Er(r)go,
there are at least five good reasons—apart from Polish connections with Madagascar—why postcolonial studies deserve our attention despite the facile conclusion that they owe their popularity in countries which have never had anything to do with colonialism to academic fashion or to the West's huge interest in such issues.
Three methodological reasons. First of all, the postcolonial discourse belongs among those modes of expression which undermine established and naturalized systems of representing and constructing the world, systems which indicate that representation is at bottom a creation of reality from the perspective of a dominant ideological discourse—the postcolonial discourse is characterised by "a polemical thrust and a critical potential in relation to such ossified and conventionalized constructs as race, history and identity" (Katarzyna Nowak) and, by analogy, to any other construct. Secondly, it is one of those discourses which must permanently keep an eye on itself, continue scrutinising itself so as, on the one hand, not to get saturated by the categories constructed by those cultures which tend to dominate and marginalize other cultures (and thus re-colonize them on the sly) and, on the other hand, not to yield—by way of an expiatory negation of whateveris western, European or our own —to "the terror of the marginal". Thirdly, the postcolonial discourse brings to our attention and—by means of its own analytical practice—demonstrates the localism of each culture. By insisting on rewriting history and geography and on developing a new perspective on the "historiosophy" of cartography, it exposes the inevitable perspectivism of both knowledge and power. What follows from the above is a lesson in critical constructivism and self-reflection as well as in sensitivity to the awesome power of political ideologies which are dispersed or concealed in the ostensible innocence of the sign.
An existential reason: yet another lesson in sensitivity to the Other.
An essential reason: One may postulate systematic postcolonial research in Eastern and Central Europe; by retaining or modifying the premises of western postcolonial studies, Eastern and Central Europe could get interested in its own area which has experienced colonialism and postcolonialism in its own peculiar way.
This issue—whose guest editor is Zbigniew Białas—inaugurates a series of similar ones to be published in the future; we intend to invite renowned specialists in the fields which subsequent issues of Er(r)go will be concerned with to act as their guest editors.
Wojciech Kalaga
No. 49 (2024)
Published: 2024-12-30
10.31261/errgo
English
Język Polski