Postcolonial Theory and
the Specter of Capital
Vivek Chibber
For Nivedita
Contents
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1: POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND SUBALTERN STUDIES
1.1Postcolonial Studies as Analysis and Critique
1.2The Rise of Subaltern Studies
1.3Subaltern Studies as Theory
1.4Assessing Subaltern Studies
1.5The Failure of Subaltern Studies
CHAPTER 2: DOMINANCE WITHOUT HEGEMONY: THE ARGUMENT EXPLAINED
2.1Subaltern Studies in Context
2.2The Roots of the Postcolonial Crisis
2.3The Two Paths to Bourgeois Power
2.4Capital’s Universalizing Tendency and the Bourgeois Revolutions
2.5Universalization Abandoned: Capital’s Colonial Venture
CHAPTER 3: DOMINANCE WITHOUT HEGEMONY: THE ARGUMENT ASSESSED
3.3Conclusion
CHAPTER 4: DOMINANCE WITHOUT HEGEMONY: THE ARGUMENT IN CONTEXT
4.1Bourgeois Interests and Land Reform
4.2The Bourgeoisie and Subaltern Classes
4.3The Bourgeoisie and Nation-Building
4.4The Postcolonial Crisis Revisited
4.5Critique or Apologia? Subalternists as the New Whigs
4.6Conclusion
CHAPTER 5: CAPITAL’S UNIVERSALIZING TENDENCY
5.1What Is at Stake
5.2What Does Capitalism Universalize?
5.3Capital and Power
5.4Conclusion
5.5Postscript: The Bogey of a “Hyperreal Europe”
CHAPTER 6: CAPITAL, ABSTRACT LABOR, AND DIFFERENCE
6.1The Problem Defined
6.2Capitalism and Abstract Labor
6.3From Socially Necessary Labor to Abstract Labor
6.4Abstract Labor and Social Hierarchies
6.5Capitalism and Social Hierarchies
6.6The Real Engine of Democratization
6.7Conclusion
CHAPTER 7: CULTURE, INTERESTS, AND AGENCY
7.1Elementary Aspects as History from Below
7.2The Peculiarities of the Indian Peasantry
7.3Peasant Psychology in Elementary Aspects
7.4Individual and Community in Late Colonial Bengal
7.5Chatterjee’s Contradictions
7.6Conclusion
CHAPTER 8: INTERESTS AND THE OTHER UNIVERSALISM
8.1The Conventional Analysis of Worker Consciousness
8.2Chakrabarty’s Alternative to the Conventional Analysis
8.3Reasons and Interests
8.4Interests and Culture
8.5The Universal History of Class Struggle
8.6The Other Universalism
8.7Conclusion
CHAPTER 9: THE (NON)PROBLEM OF HISTORICISM
9.1What Is at Stake
9.2The Two Histories of Capital
9.3The Problem of Historicism
9.4Abstract Categories and the Real History of Capital
9.5Historicism as a Non-Problem
9.6Capitalism and Diversity Revisited
9.7Conclusion
CHAPTER 10: THE NATION UNMOORED
10.1The Two Dimensions of Anticolonial Nationalism
10.2Nationalism and the Cunning of Reason
10.3Nationalism and the Modernizing Imperative
10.4The Missing Counterfactual
10.5Modernization as Prison House?
10.6The Disappearance of Modernizing Nationalism
10.7Conclusion
CHAPTER 11: CONCLUSION: SUBALTERN STUDIES AS IDEOLOGY