Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory

by Julian Go

Social scientists have long resisted the radical ideas known as postcolonial thought, while postcolonial scholars have critiqued the social sciences for their Euro-centric focus. However, in Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory , Julian Go attempts to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory fields by crafting a postcolonial social science. Contrary to claims that social science is incompatible with postcolonial thought, this book argues that the two are mutually beneficial, drawing upon the works of thinkers such as Franz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. Go concludes with a call for a "third wave" of postcolonial thought emerging from social science and surmounting the narrow confines of disciplinary boundaries.

Genres: Sociology, Politics, Theory, Nonfiction

264 pages, Hardcover

First published September 23, 2016

About the author

Julian Go is a Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate in the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture & The Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago.

Julian Go’s research explores the social logics, forms and impact of empires and colonialism; postcolonial/decolonial thought and related questions of social theory, epistemology, and knowledge; and global historical sociology.

Much of Go’s work has focused on the US empire. His other work is on postcolonial thought and social theory. His most recent book, Policing Empires: Militarization and Race in Britain and America, 1829-present (Oxford, 2023) explores imperialism’s impact upon police militarization in the US and Britain. He is also working on a project that recovers anticolonial thought as a critical form of social theory.

His scholarship has won prizes from the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, the American Political Science Association, and the International Studies Association, among other institutions. He is the winner of Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting in Sociology given by the American Sociological Association. In 2021-2022, Julian serves as the President of the Social Science History Association.

Reviews

[Xia_Beah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint-hearted-- not because of its lofty ambition but because of the, perhaps, inaccessible language to those unfamiliar with epistemic justice and social theory. However, to understate the importance of this book, to academic aspirants like me and to those continually wondering why no one attributes anything to the other 150 countries outside of Western Europe and North America, would be an egregious disservice. In outlining the origins of the different waves of postcolonial thought, defining exactly where modern social theory fails to include and actualize non-Western modes, conscientiously and exhaustively disproving the expected and unexpected discreditations, and by providing feasible solutions to self-inhibiting Western sociological hegemony through perspectival realism and postcolonial relationism, Go sets the book firmly in the vanguard of worldly change and outlines the path towards a just sociology. It's a mind-melting but worthwhile read that you'll shelve feeling knowledgeable and capable of implementing in your and others' lives.

[Yaaser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julian Go has a clear project. It is an enthralling and problematic project. Postcolonial theory has been crusading academia for several decades now, achieving successes so wide that it has almost become common knowledge, at least among fairly educated middle classes. Much of its premise has remained in the humanities, however, which channeled much of its critical and emancipatory power into postmodern echo-chambers of discourses about discourses about discourses. What is enthralling about Go’s project is that it challenges those postmodern strands under social field, where concepts are moored in the social and the empirical, and theories and hypothesis are to be tested on the ground, that is, the subaltern ground far from esteemed academic positions in the United States. Orientalism, to take one example, has not received serious engagement by “Oriental” intellectuals, and Said’s legacy at large remains subject to polemics, reductionism or uncritical binarisms. This is partly because of the domination of grand narratives and big talk in Arab contemporary thought, wherein debates of Islamism, secularism, colonialism, nationalism…, trump any serious consideration of “the social.”
On the other hand, Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory is replete with concepts and articulations so critical that it warrants a post-postcolonial turn. I can see Go’s approach heading there. Without elaboration, Go touches upon several problems that have contaminated postcolonial thought. The purpose of transcending the imperial episteme, for him, is “not in a vain effort to overcome guilt, but … to create new and better social knowledge” (187). He quotes Said’s later work, Culture and Imperialism, to note “a politics of blame” and “the even more destructive politics of confrontation and hostility” (112) that should be opposed. Moreover, he discusses in his conclusion, rather too briefly, the Islamic State’s espousal of anti-colonial rhetoric, and whether or not postcolonial theory has been complicit with fundamentalisms and nativisms. While he rightly focuses the critique of rationalism on its role in “the imperial episteme that binarizes, essentializes, and homogenizes identities” (200), he dogmatically states that “[p]ostcolonial thought is a critique of fundamentalist identities of all sorts, whether originating from imperial metropoles or from others.” This is too broad and wishful, I regret to say, and it is not always the imperial episteme that does that.
Ideas have lives, and the do not live in books; they live in social realities. And there, they can be used, misused and abused. As far as the Arab world is concerned, postcolonial theory has little to say about post-independence power structures, societal dysfunctions, and the rise of violent extremism in home and abroad. When it does, it mostly refers to the imperial configuration of the Middle East and the stubborn endurance of empire through allegedly “US-propped” dictators. This perhaps constitutes the book’s main failure: what is empire, now in the 21st century? Does it include the “power relations, systems of meanings and socioeconomic inequalities” produced by non-colonial, even anti-colonial global actors? Apart from Islamism, Go passingly mentions Russia and China as empires (198), without realizing that both emerging powers embrace Western-produced postcolonial theories and indeed leverage them for favorable ideological grounding, which makes any nuanced critique conveniently obliterated and dragged into fundamentalist directions. If it is the duty of Western intellectuals to be critical of power “at home,” this is not necessarily every “subaltern” intellectual’s cup of tea in our age. Sometimes preaching postcolonialism can be an act of… orientalism.

[Aliosha Bielenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is lucidly written and compelling. Go begins by outlining what he sees as the dominant characteristics of social theory (as manifested in the discipline of sociology) and postcolonial thought. In summarizing the latter, he introduces two terms that I think encapsulate postcolonial theory: "analytical bifurcation" and "metrocentrism." This "metrocentrism," the transposition of (Anglo-American) metropolitan ideals everywhere else, is what Go problematizes most in his critique of sociology. To reconcile postcolonial thought and social theory, Go proposes two main theoretical techniques: "postcolonial relationism" and "perspectival realism." To illustrate these, Go narrates examples from history and demonstrates how his theory breathes fresh air into dusty old examples. As I'm sure you can tell, a short review cannot do justice to this great project. This book should be required reading for anybody interested in extending postcolonial theory and any serious practitioner of social theory.

[An upbeat reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is giving me a headache