In an age of bloody confusion,
Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
Be held unalterable!
Bertolt Brecht
The past has passed, meaning it is no more. By definition not present, it no longer exists. So why bother attending to it? Whether we attend to it or not, we cannot escape the past, since it produced our present – what exists is inherited from whatever came before. Perhaps we could just forget the past and be as happy as Nietzsche's cows. With no memory, they would be forgiven for taking themselves to be the general case. They might assume the whole world is an eternal pasture, and that a herd is the only natural way of being. But this is exactly the concern. Without attention to historicity we run the risk of naturalizing a particular kind of subject, society, culture, economic system, or set of power relations, universalizing the particular, making natural a product of history. Not only does this reduce anything (or anyone) different into an Other, an aberration, it leaves little room for change. The colonial order, racial hierarchies, gender inequality all appear natural and timeless.
A diachronic perspective, by contrast, can show us that things have not always been the way they are now, and therefore immunize us from assuming things will be thus forever. How we tell our past-narrative, our history, impacts how we imagine ourselves, our present, and our future. This is precisely the reason postcolonial thinkers have concerned themselves with the past. Of course, as Nietzsche points out, not just any attention to the past will do – history should serve life. Whatever falls outside of the grand universal narrative of historicism, akin to monumental history, is produced as an Other. Nativist history, a response to this othering, makes a fetish of the past (as does antiquarian history), but is unable to break free of the othering discourse. In contrast critical history and attention to historicity are concerned with the present and have the potential to go beyond the othering discourse.
The grand sweep of colonial history could be seen as an attempt to deal with difference met in the colonial encounter. In order to persevere, historicism had to find a way of fitting very different societies into its universal temporal narrative. Often seen as unhistorical, in stasis, outside of time, these colonized societies were only wrenched back into the stream of time by colonial rule. Although back in the narrative, they were then behind, backward. The colonies were seen as Europe's own past, like Europe but at the same time not like Europe. Historicism is then about both sameness and difference. It brings difference into sameness by temporizing. Nietzsche could have been writing about this when he wrote of monumental history: "how much that is different must be overlooked, how ruthlessly must the individuality of the past be forced into a general form …" Monumental history is inspirational. It advises us that greatness is once more possible if we imitate past greatness. Monumental history thus produces a script, forcing out all specificity. It is nothing but lifeless mimesis, producing "nothing but timidly disguised universal men."
Hegel exemplifies historicism. His juggernaut of a master narrative simply rolled right over alternative histories. He could subjugate them, bringing them all into the grand narrative, because of the totalizing progress of spirit (geist) through the ages. To be all-encompassing his system had to find ways to make these varied narratives commensurate, which is why the India we meet in Hegel's narrative is so distorted. Hegel's question of how to deal with discrepancy – India – was solved by the explanation that ancient India was once great but got stuck in stasis, while Europe kept on progressing. For Hegel, self-consciousness is produced dialectically through experience of the other: "those peoples therefore are alone capable of History... who have arrived at that period of development... at which individuals comprehend their own existence as independent, i.e. possess self-consciousness." But the Indians, steeped in spirituality, did not exercise their reason to separate Man from Nature and God. Without differentiating themselves from the universal, the dialectic could not function. The irrationality and lack of individuation of Indians ("In India we have only a division in masses..." explains Hegel) thus retarded the development of reason. And because reason, or Spirit, is the great mover of history, without it the Indians could have no history or progress. They were doomed to be stuck in the past – at least until Europe's convenient intervention; it was "the necessary fate of Asiatic Empires to be subjected to Europeans." In Hegel, India is othered, then the other is conquered by the same. As Chakrabarty explains this is a united world with an internally articulated hierarchy – the world is both one and unequal.
Part 2 here
