For those of us writing from the margins (of one

form or another), few would not have been

attracted by the term ‘postcolonial’ and wondered

about the promise and possibilities it may

contain. This is particularly the case in the face

of statements such as Hall’s that the world today

is ‘incontrovertibly post-colonial’, as

colonisation so refigured the terrain that, ever since, the

very idea of a world of separate identities, of isolated or

separable and self-sufficient cultures and economies,

has been obliged to yield to a variety of paradigms

designed to capture these different but related forms of

relationship, interconnection and discontinuity. (1996:

257, 252–3)

Hall goes on to claim that the ‘postcolonial’

touchstone offers ‘an alternative narrative, high-

lighting key conjunctures to those embedded

in the classical narrative of Modernity ... [a] re-

narrativisation [that] displaces the “story” of

capitalist modernity from its European centring

to its dispersed global “peripheries” ’(1996:

249). Much indeed has been claimed for the

power of the postcolonial critique in cutting right

through to the very terms by which knowledge is

constructed and the world mapped. As Anthony

King argues,

Compared to other representations of the contemporary

global human condition, postcolonial studies may be

said to restore history and colonialism into presentist

theories of globalization, and contest representations of

the contemporary world in terms of Eurocentric notions

of postmodernism. (1999: 99)

Such is what Jacobs calls the ‘fantastic optimism

of the “post” in postcolonialism’ (1996: 24). Yet

its value and impact as a critical and emancipa-

tory discourse within geography and beyond

cannot be taken for granted. Critics have already

alerted us to the dangers. Drawing on his work

on nationalism and postcolonial identity in

Sri Lanka, Perera (1998: 6) warns that just as the

application of the category ‘precolonial’ to soci-

eties prior to their incorporation into European

political and economic systems tends to fix the

‘colonial’ as the main point of reference, so

adding the prefix ‘post-’ may also impose ‘the

continuity of foreign histories’ and ‘subordinate

indigenous histories’. Reflecting on the tech-

niques of subjugation and violence applied by

‘pro-Indonesia militias’ in the recent annexation

of East Timor, Kusno concludes that ‘Behind the

postcolonial [present] can lurk the spectre of a

future more sinister than the colonial past itself’

(2000: xii). Critics have thus argued that not only

is postcolonial discourse out of touch with post-

colonial realities, it may itself serve to mask and

at the same time perpetuate the presence of a

Eurocentric pall over current efforts at (re-)-

constituting the world in discursive and material

terms. As Sidaway points out, ‘any postcolonial

geography must realize within itself its own

impossibility, given that geography is inescapably

marked (both philosophically and institutionally)

by its location and development as a western-

colonial science’ (2000: 593).^1

Would it then be possible to steer between the

seduction of optimistic claims as to postcolonial-

ity’s ‘possibilities’ and the disabling gridlock of

critiques as to its ‘impossibilities’? I shall argue

that starting places leading to possible paths may

be found by taking on board the view that the

‘postcolonial’ is not a totalizing or monolithic

discourse representing one half of any simple west/

non-west bifurcation of the world, but in fact a

highly mobile, contestatory and still developing

arena where opportunities for insight may be

gained at multiple sites. Its redemptive features

as a means of resisting colonialisms of all forms

and its manipulative aspects as a vehicle for

19

Postcolonial Geographies of Place and Migration

Brenda S.A.Yeoh

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