The Devil's Handwriting

Precolonial Discourse, Ethnographic Acuity, and Cross-Identification in German Colonialism

Bibliographic Data

ID2108214
AuthorsG Steinmetz (0000-0002-5081-1114, English and Foreign Languages University, corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume45
Issue01
Publication date2003-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417503000045
OpenAlexW2053595858
LanguageEN
Citations received40
References cited73

A polarization has emerged in the field of colonial studies. On the one hand, many writers describe colonialism as a direct, inexorable product of Orientalist or precolonial racial discourse and pay little attention to "social" phenomena such as capitalism, the state, and social class. Other analysts assume that cultural discourse is the product of supposedly more foundational economic or material factors. Historians in the second group explain colonial policies in terms of imperialist economic and political interests, strategies of resistance and collaboration among the colonized, precolonial social structures in the periphery, or other "quasi-objective" phenomena. Both schools tend to ignore the role of properly psychic processes in the constitution of colonial regimes, although this has been the focus of Homi Bhabha's psychoanalytic interventions in (post)colonial theory (1994). The lack of integration of materialist, culturalist, and psychoanalytic approaches in the colonial literature echoes broader oppositions that structure the human sciences today.The essays in Steinmetz (1999) exemplify some attempts to overcome the artificial separation between culturalism and materialism in studies of the state. Landmark theoretical interventions that reintegrate the social and cultural levels include Bourdieu (1977), Bhaskar (1979), and Laclau and Mouffe (1985). The need for a reintegration of the psychic into social theory has been argued forcefully by Zizek (1989, 1991) and Elliott (2000

Capitalism · Colonialism · Historical materialism · Marxist philosophy · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Sociology · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · German legal, social, and political studies · Psychology · Sociology and Education Studies · Gender Studies · Law

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