory slowly died out, only to be rekindled by those who saw the reality of a civilisation literally under fire and where the conspicuous return of the repressed demanded the politics of recognition.
Literature and politics
It cannot be denied that no literature can be apolitical. For anyone who has read Edward Said, it becomes clear that the very teaching of literature in the colonies had the underlying agenda of promoting the ruling power interests of the Empire. The chief motives behind English as an academic discipline was to ensure that the middle class fell in line with the social and cultural norms of the English elite. But this view overlooked the necessity of studying popular culture where Elvis Presley becomes as important as John Donne and soap operas as viable for research as sonnets.
There is a need for understanding the contemporary imbroglios of technology and politics so as to move away from literary theory to cultural theory or what we may call critical realism, with the purpose of equipping students with the analytical tools and philosophical grounding for the social sciences and humanities geared towards understanding the relevance of knowledge and power, ideology and counter discursive practices and movements of resistance within society, as well as vital social concerns about the future of Marx or the mechanics of cyberspace. The impact of eminent theoreticians like Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Said or Terry Eagleton and many more had set the trend for the radical change in research methodologies in the humanities and the social sciences. Politics and aesthetics began to go hand in hand, and often a political approach tended to supersede the aesthetic as is amply clear in the program of postcolonial cultural studies. But this exercise gradually withdrew from real politics and result-oriented dissidence writing; the obsession of many of these theory experts who initially held out the promise of political transformation began to immerse themselves in, as Terry Eagleton humorously writes, in subjects like body piercing and the French kiss. It was the final extinction of the revolutionary fervour.
Understandably then, it has been regretted that all that had been envisaged in the cultural studies program has not stood up to its original ambitions. Though revisionist tendencies in issues of race, nation, gender, class, and subject were underscored over the last couple of decades, the project has largely got bogged down in the classroom where theory is day after day regurgitated with no visible outcome of a praxis that may allow theory to cross the threshold into the arena of meaningful politics and vehemently oppose a free-wheeling consumerist society. In a world taken over by Anglo-American unilateralism along with the underlying smugness of the affluent, an engaging participatory involvement with theory can be a "formidable presence" in our society.
Religion and revolution, evil and the metaphysical question of survival in a war-ridden dismaying world where humanitarianism is at its lowest ebb, cultural theory has to be incorporated in the very analytical skills of a student so that it becomes a revolutionary pedagogical practice adequate enough to build a temperament of oppositional thinking. As Terry Eagleton writes, "We can never be `after theory', in the sense that there can be no reflective human life without it... It cannot afford simply to keep recounting the same narratives of class, race and gender, indispensable as these topics are. It needs to chance its arm, break out of a rather stifling orthodoxy and explore new topics, not least those of which it has so far been unreasonably shy".
Resisting master narratives
Master narratives of neoliberal capitalism that visibly point towards the end of history and ideology, of world-wide terrorism that threatens the Western way of life, now stand as dominant forces in our global history where "incredulity" towards them has to be replaced by a strident and ambitious plan of political activism. With Baudrillard in one hand and the Bible in the other, an all-encompassing view is possible to comprehend the pressing issues of fundamentalism, evil and death, of madness and reason. A formidable history stares us in the face; worlds in collision necessitate the upsurge of "an absolute truth" so far denied by postmodernism.
A socialist society where the premier existence of an unexploitative community that respects fundamental human rights, and an ethical social framework, must underpin any theoretical prototype that demands a rigorous and expansive counter discourse to the reality of social engineering and the manufacturing of consent. Moreover, there has to be a willingness to entertain new ways of understanding various and multiple discourses that jostle in our world, illuminating, in the words of Ernesto Laclau, "the complex discursive strategies through which social relations take shape". Theory, thus, is the practice of "thinking hard" which throws up the "possibility of the hitherto unthought-of" or, as Edward Said saw it, a way of recognising the "counterpoint", or in other words, a play of domination and resistance.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
