The fact that indigenous societies had their own systems of order was dismissed through what Albert Memmi referred to as a series of negations: they were not fully human, they were not civilized enough to have systems, they were not literate, their languages and modes of thought were inadequate. As Fanon and later writers such as Nandy have claimed, imperialism and colonialism brought complete disorder to colonized peoples, disconnecting them from their histories, their landscapes, their languages, their social relations and their own ways of thinking, feeling and interacting with the world. It was a process of systematic fragmentation which can still be seen in the disciplinary carve-up of the indigenous world: bones, mummies and skulls to the museums, art work to private collectors, languages to linguistics, 'customs' to anthropologists, beliefs and behaviors to psychologists. To discover how fragmented this process was one needs only to stand in a museum, a library, a bookshop, and ask where indigenous peoples are located. Fragmentation is not a phenomenon of postmodernism as many might claim. For indigenous peoples fragmentation has been the consequence of imperialism.
[...]
Coming to know the past has been part of the critical pedagogy of decolonization. To hold alternative histories is to hold alternative knowledges. The pedagogical implication of this access to alternative knowledges is that they can form the basis of alternative ways of doing things. Transforming our colonized views of our own history (as written by the West), however, requires us to revisit, site by site, our history under Western eyes. This in turn requires a theory or approach which helps us to engage with, understand then act upon history. [...] Telling our stories from th epast, reclaiming the past, giving testimony to the injustices of the past are all strategies which are commonly employed by indigenous peoples struggling for justice. On the international scene it is extremely rare and unusual when indigenous accounts are accepted and acknowledged as valid interpretations of what has taken place. And yet, the need to tell our stories remains the powerful imperative of a powerful form of resistance.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
On Fragmentation and Alternative Histories
From Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodology:
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2 comments:
"The pedagogical implication of this access to alternative knowledges is that they can form the basis of alternative ways of doing things. Transforming our colonized views of our own history (as written by the West), however, requires us to revisit, site by site, our history under Western eyes. This in turn requires a theory or approach which helps us to engage with, understand then act upon history. [...]"
I found this to be really powerful. The way in which history is construed has powerful political consequences, and may either limit or encourage emancipatory struggle (as the quote makes clear). And the explicit call for not only revolutionary action, but revolutionary theory (that mobilizes the experiences of the oppressed that have been crushed under the boot of imperialism) sounds right on to me.
Another key example of this fragmentation that comes to mind is Bolivia, and the way that neoliberal policy "experts" speak about how to "control" the large indigenous population there who has, after centuries of struggle, finally taken control of the national state apparatus. The indigenous radicals, aware that their oppression has been enforced at gunpoint many times over throughout the history of European involvement on the continent, are arming themselves, only to be decried by the likes of the Economist and the NYTimes as deranged extremists.
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