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Neil Lazarus, The Postcolonial Unconscious. Cambridge University Press, 2011.310 pp. ISBN 978-0521186261.
Never judge a book by its title? I must admit that I selected this book from a number proffered for review because of its title. The Postcolonial Unconscious suggested that here at last was the long-awaited systematic unhinging of psychology from Freud's normative nuclear family and its resituation within the social organisation and values of non- Western cultures. How wonderful it might be if Oedipus was rewritten within an extended family who worshipped their ancestors on a sunburnt plain far from any metropolis or bourgeoisie. I was disappointed, then, to discover that The Postcolonial Unconscious was not a thoroughgoing reconstruction of the psychology of Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, but a riff on Jameson's The Political Unconscious that attempted a reconstruction (via a return to Marxism) of what Lazarus calls "porno postcolonialism." Having said that, it behoves any critic to try to critique the book in front of them, rather than the ideallyimagined book it is not.
Lazarus' s book attempts an intervention into what I call second wave postcolonialism in order to correct its cautious deconstructive postmodern tendencies that in his view lack revolutionary fervour and material locatedness. First wave postcolonialism was embodied in the Marxistinspired nationalist resistance and independence movements after World War II. According to Lazarus second wave postcolonialism repudiated this heritage and has become an anaemic academic critique that "disavows nationalism as such and refuses an antagonistic or struggle -based model of politics in favour of one that emphasises '"cultural difference,' 'ambivalence' and the 'more complex cultural and political boundaries that exist on the cusp' of what 'modem' philosophy had imagined as determinate categories of social reality" (12). Lazarus sees this current postcolonialism as hegemonic, defanged, limp, cosmopolitan, complicit and institutionalised. I couldn't agree with him more. There is no doubt that the production of much postcolonial theory has occurred within the Western academy with its relatively lavish funding, low student numbers and easy access to resources. Surely it is not too controversial to argue that this location has affected the theory produced. Lazarus attempts a refreshing defence...