The postcolonial argument

This section presents the major features of postcolonial theory, including the various understandings o f the concept, its purpose, its subjects o f inquiry, its response to the colonial discourse, its concept o f identity and its denial of being a nationalistic struggle.

3.3.1 Understanding the postcolonial argument

The term ‘postcolonialism,’ inform Moore-Gilbert et al (1997), was first used in 1959. However, it is still a contested term. Moore-Gilbert et al (1997:1) speak o f this problem of defining it. ‘It is an elusive and contested term. It designates at one and the same time a chronological moment, a political movement, and an intellectual activity. This multiple status makes exact definition difficult.’ Hall (1996:242) too puts forward a basic question, ‘When was the post-colonial?’ Moore-Gilbert et al (1997) reply that if we take ‘post’ to mean ‘after’ and ‘colonialism’ to denote the ‘period of imperial rule of foreigners, primarily Western, in other continents,’ postcolonialism will mean a ‘period after the end of colonial rule’. This is how the term is commonly understood. But the authors do not accept the word ‘post’ so unquestioningly. They ask whether ‘post’ means ‘after, semi, late, ex or neo?’ To them postcolonialism ‘hints at withdrawal, liberation and

reunification, a period marked by suspicion of progress’ because o f the ‘degrading past’ and ‘enslavement of the Other’ (Moore-Gilbert et al, 1997: 2).

But to Mongia (1996) and Loomba (1998), postcolonialism is primarily a change in intellectual approaches. Postcolonialism is not a periodization but a

methodological revisionism which enables a wholesale critique o f Western structures o f knowledge and power, particularly those of the post-Enlightenment period’ (Mongia, 1996:2).

Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin (1995: xv) see postcolonialism as:

the totality o f practices, in all their rich diversity, which characterize the societies of the postcolonial world from the moment of colonization to the present day, since colonialism does not cease with the mere fact of political independence and continues in a neocolonial mode to be active in many societies.

To Dirlik (1996), it is both a period after colonization as well as the discourse on it produced by postcolonial intellectuals. For my understanding o f the term, I consider both Ashcroft et al’s (1995) and Dirlik’s (1996) conceptions necessary. Periodically speaking, I regard postcolonialism as a period after colonialism, and epistemologically as a discussion produced on a variety of practices in the postcolonial world from the moment o f colonization to present day.

Postcolonial perspective ‘insists...that cultural and political identity is constructed through a process o f othering’ urging us to rethink the language of cultural community (Bhabha, 1998:219). Along with globalization, postcolonialism believes that culture is the ‘site on which Eurocentricism needs to be challenged’ (Dirlik et al, 2000:29). Hence postcolonial studies are interested in investigating how stereotypes, images, and

knowledge o f colonial subjects and cultures are utilized to serve different institutions of control (Priyadharshini, 2000). My study is one such attempt. Directed at inquiring into the values different MBA programmes are endorsing, my study aims to question whether the local religious values of the students are being othered in order to serve certain ends.

3.3.2 The purpose(s) of postcolonial theory

No perspective exists without a purpose (Priyadharshini, 2000). The purpose o f the postcolonial perspective is to many, according to Mongia (1996:2), to deconstruct European thinking in areas as wide ranging as philosophy, history, literary studies, anthropology, sociology and political science. Postcolonial theory denies Europe’s or America’s claim to universality and sees them only as one of the provinces of the world. From an academic point of view, it revisits, but in no way demotes, old canonical works ‘that conspired to make the straight white Christian man of property the ethical universal’ (Spivak, 1993:275). According to Bhabha (1994:171), postcolonial theorists

formulate their critical revisions around issues of cultural difference, social authority, and political discrimination in order to reveal the antagonistic and ambivalent moments within the rationalization of modernity.

I too use this perspective to challenge the discourse of Westernization (as well as the technicist-managerialist thinking, as I will show later) in the field of management education.

This is because, to the postcolonial theorist, authority is not neutral - it is formed and disseminated; it establishes canons of value, it is indistinguishable from certain ideas it

dignifies as true and from perceptions and judgments it transmits. ‘It must be analysed,’ is his/her message (Said, 1995:19). Hence, postcolonial perspectives challenge those ideological discourses of modernity that attempt to give ‘hegemonic normality’ to the uneven development and the differential, often disadvantaged, histories of peoples. In a similar vein, by directly asking respondents, by observing classes in schools and by inquiring into school publications, I see myself questioning the authority of the established management curricula and the discourses prevalent in them (for example, technicist-managerialist and Westernization/Americanization) with regard to the work values they are endorsing.

3.3.3 Subjects of inquiry o f postcolonialism

Philosophical and theoretical perspectives, due to their selection of topics for problematization, usually look at specific elements in society (Bertman, 1974). The most obvious subjects of postcolonialism are the races which were once colonized. Hence conducting a research study in Pakistan, I see my study of the Pakistani MBA students and teachers as well as managers as one by a postcolonial researcher on a postcolonial race. But since postcolonialism talks as much about the colonizers as the colonized or perhaps even more so, some authors, including Bhabha and Ashcroft et al believe that the subjects of inquiry of postcolonialism should include both these groups (in Moore-Gilbert et al, 1997). Moreover, Loomba (1998) and Young (1995) caution that it should be borne in mind that not all colonized subjects had similar experiences. Spivak (1988) also insists that the subaltern, or the colonized subject, is heterogeneous, with different genders, experiences, and histories, not any singly defined individual. Besides, experiences of

natives varied from America and Australia to India and Africa (Ahmad, 1996; Moore- Gilbert et al, 1997).

The characteristic feature o f the subalternu is often understood to be his/her muteness but this is not unanimously agreed upon by all postcolonial theorists. To Spivak, (s)/he has been silenced. ‘There is no space from which the sexed subaltern subject can speak.’ If he or she has spoken he or she has not been understood (in the intended way) by the privileged o f the first or third worlds (Spivak, 1988:307); to Bhabha (1994), (s)/he has already spoken through mimicry. Loomba (1998) is not too sure of what speak means.

Nevertheless in the opinion o f (Spivak, 1988:298), ‘To ignore the subaltern today is...to continue the imperialist project.’ This is one o f the major purposes of my study: to find out the opinions and experiences of postcolonial students and teachers in their MBA programmes and those of the managers of their interaction with MBA graduates. To give voice to these postcolonial subjects as to the values being endorsed in the MBA programmes, I have used data collection methods that could allow them to comment freely on their experiences, feelings and opinions. This has enabled me to comment if the subaltern is still being reproduced in the management academia of Pakistan through internalization o f certain values, for example, technicist-managerialist or colonial, in opposition to the Islamic.