47 pages 1 hour read

The Location of Culture

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1994

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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “Articulating the Archaic: Cultural Difference and Colonial Nonsense”

In Chapter 7, Bhabha explores the notion of the “archaic” and how colonial discourse often uses it as a defining feature of colonized cultures to justify colonial domination. Bhabha’s key concept in this chapter is “nonsense,” or a way to describe the contradictions inherent in colonial discourse. Colonial narratives often fail to accurately capture or understand the cultures they attempt to represent, as reflected in famous literary phrases like “the Horror, the Horror!” (Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness) or “Boum, ouboum” (E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India). Colonial narratives often reveal their limitations of authority and knowledge through their misreadings of other cultures.

Bhabha reveals how even the concept of the “archaic” is nonsensical, since all cultures do not progress linearly, from “primitive” states to “civilized” ones. Colonial discourse, however, promotes its own culture as “enlightened” or “advanced.” In this way, the colonial idea of the archaic is actually a contradiction, as it insists on colonized peoples’ fixed identities and yet uses that fixed, archaic identity to justify constant colonial intervention and change.

Colonial power, Bhabha argues, tries to assert itself through language by reducing cultural difference to easy categories, but the contradictions within colonial discourse itself destabilizes these attempts. Colonial authority is limited by the discourse’s very attempts to establish control through language knowledge.

Chapter 8 Summary: “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation”

Bhabha examines the intersection between cultural narrative, national identity, and the colonial experience through the perspective of the colonial diaspora. Referencing theorists like Benedict Anderson and his work Imagined Communities, Bhabha explores how the narratives of modern nationhood are not linear—they are instead fragmented, ambivalent, and often subversive. Dissemination (the scattering or distribution of meaning) is key to his understanding of the dynamic and contingent nature of cultural identity in postcolonial societies.

Bhabha critiques traditional, linear understandings of national identity and nationalism, which often conceive of the nation as a unified, coherent entity defined by shared culture and history. This perspective creates a sense of unity and continuity in the formation of modern nation-states. Bhabha argues that this model of national identity is simplistic and fails to account for the complexities and contradictions of nations, especially in postcolonial societies. National identity, he argues, is often disseminated or fragmented, shaped by multiple (overlapping) histories and cultural practices.

Colonized subjects, he argues, exist in a liminal space, caught between colonial and postcolonial identities and living on the “margins of the nation.” This complicates the idea of a unified national subject, and gives them a unique perspective on national identity. Nations are never fully “whole,” according to Bhabha, but rather in a state of constant “becoming,” full of contradictions and competing narratives. Narrative thus becomes a key site of resistance to colonial power in Bhabha’s argument. Postcolonial subjects narrate their own histories in ways that resist colonialist attempts to nail down static national identity in terms of European modernity.

Bhabha focuses on how postcolonial narratives reimagine the nation and move beyond the ideal of a unified national identity, instead exploring cultural difference and historical memory. As he does throughout the book, Bhabha critiques the idea of a national “origin” or sense of authenticity often used in nationalist discourse. Bhabha explores postcolonial narrative through literary examples like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, which often embody the hybridity of modern nationhood.

Chapter 9 Summary: “The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency”

Chapter 9 focuses on the intersections between postcolonial theory and postmodern thought, addressing the concept of agency. Bhabha critiques traditional representations of colonized subjects that depict them as passive victims or objects of colonial power. Instead, he highlights their active role in resisting, negotiating, and transforming colonial authority.

Bhabha draws on postmodern ideas like fragmentation, multiplicity, and hybridity to explore how colonized individuals and communities interact with, and resist, colonial power structures. Fragmentation in postmodern theory rejects a unified, coherent subject and poses identity as fragmented, dispersed, and in flux. Bhabha explains that this fragmentation resonates with the experiences of the colonized, whose identities are shaped by multiple, often contradictory forces, such as colonialism, indigenous cultures, migration, and globalization. The colonized subject inhabits a fractured space where multiple identities coexist, overlap, and inform one another, creating a hybrid identity that can be seen as empowerment since it allows for more dynamic forms of resistance and identity formation.

Bhabha suggests that agency is a dynamic and continuous process rather than a single act of resistance. In the colonial or postcolonial context, he argues, agency is a continuous process of reworking identity and transforming colonial meanings, both at the individual and collective levels. Colonized peoples don’t just enact isolated moments of rebellion; their resistance is historically situated, informed by their experiences, the legacy of colonialism, and their efforts to reclaim history. 

Negotiating one’s own identity in a postcolonial world becomes an ongoing form of agency. This agency also involves cultural production, where colonized peoples actively create new meanings, challenge old ones, and offer alternative visions of their histories and futures through their art, performance, and other forms of representation.

Chapters 7-9 Analysis

In Part 3 of The Location of Culture, Bhabha explores the limits of cultural representation, the fragmentation of time and identity, and the negotiation of agency within both postcolonial and postmodern frameworks.

Bhabha explores the tension between concepts of modernity and primitivism, and the ways in which colonial and postcolonial discourses construct, essentialize, and distort cultural identities. Through the concept of the archaic, Bhabha engages with the idea of cultural difference not as a static, unchanging essence, but as something that is continually contested within the context of modernity and colonialism. The concept of the archaic is central to Bhabhas critique of how colonial discourses have historically framed non-Western cultures as backward, primitive, and in need of Western intervention (or civilizing). Western colonizers represented cultural others as outdated, static, and incapable of change, creating a binary opposition between the modern, progressive West and the traditional, regressive other.

However, Bhabha focuses on Deconstructing Binaries in Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse, emphasizing that history and progress is not linear but instead a dynamic and often contradictory process. The archaic, he argues, is a construct created through the colonial encounter—a projection by the colonizer onto the colonized to affirm colonial authority, not an accurate representation of the colonized culture’s reality. By asserting this image, the colonial system also creates the conditions for its own contestation, since the archaic cultural difference can never be fully assimilated into Western models of modernity. Once again, the concept of ambivalence plays an important role: Colonial powers reveal their inherent ambivalence by reducing the colonized to fixed characteristics that can be controlled, while on the other hand being unable to fully understand those cultural differences.

Bhabhas examination of the archaic extends to its role in the postcolonial period, adding another dimension to the theme of The Ongoing Impact of Colonial Legacies. The postcolonial subject, having been constructed within the frame of the archaic, is now faced with the challenge of navigating between the legacies of colonialism and the demands of modernity. The archaic is more than just a relic of colonial discourse; it becomes a point of articulation for postcolonial identities, histories, and political struggles.

Bhabha examines the concepts of nationhood, identity, and temporality in postcolonial contexts, particularly from the perspective of diasporic peoples. Bhabha explores how the idea of a nation is constructed and contested through the dynamics of cultural narration, specifically through the tensions between historical continuity and the marginalization of non-dominant voices within the narrative of the modern nation-state. The chapter title’s term of “DissemiNation” suggests a disaggregation or disruption of the nation, reflecting the fragmented and contested ways in which cultural identities and histories are transmitted and contested in postcolonial nations. Bhabha interrogates the relationship between national time and national narrative, emphasizing the disjunctions between official histories and the lived experiences of marginalized communities.

Bhabha grapples with the question of agency in postcolonial contexts, understanding it not as a straightforward concept, since it is neither an unmediated exercise of free will nor an essentialized attribute of the subject. Instead, the agency in postcolonial contexts is always “disrupted” and “contingent,” shaped by the historical, social, and political conditions of colonization and its aftermath. In many ways, postcolonial subjects’ capacity for resistance and self-definition is constrained by the very structures of power that have shaped their lives. Bhabha draws attention to the fact that the act of resistance is itself complicated by the persistence of colonial power in the postcolonial period. Agency in this period, then, cannot be understood simply as the rejection of oppression or the assertion of an independent, autonomous self. Instead, mimicry acts as a subtle form of transgression or resistance.

Bhabha also connects postcolonialism and postmodernism through their shared critique of grand narratives or metanarratives. Postmodernism rejects universalizing narratives of progress, truth, and history that have historically structured Western thought, while postcolonialism critiques the imperialist narratives that justified colonization and domination of non-Western peoples. Bhabha emphasizes, however, that postmodernism is often concerned with abstract concepts like “language,” “representation,” and “discourse,” overlooking or underplaying tangible and oppressive realities of colonial and postcolonial struggles. He contends that postcolonial thought must not simply dissolve into abstract relativism but instead focus on the political and social struggles of marginalized peoples in the wake of colonialism.

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