Reading DissemiNation

I. Homi K. Bhabha , Nation and Narration (London: Routledge , 1990), p. 29,

Ibid., p. 3. However. we should also not underestimate the extent to which the 'doubling' of the sign can also be stilled by the 'coolness' of academic argument.

Ibid. p. 144.

Bhabha's theoretical framework in Nation and Narratum emerges from the prior essays on colonial discourse. Here I ain making use of Bhabha's formulation of the process of subjectification and idenlificatioin that he set out in his essay. The Other Question, Sceen Vol. 24, December 1983 ). A useful essay that can serve as a bridge between the essay on colonial discourse and 'DissemiNation' is his Comportment to Theory New Formations (vol 5, 1988). pp. 9-21

Bhabha. op cit.. in note I. p 307

Ibid. p 2.

Ibid., p. 298.

The immediate difference in the two projects is apparent in the use of texts which function as representations of particular positions. For instance, in the colonical context. Bhabba relies on documents by the colonisers, missionaries, etc. and through them he can explore the dissonance between the official worldview and the native order However, in the context of the nation-state. Ihe sources do not proceed from such polarities. While Bhabha's strategy is, once again, to explore the shifts in meaning. the ruptures in this instance are far more problematical because they are already internalised. Hence, he draws on literary and theoretical material whose location within metropolitan culture is ambivalent.

Fichte quoted in E. Kedourie , Nationalism (Hutchinson University Library, 1960), p. 40.

See, for instance, Bush's charming comments on the limits to positive discrimination and civil rights: 'You can I put a sign on a pig and say it is a horse', The Guardian. Tuesday. 4 June 1991

Bhahha , op cit, in note I, p. I.

R. Senneti. The Fall of Public Man (London Faher & Faher, 1977).

For an alternative view, to which my critique is very much in debt, see Ashis Nandy , The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism ( Delhi Oxford University Press, 1983 ).

Here, I am drawing on the marvellous conclusion that Paul Carter puts forward in The Road to Botany Bay (London: Faber & Faher. 1987) and Foucault's proposition in 'The Eye of Power' in Colin Cordon (ed.), Knowledge/Powwer Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980).

G. Simmel. The Philosophy of Money (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 69.

Quoted in R. Bartra. 'Mexican Oficia The Splendors and the Miseries of Culture', Third Text (Vol. 14, Spring. 1991). p. 15.

In this sense, the time of cultural difference is very close to Walter Benjamin's notion of 'Jetzlzieit'. See Harry John, (trans.). 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'. Illuminations (New York : Schocken, 1969).

Rhabha. op cit, in note 1, p. 300. See for instance, The Europpean. 10-12 May 1991, a weekly publication which calls itself 'Europe's first national newspaper'. and which chose to celebrate its first birthday with the following front page headline: 'Europe braced for migrant Invasion.'

Stuart Hall's attempt to uncouple the concept of ethnicity from an exclusive linkage to nation and race and to realign it to a new sense of identity which asserts the specificity of cultural experience is a parallel project to Bhabha's differentiation between cultural diversity and cultural difference. Both are contesting the truncation of cultural difference into an exotic commodity that merely serves the tourist Industry. See Stuart Hall. 'New Ethnicities', in K. Mercer (ed.). Black Film British Cinema (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts. No. 7, 1988).

Bhabha , op. cit, in note 1. p. 305.

For a Crystal clear account of the duat process of displacement and correspondence in the act of translation, see Homi Bhabha , 'The Third Space ', in Johathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity (London: Lawrence & Wisbart. 1990), pp. 209. 10.

For a brilliant example of the complex cultural inscriptions of immigrant artists, as well as a critique of the notion that only the bourgeios white male could be conceived as a fully formed historical subject, see Rasheed Araeen (curator). The Other Story: AfroAsian Artists in Postwar Britain (London: Hayward Gallery. 1989).

To be distinguished from the anthropological sense that involves the inversion of two or more stable, but very different, points, or a passage of initiation which is an irreversible process. See A. Van Gennep. (trans.), M.B. Vizeden and G.L. Caffee, The Rites of Passage (London: Roultedge and Kegan Pad, 1960).

Bhabha , op.cit, in note 1. p. 300.

R.I. Young , White Mythologies; Writing History and the West (London : Routledge, 1990). p. 144.

Bhabha , op.cit, in note 1, p. 313.

Young , op.cit, in note 25, p. 151.

Babha , 'The Other Question '. op.cit, in note 4, p. 23.

H. Bhabha , 'Difference, Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonialism', In F. Barker , et al., (eds). The Polities of Theory (Colchester: University of Essex, 1983), p. 204,

H. Bhabha , 'The Other Question' op. cit, in note 4, p. 18.

H. Bhabha , 'Of Man and Mimiery: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse', October (Vol. 28. Spring. 1984). p. 127,

H. Bhabha , 'Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Free Outside Delhi, May 1817', Critical Inquiry (Vol. 12. Aulumn 1985), p. 148.

H. Bhabha. 'What Does The Black Man Want?', New Formations (Vol. I, Spring 1987), p. 119.

H. Bhabha. 'Interrogating Identity', Identity (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts Documents, No. 6, 1987), pp. 6-7.

Bhabha , op.cit, in note 1, p. 309.

Ibid p. 310.