A Critical Analysis of Homi K. Bhabha's "How Newness Enters The World: Postmodern space, postcolonial times and the trials of cultural translation"
Rachit Anand
Professor Subarno Chattarji
Department of English, University of Delhi
13-10-2013
A Critical Analysis of Homi K. Bhabha's "How Newness Enters The World: Postmodern space, postcolonial times and the trials of cultural translation" The Indian theorist Homi K. Bhabha shifted the limelight from the binary1 of the colonizer and the colonized to the liminal spaces in-between in the domain of Postcolonial studies. In Difference, Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonialism, he stated, "There is always, in Said, the suggestion that colonial power is possessed entirely by the colonizer which is a historical and theoretical simplification" (200). He asserted that colonization is not just a conscious body of knowledge (Said's manifest Orientalism) but also the "unconscious positivity" of fantasy and desire (Bhabha's latent Orientalism) (Young, "White Mythologies" 181). Bhabha used that vantage point — of liminal spaces — to study the phenomenon of cultural translation in his essay "How Newness Enters the World..." which was published in a collection of essays titled under The Location of Culture (1994). The liminal zone that the postcolonial immigrant occupies is the guiding question of this essay. Bhabha explains:
I used architecture literally as a reference, using the attic, the boiler room, and the stairwell to make associations between certain binary divisions such as higher and lower.... The stairwell became a liminal space, a pathway between the upper and lower areas.... (3-4) In "How Newness..." Bhabha directs this framework to critique Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. He argues that the category of Postmodern assumes a neat categorization of subject positions, which leaves no room for subjects to exist in the liminal space. He asserts, "For Jameson, the possibility of becoming historical demands a containment of this disjunctive social time." (217) Bhabha elaborates upon the concept of liminal space
Professor Subarno Chattarji
Department of English, University of Delhi
13-10-2013
A Critical Analysis of Homi K. Bhabha's "How Newness Enters The World: Postmodern space, postcolonial times and the trials of cultural translation" The Indian theorist Homi K. Bhabha shifted the limelight from the binary1 of the colonizer and the colonized to the liminal spaces in-between in the domain of Postcolonial studies. In Difference, Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonialism, he stated, "There is always, in Said, the suggestion that colonial power is possessed entirely by the colonizer which is a historical and theoretical simplification" (200). He asserted that colonization is not just a conscious body of knowledge (Said's manifest Orientalism) but also the "unconscious positivity" of fantasy and desire (Bhabha's latent Orientalism) (Young, "White Mythologies" 181). Bhabha used that vantage point — of liminal spaces — to study the phenomenon of cultural translation in his essay "How Newness Enters the World..." which was published in a collection of essays titled under The Location of Culture (1994). The liminal zone that the postcolonial immigrant occupies is the guiding question of this essay. Bhabha explains:
I used architecture literally as a reference, using the attic, the boiler room, and the stairwell to make associations between certain binary divisions such as higher and lower.... The stairwell became a liminal space, a pathway between the upper and lower areas.... (3-4) In "How Newness..." Bhabha directs this framework to critique Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. He argues that the category of Postmodern assumes a neat categorization of subject positions, which leaves no room for subjects to exist in the liminal space. He asserts, "For Jameson, the possibility of becoming historical demands a containment of this disjunctive social time." (217) Bhabha elaborates upon the concept of liminal space
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