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What is Theory? Interpreting Spivak, Postcolonial and Indigenous Theory
Introduction
The August 2002 issue of Communication Theory (an ICA journal) recognizes the
importance and relevance of the term ’Postcolonial’ in contemporary analysis of culture and
politics. As the editors write in their introduction, "There is a need within the
communication discipline to develop intellectual resources to begin to talk about culture as a
multiplicity of trajectories...[the articles] presented in this issue speak to some major areas of
mutual interest and overlap between postcolonial theory and communication inquiry --
representation, identity, hybridity, and agency" (p. 265)
A
raging definitional debate in
various disciplines about Postcolonial theory and the term Postcolonial has continued for
some time. Some of the questions being asked are: "Is postcolonial an ism?"; "What is post
in the postcolonial?"; "Is there such a thing as the postcolonial condition?"; "Who or what is
postcolonial?"; "How can postcolonial be theorized and even whether the term needs to be
hyphenated?" (Loombia, 1998; McClintock, 1992; Shohat, 1992) Major publishers have
published books titled Introduction to Postcolonial Theory and Postcolonialism: A historical
Introduction (Gandhi, 1999; Young, 2000) and Journals such as Interventions: Journal of
Postcolonial Studies and Jouvert are gaining wider and wider circulation. Shome and
Hegde’s introductory article, "Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Charting the
Terrain, Engaging the Intersections" in Communication Theory outlines the possible
connections between Postcolonial and Communication theory.
In such an effort, they interview Gayatri Spivak as a prominent Postcolonial and feminist
thinker whose scholarship they write, "...has significantly shaped the course of postcolonial
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Convention