Empire (24 page)

intimacy, however, in no way blurs the division between the two

identities in struggle, but only makes more important that the

boundaries and the purity ofthe identities be policed.
The identity

of the European Self is produced in this dialectical movement.
Once the colonial subject is constructed as absolutely Other, it can in turn

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be subsumed (canceled and raised up) within a higher unity. The

absolute Other is reflected back into the most proper. Only through

opposition to the colonized does the metropolitan subject really

become itself. What first appeared as a simple logic of exclusion,

then, turns out to be a negative dialectic ofrecognition. The colo-

nizer does produce the colonized as negation, but, through a dialec-

tical twist, that negative colonized identity is negated in turn to

found the positive colonizer Self. Modern European thought and

the modern Selfare both necessarily bound to what Paul Gilroy

calls the ‘‘relationship ofracial terror and subordination.’’26 The

gilded monuments not only ofEuropean cities but also ofmodern

European thought itselfare f

ounded on the intimate dialectical

struggle with its Others.

We should be careful to note that the colonial world never

really conformed to the simple two-part division of this dialectical

structure. Any analysis ofeighteenth-century Haitian society before

the revolution, for example, cannot consider only whites and blacks

but must also take into account at least the position ofmulattoes,

who were at times united with whites on the basis oftheir property

and freedom, and at times united with blacks because of their

nonwhite skin. Even in simple racial terms this social reality demands

at least three axes ofanalysis—but that, too, fails to grasp the real

social divisions. One must also recognize the conflict among whites

of different classes and the interests of the black slaves as distinct

from those of the free blacks and maroons. In short, the real social

situation in the colonies never breaks down neatly into an absolute

binary between pure opposing forces. Reality always presents prolif-

erating multiplicities. Our argument here, however, is not that

reality presents this facile binary structure but that colonialism, as

an abstract machine that produces identities and alterities, imposes

binary divisions on the colonial world. Colonialism homogenizes

real social differences by creating one overriding opposition that

pushes differences to the absolute and then subsumes the opposition

under the identity ofEuropean civilization.
Reality is not dialectical,
colonialism is.

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The work ofnumerous authors, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and

Franz Fanon, who have recognized that colonial representations

and colonial sovereignty are dialectical in form has proven useful

in several respects. First ofall, the dialectical construction demon-

strates that there is nothing essential about the identities in struggle.

The White and the Black, the European and the Oriental, the

colonizer and the colonized are all representations that function

only in relation to each other and (despite appearances) have no

real necessary basis in nature, biology, or rationality. Colonialism

is an abstract machine that produces alterity and identity. And yet

in the colonial situation these differences and identities are made

to function as if they were absolute, essential, and natural. The first

result ofthe dialectical reading is thus the denaturalization ofracial

and cultural difference. This does not mean that once recognized

as artificial constructions, colonial identities evaporate into thin air;

they are real illusions and continue to function as if they were

essential. This recognition is not a politics in itself, but merely the

sign that an anticolonial politics is possible. In the second place, the

dialectical interpretation makes clear that colonialism and colonialist

representations are grounded in a violent struggle that must be

continually renewed. The European Selfneeds violence and needs

to confront its Other to feel and maintain its power, to remake

itselfcontinually. The generalized state ofwar that continuously

subtends colonial representations is not accidental or even un-

wanted—violence is the necessary foundation of colonialism itself.

Third, posing colonialism as a negative dialectic ofrecognition

makes clear the potential for subversion inherent in the situation.

For a thinker like Fanon, the reference to Hegel suggests that the

Master can only achieve a hollow form of recognition; it is the

Slave, through life-and-death struggle, who has the potential to

move forward toward full consciousness.27 The dialectic ought to

imply movement, but this dialectic ofEuropean sovereign identity

has fallen back into stasis. The failed dialectic suggests the possibility

ofa proper dialectic that through negativity will move history

forward.

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The Boomerang of Alterity

Many authors, particularly during the long season ofintense decolo-

nization struggles from the end of World War II through the 1960s,

argued that this positive dialectic ofcolonialism that founds and

stabilizes European sovereign identity should be challenged by a

properly negative and hence revolutionary dialectic. We cannot

defeat the colonialist production of alterity, these authors claimed,

simply by revealing the artificiality of the identities and differences

created—and thereby hoping to arrive directly at an affirmation of

the authentic universality ofhumanity. The only possible strategy

is one ofreversal or inversion ofthe colonialist logic itself. ‘‘The

unity which will come eventually, bringing all oppressed peoples

together in the same struggle,’’ Sartre proclaims, ‘‘must be preceded

in the colonies by what I shall call the moment ofseparation or

negativity: this antiracist racism is the only road that will lead to the

abolition of racial differences.’’28 Sartre imagines that this negative

dialectic will finally set history in motion.

The negative dialectic has most often been conceived in cul-

tural terms, for example, as the project of ne´gritude—the quest to

discover the black essence or unveil the black soul. According to

this logic, the response to colonialist representations has to involve

reciprocal and symmetrical representations. Even ifthe blackness

ofthe colonized is recognized as a production and a mystification

constructed in the colonial imaginary, it is not denied or dispelled

on account ofthat, but rather affirmed—as essence! According to

Sartre, the revolutionary poets ofne´gritude, such as AimeĆeśaire

and Leópold Senghor, adopt the negative pole that they have inher-

ited from the European dialectic and transform it into something

positive, intensifying it, claiming it as a moment of self-conscious-

ness. No longer a force of stabilization and equilibrium, the domesti-

cated Other has become savage, truly Other—that is, capable of

reciprocity and autonomous initiative. This, as Sartre announces so

beautifully and ominously, is ‘‘the moment of the boomerang.’’29

The negative moment is able to operate a reciprocal destruction of

the European Self—precisely because European society and its val-

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ues are founded on the domestication and negative subsumption

ofthe colonized. The moment ofnegativity is posed as the necessary

first step in a transition toward the ultimate goal ofa raceless society

that recognizes the equality, freedom, and common humanity of

all.30

Despite the coherent dialectical logic ofthis Sartrean cultural

politics, however, the strategy it proposes seems to us completely

illusory. The power ofthe dialectic, which in the hands ofcolonial

power mystified the reality ofthe colonial world, is adopted again

as part ofan anticolonial project as ifthe dialectic were itselfthe

real form ofthe movement ofhistory. Reality and history, however,

are not dialectical, and no idealist rhetorical gymnastics can make

them conform to the dialect.

The strategy ofnegativity, however, the moment ofthe boo-

merang, appears in an entirely different light when it is cast in a

nondialectical form and in political rather than cultural terms. Fanon,

for example, refuses the cultural politics of ne´gritude with its con-

sciousness ofblack identity and poses the revolutionary antithesis

instead in terms ofphysical violence. The original moment of

violence is that ofcolonialism: the domination and exploitation of

the colonized by the colonizer. The second moment, the response

ofthe colonized to this original violence, can take all sorts of

perverted forms in the colonial context. ‘‘The colonized man will

first manifest this aggressiveness which has been deposited in his

bones against his own people.’’31 The violence among the colonized

population, sometimes thought to be the residues ofancient tribal

or religious antagonisms, is really the pathological reflections ofthe

violence of colonialism that most often surfaces as superstitions,

myths, dances, and mental disorders. Fanon does not recommend

that the colonized should flee or avoid the violence. Colonialism

by its very operation perpetuates this violence, and ifit is not

addressed directly, it will continue to manifest itself in these destruc-

tive, pathological forms. The only path to health that Doctor Fanon

can recommend is a reciprocal counterviolence.32 Moreover, this

is the only path to liberation. The slave who never struggles for

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freedom, who is simply granted the permission of the master, will

forever remain a slave. This is precisely the ‘‘reciprocity’’ that Mal-

colm X proposed as a strategy to address the violence ofwhite

supremacy in the United States.33

For both Fanon and Malcolm X, however, this negative mo-

ment, this violent reciprocity, does not lead to any dialectical synthe-

sis; it is not the upbeat that will be resolved in a future harmony.

This open negativity is merely the healthy expression ofa real

antagonism, a direct relation offorce. Because it is not the means

to a final synthesis, this negativity is not a politics in itself; rather,

it merely poses a separation from colonialist domination and opens

the field for politics. The real political process of constitution will

have to take place on this open terrain offorces with a positive

logic, separate from the dialectics of colonial sovereignty.

ThePoisoned Gift of National Liberation

Subaltern nationalism has indeed, as we argued in the previous

section, served important progressive functions. The nation has

served among subordinated groups both as a defensive weapon

employed to protect the group against external domination and as

a sign ofthe unity, autonomy, and power ofthe community.34

During the period ofde-colonization and after, the nation appeared

as the necessary vehicle for political modernization and hence the

ineluctable path toward freedom and self-determination. The prom-

ise ofa global democracy among nations, including their formal

equality and sovereignty, was written into the original Charter of

the United Nations: ‘‘The Organization and its Members . . . shall

act in accordance with . . . the principle ofthe sovereign equality

ofall its members.’’35 National sovereignty means freedom from

foreign domination and the self-determination of peoples, and thus

signals the definitive defeat of colonialism.

The progressive functions of national sovereignty, however,

are always accompanied by powerful structures of internal domina-

tion. The perils ofnational liberation are even clearer when viewed

externally, in terms ofthe world economic system in which the

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‘‘liberated’’ nation finds itself. Indeed, the equation nationalism

equals political and economic modernization, which has been her-

alded by leaders ofnumerous anticolonial and anti-imperialist strug-

gles from Gandhi and Ho Chi Minh to Nelson Mandela, really

ends up being a perverse trick. This equation serves to mobilize

popular forces and galvanize a social movement, but where does

the movement lead and what interests does it serve? In most cases

it involves a
delegated
struggle, in which the modernization project also establishes in power the new ruling group that is charged with

carrying it out. The revolution is thus offered up, hands and feet

bound, to the new bourgeoisie. It is a February revolution, one

might say, that should be followed by an October. But the calendar

has gone crazy: October never comes, the revolutionaries get