David Scott

"The 'Social Construction' of Postcolonial Studies"

Abstract:

"Postcolonial Studies" is undoubtedly one of the great beneficiaries of the rise of social constructionism in the human sciences in the 1980s and 1990s. The recharacterization of colonialism it urged (especially its focus on the poetics of representation) depended upon and helped to foreground the constructionist strategy of anti-essentialism. But to what extent does this strategy continue to be one worth deploying? Did its use-value depend in part on a contrast-effect that has now largely receded? Taking a cue from Ian Hacking's recent worry about the coherence of the claims of social constructionism in the natural and social sciences I inquire into the continued critical force of this strategy for an understanding of the postcolonial world.