Spring Break
Are We "Post" Colonial?
A Conversation with Ania Loomba
Interview by Samantha Cohen
Issue date: 6/1/08 Section: Spring 2008
I was first introduced to Ania Loomba through her book, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (2005). After reading most of it, I thought that she would be a perfect fit for The Humanities Review. This issue, as well as the last, works (as the publication's title suggests) toward locating the relevance of the humanities in today's world. Loomba's book takes on this project too, specifically in the realm of postcolonial theory-and reminds us that we may not be as "post" colonial as we would like to think. Our conversation focused a great deal on the remnants, and new strains, of colonization that are so pervasive-and yet so naturalized-in our world. This is a topic that is addressed by several other pieces in this journal, directly and indirectly. Here, Loomba asks us to be more conscious of the political ramifications of our actions in the world, of the pitfalls of what we consider to be "progress."
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Your book Colonialism/Postcolonialism provides an encyclopedic overview of the field. Can you discuss the process of putting together such an extensive study?
Well, I wrote the book in New Delhi, India while I was teaching at Jawaharlal Nehru University. I read as many things as I could lay my hands on, but I had limited library resources there, and those were days before the Internet could be used as a resource in the way it now can. At the same time, reading and working in India made other readings and perspectives available to me which I might have been less aware of had I written the book in the U.S. So in some ways, I proceeded by thinking about what I had, rather than attempting to get everything, and plugging all possible loopholes. I worked outwards from areas I knew well, and followed the chain of thought where my materials led me.
In this book, you write that the term "postcolonialism" is one that "is useful only if we use it with caution and qualifications." Can you expand on this a bit?
Well, the term becomes a bit pointless if it is used as an umbrella term to describe all once-colonized societies as if there is nothing else to those societies, or as if colonialism is simply a by-gone thing, or to demarcate the so-called "third world" from the rest of the world. So for example, countries like India or Egypt or Kenya have much more to their history than just colonialism-the world "postcolonial" obscures that. There are neocolonial aspects to the current world order-the word postcolonial obscures that also. And often by calling only some parts of the world postcolonial, we obscure the fact that colonialism was a global system.
........
Your book Colonialism/Postcolonialism provides an encyclopedic overview of the field. Can you discuss the process of putting together such an extensive study?
Well, I wrote the book in New Delhi, India while I was teaching at Jawaharlal Nehru University. I read as many things as I could lay my hands on, but I had limited library resources there, and those were days before the Internet could be used as a resource in the way it now can. At the same time, reading and working in India made other readings and perspectives available to me which I might have been less aware of had I written the book in the U.S. So in some ways, I proceeded by thinking about what I had, rather than attempting to get everything, and plugging all possible loopholes. I worked outwards from areas I knew well, and followed the chain of thought where my materials led me.
In this book, you write that the term "postcolonialism" is one that "is useful only if we use it with caution and qualifications." Can you expand on this a bit?
Well, the term becomes a bit pointless if it is used as an umbrella term to describe all once-colonized societies as if there is nothing else to those societies, or as if colonialism is simply a by-gone thing, or to demarcate the so-called "third world" from the rest of the world. So for example, countries like India or Egypt or Kenya have much more to their history than just colonialism-the world "postcolonial" obscures that. There are neocolonial aspects to the current world order-the word postcolonial obscures that also. And often by calling only some parts of the world postcolonial, we obscure the fact that colonialism was a global system.
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