Deleuze and the Postcolonial

321 Pages·2010·2.28 MB·English

by  Simone Bignall (ed.), Paul Patton (ed.)

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Deleuze and the Postcolonial
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inthesefields–includingRédaBensmaïa,ReyChow,NickNesbitt,PatriciaPisters, l
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Theydealwithcolonialandpostcolonialsocial,culturalandpoliticalissuesinAsia,
Africa,theAmericas,IndiaandPalestine.Topicsincludecolonialgovernment,nation
buildingandethicsinthecontemporarycontextofglobalisationanddecolonisation,
throughissuesrelatingtodesire,sexualityandagency,toquestionsof
‘representation’anddiscursivepoweraspracticedthroughpostcolonialart,cinema
andliterature.
Thisbookconstitutesatimelyinterventiontodebatesinpoststructuralist,
postcolonialandpostmodernstudies.Itwillbeofinteresttostudentsincultural
studies,cinemaandfilmstudies,languagesandliterature,politicalandpostcolonial
studies,criticaltheory,socialandpoliticalphilosophy.
SimoneBignallisaVisitingFellowintheSchoolofHistoryandPhilosophyandPaul
PattonisProfessorofPhilosophy,bothatTheUniversityofNewSouthWalesin
Sydney,Australia. B
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Deleuze and the Postcolonial
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Deleuze Connections
‘It is not the elements or the sets which defi ne the multiplicity. What
defi nes it is the AND, as something which has its place between the
elements or between the sets. AND, AND, AND – stammering.’
Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues
General Editor
Ian Buchanan
Editorial Advisory Board
Keith Ansell-Pearson Gregg Lambert
Rosi Braidotti Adrian Parr
Claire Colebrook Paul Patton
Tom Conley Patricia Pisters
Titles Available in the Series
Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and Feminist Theory
Ian Buchanan and John Marks (eds), Deleuze and Literature
Mark Bonta and John Protevi (eds), Deleuze and Geophilosophy
Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda (eds), Deleuze and Music
Ian Buchanan and Gregg Lambert (eds), Deleuze and Space
Martin Fuglsang and Bent Meier Sørensen (eds), Deleuze and the
Social
Ian Buchanan and Adrian Parr (eds), Deleuze and the Contemporary
World
Constantin V. Boundas (ed.), Deleuze and Philosophy
Ian Buchanan and Nicholas Thoburn (eds), Deleuze and Politics
Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr (eds), Deleuze and Queer Theory
Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and History
Laura Cull (ed.), Deleuze and Performance
Mark Poster and David Savat (eds), Deleuze and New Technology
Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds), Deleuze and the Postcolonial
Forthcoming Titles in the Series
Ian Buchanan and Laura Guillaume (eds), Deleuze and the Body
Simon O’Sullivan and Stephen Zepke (eds), Deleuze and
Contemporary Art
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iii
Deleuze and the Postcolonial
Edited by Simone Bignall and Paul Patton
Edinburgh University Press
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We dedicate this collection to a ‘future form, for a new earth and a
people that do not yet exist’ – and to ‘the now of our becoming’.
© in this edition, Edinburgh University Press, 2010
© in the individual contributions is retained by the authors
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3699 0 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 3700 3 (paperback)
The right of the contributors
to be identifi ed as authors of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents v
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Deleuze and the Postcolonial: 1
Conversations, Negotiations, Mediations
Simone Bignall and Paul Patton
1 Living in Smooth Space: Deleuze, Postcolonialism and the 20
Subaltern
Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey
2 Postcolonial Theory and the Geographical Materialism of 41
Desire
John K. Noyes
3 Postcolonial Visibilities: Questions Inspired by Deleuze’s 62
Method
Rey Chow
4 Affective Assemblages: Ethics beyond Enjoyment 78
Simone Bignall
5 The Postcolonial Event: Deleuze, Glissant and the Problem of 103
the Political
Nick Nesbitt
6 Postcolonial Haecceities 119
Réda Bensmaïa
Translated by Paul Gibbard
7 ‘Another Perspective on the World’: 163
Shame and Subtraction in Louis Malle’s L’Inde fantôme
Timothy Bewes
8 Becoming-Nomad: Territorialisation and Resistance in 183
J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians
Grant Hamilton
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vi Deleuze and the Postcolonial
9 Violence and Laughter: Paradoxes of Nomadic Thought in 201
Postcolonial Cinema
Patricia Pisters
10 The Production of Terra Nullius and the Zionist-Palestinian 220
Confl ict
Marcelo Svirsky
11 Virtually Postcolonial? 251
Philip Leonard
12 In Search of the Perfect Escape: Deleuze, Movement and 272
Canadian Postcolonialism
Jennifer Blair
Notes on Contributors 297
Index 301
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Acknowledgements vii
Acknowledgements
Like all books, this collection is a ‘group work’, which has emerged from
a virtual state of existence into formal actuality only through the efforts
of the many people who have been involved in the process of its becom-
ing. We are grateful for the assistance given by the editorial team at
EUP, and especially wish to thank Carol MacDonald and Ian Buchanan
for their advice and support. Christopher Miller, Rey Chow, Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Peter Hallward, Françoise Lionnet and Bill Ashcroft pro-
vided us with valuable early suggestions about potential contributors
with an interest in the connections between Deleuze and postcolonial-
ism. Our sincere thanks are due to Paul Gibbard for his expert transla-
tion of the chapter by Réda Bensmaïa. We are indebted to Nabile Farès
for kindly allowing us to reprint pages of illustrative text from his book
L’État perdu (1982), published by Actes Sud. Princeton University
Press gave us kind permission to include material previously published
in Réda Bensmaïa’s book Experimental Nations (2003). The Thomas
Fisher Rare Book library at the University of Toronto and the Canadian
Centre for Architecture in Montreal generously authorised the repro-
duction of archived images of early fi re escapes. Simone would especially
like to thank Greg Dayman for his care and support. Paul would like to
thank Moira Gatens, as always, for her advice and support. Finally, we
wish to thank each of the contributors for making the shared journey so
enjoyable and illuminating.
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Introduction
Deleuze and the Postcolonial:
Conversations, Negotiations, Mediations
Simone Bignall and Paul Patton
Conversations
The collection of essays assembled in this volume constructs a series of
conversations between Deleuzian philosophy and postcolonial theory,1
canvassing the relationship between Deleuze’s concepts, the phenomena
of the postcolony and the project of decolonisation. As an act of engage-
ment, a ‘conversation’ may take various forms, including ‘speaking with’,
‘speaking to’, ‘speaking about’ and ‘speaking for’. In different ways, the
contributions participate in each of these aspects of conversational inter-
action. The starting premise for this collection, also defi ning the ration-
ale for its production, concerns the problematic lack of mutuality, or
else the mutual disregard, which previous scholarship has highlighted as
characteristic of the relationship between Deleuze and the postcolonial.
Deleuze does not directly ‘speak with’ the thinkers and writers of the
postcolony, and postcolonial theory seldom engages with Deleuzian phi-
losophy in a sustained or comprehensive way, despite the abundance of
Deleuzian motifs in postcolonial discourse. When theorists have directly
considered postcolonial infl uences of/upon Deleuzian philosophy, they
have usually done so in a critical and dismissive fashion.
For some, his failure to relate expressly to postcolonial issues does
not simply suggest a careless lack of concern on Deleuze’s part, but also
the more worrying possibility that his silence on colonialism conceals a
certain Eurocentric self-interest, a neo-imperial motivation or a hidden
or unacknowledged desire to defl ect attention away from the political
concerns of the postcolony. Deleuze is accordingly condemned for his
lack of explicit engagement with the body of postcolonial thought and
with colonialism as a problematic site of analysis. Furthermore, certain
Deleuzian concepts – nomadology in particular – are seen to appropri-
ate and intellectualise indigenous experience and ways of life, extracting
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