A closer look should to be given to what Wong
Hoy Cheong denominates as „archetypes“ referring to the characters of RE:Looking:
„They played archetypes – such as migrants, sociologists, political
commentators, culturally and mentally-colonized natives, angry
post-colonialists, and other types.“[1] Two of these types are of interest: The culturally
and mentally-colonized natives and angry post-colonialists. While the first term is
also used by Fanon and could be defined in his terms, the second term is rather
new. It is not quite clear whether these 'angry post-colonialists' are
put in opposition to the first or not, but for some Fanon himself is one of
those. Doug Saunders[2]
in his column declares an “end of post-colonialism”:
[There was a] past – a time when
the politics and economics of Brazil, and most non-wealthy countries, were
entirely defined by relations with the great former colonial powers to the
north and west. In those days, countries like Brazil had a choice: They either sold raw materials and
cheap goods at low cost to the Yankees and Europeans and played by their rules,
or resisted them with closed borders, Kalashnikovs and command economies. […] I
believe we are witnessing the end of the post-colonial era in politics and
economics. In China, Brazil and a dozen other countries, the type of thinking
known as “post-colonial” – defined as a stark choice between angry resistance
or humiliating subservience – has simply ceased to matter in political and
business relations. […] The post-colonial era began in earnest in the years
after the Second World War, when Britain, France and the United States ceased
to be formal colonizers, allowing southern and eastern countries to have their
own governments (in places like Brazil, it had begun decades earlier). The end
of the Cold War and the Soviet empire kicked it into high gear.
Post-colonial governments had responded to the
external, commercial and globalized nature of their erstwhile colonial rulers
very often by becoming nationalist, closed to trade and investment. Sometimes
they were opposed to capitalism itself – witness the waves of Marxist and
Maoist regimes that swept across Africa and South
America, without
Soviet prodding, during the postwar decades. Or they were dictatorial and
violent and co-operative with the industries of their former empires.”
'Angry post colonialist'
would be those who denounce
and oppose to colonial structures, blaming them for being unable to progress or
develop in any way as a nation. During the second half of the nineties an essay
entitled Guide for the perfect Latin American Idiot[3]
became a bestseller exposing and defining some characteristics of a kind of
old-fashioned 'angry post colonialist'. Also Doug Saunders dares to
assert: “While post-colonialism clings on in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Zimbabwe and a handful of other places, it has vanished from
most of the world with amazing speed.”[4]
It might has been replaced by different forms of imperialism pushed mainly by
self-confidently acting newly industrialized countries and the former second
world. And so the article ends mentioning the raise of the minimum wage and
presence of short-range ballistic missiles in China and concluding that the U.S. – and probably Europe too – are not relevant any more. In economic terms this is probably true, but in terms
of signs, denotata, iconography, readings, humanities and identity this shift
continues.
[1] Gerhard Haupt and Pat Binder, Wong Hoy Cheong, Re:Looking Interview
with the Malaysian artist in Nafas Art Magazine, December,
2004. http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2004/wong_hoy_cheong accessed February 28, 2012.
[2] Doug
Saunders : Look east and south: Witness the end of post-colonialism in:
The Globe and Mail, 08.01.2011 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/look-east-and-south-witness-the-end-of-post-colonialism/article1862101/
accessed March 3, 2012.
[3] The
authors Apuleyo Mendoza, C. A.Montaner,
and A. Vargas Llosa wrote in 1996 a satiric Bestseller entitled: Manual del
perfecto idiota latinoamericano, exposing liberal thoughts and blaming an
overcome left wing conceptions of politics, anti-Americanism and its inability
to find self-respective ways to get out of a state of permanent crisis without
blaming the former colonizers.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55981/kenneth-maxwell/guide-to-the-perfect-latin-american-idiot http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_del_perfecto_idiota_latinoamericano
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55981/kenneth-maxwell/guide-to-the-perfect-latin-american-idiot http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_del_perfecto_idiota_latinoamericano
[4] Doug
Saunders : Look east and south: Witness the end of post-colonialism.
