Dear Paul, and all others,

Thank you for responding to my posting in such detail. I think your 
letter also deserves a detailed response, although perhaps from other 
people as well as from me. You raise several issues that have helped me 
to understand in more depth how I understand the idea of 
postcolonialism.

Interestingly, I was going to respond to Brian’s letter, about whether 
the language in which thinking about action research remains with 
practitioners in all contexts, or is in danger of being colonised by 
the academy. Personally I think it is for all of us, and I also think 
that some core issues in demonstrating the validity of action research 
is for all of us to address. I do not see these issues as appropriate 
only to an academic audience, but to everyone. Here is an example of 
what I mean.

The other day I was at a meeting with the steering committee of a new 
proposed project in Ireland. My job would be to write materials for 
teachers to engage as full participants in this project. The project is 
planned for practising teachers, and takes the form of systematic 
in-service provision. Participation in the project would qualify for 
certification. The question then arose who would judge the work and by 
whose standards it would be judged. The conversation went the route of 
assessing teachers’ accounts in terms of learning outcomes, and the 
demonstration of skills and competencies. I had the proof copy of a 
book with me, and I was able to show people an excerpt from Mary 
Hartog’s thesis, where she asks for her work to be judged by the 
University criteria, and also by her own standards of judgement, which 
she specifies. Previous to this point in the meeting, we had talked 
about asking participants to do some basic preparation by inviting a 
trusted colleague to have a conversation about what they believed in 
that led them to do the work, in other words, what they value that 
inspires their work. When the conversation turned to assessment, I was 
able to refer back to the idea that we can assess the value of our own 
work in terms of what we believe in. People around the table were 
delighted with this idea, saying that this is what most of us do in any 
case, and also that the idea of the legitimacy of practitioners’ 
standards of judgement for assessing their work has been accepted by 
the academy. We also talked about how, if we want people to take us 
seriously when we speak about assessing our work, we need to articulate 
the grounds for our justification, too, which seems both logical and 
morally responsible.

I really like the way that Jack is articulating these ideas in his 
recent writing, and I frequently use the idea of assessing the quality 
of my own responses in terms of the values that I say I hold. 
Throughout my public life I have tried to articulate those values, not 
only or necessarily in words, but also in deed. I judge the quality of 
my practice in an encounter in terms of whether I have realised those 
values. Did the other person leave our encounter feeling valued or 
diminished? Did they feel they could speak or did I silence them? Did I 
show, through my practice, that I was prepared to live my values, or 
did I remain within the rhetoric? For example, how do you feel reading 
this – silenced or enabled? Colonised or challenged? I also do not 
believe it is always necessary to give specific definitions to 
practices, such as calling a practice ‘postcolonial’. Throughout my 
work and writing I use terms other than ‘postcolonial’ to explain how I 
try to live in a way that honours others’ freedom and capacity to think 
for themselves. You say, Paul, that I have never used the word 
‘postcolonial’ in my indexes. You are right. However, if you look for 
words other than ‘postcolonial’ you will see words such as ‘democracy’ 
and ‘freedom’ and ‘inclusion’, all of which I think are the 
underpinning values of postcolonialism. Also, if you go beyond the 
words and the index, you will read about practices that support the 
ideas and practices of freedom and respect for all. I try to write in a 
way that makes people feel they can speak with their own voices and 
express their own ideas. I regard my writing as offering ideas in 
response to questions, as well as posing new questions, so I judge the 
quality of my writing in terms of whether people feel they can question 
me and themselves, in a way that is enabling towards freedom and not 
imperialistic. I judge my work in terms of what I say and do, and how I 
say and do it, as reflections of how I think my work should be.

This then brings me to a further point, about how I understand 
colonisation and postcolonialism. Perhaps I should begin by saying how 
I do not understand it. I do not understand colonialism only in terms 
of the categories of colour and ethnicity. I understand colonialism as 
any impulse by one person to dominate another. Many people of course do 
use the categories of colour and ethnicity as excuses for domination. 
 From my reading of postcolonialism, I worry that those same grounds of 
ethnicity and colour have been used to colonise the very literatures 
that challenge the ideas of colonisation, and these literatures are in 
turn being used to colonise other discourses. I have been at meetings 
where people have talked about colonisation, with no thought to the 
fact that I do not hear well, and I have to struggle to be part of 
those conversations, yet no mention is given to the discrimination 
against deafness (an amazing one in four people have hearing loss). I 
was at an AERA meeting this year where four men talked in heated terms 
about dismantling colonisation for black boys, with no mention of black 
girls. I campaign against the sale of girls, of all colours, into the 
slavery of prostitution, as well as the subjugation of black males. I 
do not subscribe to the form of words ‘people of colour’, a term of 
assumed privilege that denotes someone who is not white. I am a person 
of colour, too. I am officially white, and white is a colour. As a 
person of colour, I need to interrogate my colour, in the same way that 
my black colleagues in South Africa are prepared to interrogate their 
colour so that they do not in turn subjugate others, using colour as 
their subjugating category. The business of colonisation however goes 
far beyond colour. Steve Biko said that being black was more than skin 
pigmentation. Yes, and so is being white. Similarly, being female, or 
deaf, or old, or any ‘alterity’, is more than physical appearance. By 
even talking ‘alterity’ we are talking colonialism. We are talking 
about some people as non-proper-people. White is non-black. Black is 
non-white. Female is non-male. Deafness is dis-ability. Postcolonial 
literatures are (allegedly) literatures about non-colonisation – well, 
this is where I beg to differ. While the rhetoric may be in the ‘post’, 
the reality is very much in the ‘colonisation’. I do not think we will 
ever get to ‘post’ until we get to ‘start’, and ‘start’ is by starting 
to recognise ourselves as prone to colonise, even through our use of 
the language of postcolonialism.

I wonder if any of this makes sense to anyone? I would very much 
appreciate a response, because I constantly struggle with these issues, 
and some help would be appreciated.

Best wishes to all, and thanks for reading this too-long letter,

Jean

On 18 Jun 2005, at 13:11, Yaqub Paul Murray wrote:

> When Jean when writes,
>
> "Like Pip, we do not believe that we are in a 'post' phase at all"
>
> I find myself feeling excluded from her meaning.
>
> When I read Pushkala Prasad's forthcoming  account of the 'tradition of
> the 'Post' (Crafting Qaulitative Research, July 2005) I am drawn toward
> her meanings.
>
> Let me show you how I differ from Jean's comment, and explain as i do 
> so,
> why. As a postcolonial live theorising scholar i feel this is an 
> important
> act of personal, professional and postcolonial integrity.
>
>
> What are the grounds of my difference?:
> Principally, I support my difference of interpretation from the ground 
> of
> my lived subjective experience as a person of colour, of mixed race 
> and as
> a 'descendant of once were masters/once were slaves': a white~brown 
> (after
> Kevin Johnson, How did I get to be Mexican?) descendant of a Griqua 
> great-
> Grandmother.
>
>
> Who influences the 'Post' in my Postcolonial Critical Pedagogy?:
> Primarily I do. I bring stable standards of judgements, evolved and
> transformed through the practice of my embodied values of emancipation 
> in
> the course of their practice as I make educational contributions to the
> selfhood of my students, according to their insights (Staples 2005; 
> Smith,
> 2005 undergraduate dissertations; Bayliss, 2005, posting to this list).
>
> However, my appreciation of the 'post' that is postcolonial is not 
> solely
> self-referential: it is sustained in exchanges and dialogic 
> relationship.
> For example, my work into White and Black with White identity with Jack
> Whitehead, in doctoral research dialogue with Nceku Nyathi, and in my
> critical and appreciative engagement with those propositional theories
> that help me to enrich my jazz-like riff's of insight into my jazzy 
> 'live
> theorising' of my postcolonial critical pedagogy.
>
> As a canonical writer in postcolonialism, Robert Young asks,
>
> "Have you ever been the only person of colour or ethnicity in a large
> group or gathering?"
>
> Yes, i have.
> I have experienced this in my College - please go to  www.rac.ac.uk - 
> and
> in the Living Educational Theory/Action Research group convened by Jack
> Whitehead at the University of Bath during the period 1997-2002.
>
> Young also asks,
>
> "Do you sense that those speaking would never think of trying to find 
> out
> how things seem to you, from where you are? That you live in a world of
> others, a what exists for others?"
>
> Yes: I do.
> This has been the larger part of my life in British higher education, 
> and
> all of my life in British society.
>
> Young also asks, in a way that no Action Researcher I know has yet 
> asked,
>
> "How can we find a way to talk about this?
> That is the first question which postcolonialism tries to answer."
>
> Questions of this kind excite me because they seem to be questions in
> which the 'Post' inhere.
>
> This is what I understand to be the time of the 'Post', and this is my
> point of departure from Jean.
> As Diaspora, 'we' live in the 'post' of the postcolonial condition.
>
> Postcolonialism is the 'post' that enables people like me to speak 
> without
> having my voice colonised by the Academy and its professors.
>
> Postcolonialism is what i'm doing when I differ from Jean's statement 
> made
> as a white Western person. My voice is 'Post'.
>
> But i'm not asking anybody to agree with my particular postcolonial 
> live
> theorising account.
>
>
> How do i recognise the 'Post'?:
> As Young also suggests, postcolonialism is a montage, and i have moved 
> on
> in my practice from trying to suggest that postcolonialism is a 
> uniform,
> and single set of ideas to be prescribed. I rather like the ambiguity 
> and
> the space afforded by the 'post' of postcolonialism when Young asserts,
>
> "At one level there is no single entity called 'postcolonial theory':
> postcolonialism, as a term, describes practices and ideas as various as
> those within feminism or socialism."
>
> I agree: there is no single issue here about 'one size fits all', or 
> one
> dogmatic way to 'postcolonial theorising'.
>
> But there are some simple axioms that denote what i understand and 
> embrace
> as the 'post' in postcolonialism as i account for my postcolonial
> educative practice as an expression of my 'subaltern knowledge'. By
> sharing these axioms i'm hoping to influence the social formation of 
> this
> list in its appreciation of the 'post' in postcolonial, while 
> distancing
> myself as a postcolonial scholar from Jean's comment above -
>
> 1. Postcolonialism is one of the three 'P's' in the 'tradition of the
> Post', to cite Pushkala Prasad's forthcoming book (July, 2005)
>
> 2. 'Postcolonial theory' involves a conceptual reorientation towards 
> the
> perspectives of knowledges, as well as needs, developed outside the 
> west
> (Young)
>
> 3. Postcolonialism involves first of all the argument that the nations 
> of
> the three non-western continents are largely in a situation of
> subordination to Europe and North America, and in a position of 
> economic
> inequality. Postcolonialism 'names' a politics and philosophy of 
> activism
> that contests the disparity; a certain ethics and politics of
> postcolonialism that is central to 'subaltern knowledge'. It is this
> explicit 'naming', the discursive discourses in which a politics and
> philosophy of activism is named, that point to the existence of 
> Pushkala
> Prasad's  'tradition of the 'Post'. i am influenced by Prasad's 
> compelling
> account. By 'subaltern knowledge' i have in mind my knowledge as a
> subaltern in the West. I am subaltern by colour, by illegitimate mixed-
> race birth, by my working class, by my ethnicity, by my culture and by 
> my
> Islamic religion, which now seems to be a Western marker for an 
> inherently
> regressive, 'monkey-like' medievalism of mind and countenance. 
> Subaltern
> knowledge, i know from the work of Edward Said and its correspondence 
> to
> my own live, subjective experiences is the knowledge derived from being
> treated as an interruption, and intermittent presence in the normal 
> spaces
> of whiteness
>
> 4.Postcolonial cultural analysis has been concerned with the 
> elaboration
> of theoretical structures that contest the previous dominant western 
> ways
> of seeing things. (Young). In Jack's recent papers i have the evidence 
> of
> my influence on Jack's 'postcolonial education'. In authoring my 
> thesis i
> should authenticate Jack's claims through a narrative explaining my 
> side
> of this development dialogue in relationship, which has led to the 
> 'post'
> that is postcolonial emerging through both of our "research stories". 
> Go
> to Jack's writings at www.actionresearch.net for Jack's research 
> stories.
>
> i relate powerfully to Young's insight, below,
>
> "If you are someone who does not identify yourself as western, or as
> somehow not completely western even though you live in a western 
> country,
> or someone who is part of a culture and yet excluded by its dominant
> voices, inside yet outside, then postcolonialism offers you a way of
> seeing things differently, a languge and politics in which your 
> interests
> come first, not last."
>
>
> Fragment of a postcolonial research story:
> When i joined the Royal Agricultural College fourteen years ago my 
> voice
> was silenced, my ideas shaded, my interests ignored. I was subaltern, I
> was colonized, i was in a colonial institution of higher education.
>
> i am now a College Diversity officer for race and ethnicity, religion 
> and
> beliefs. I participate with colleagues within the community of British
> higher education to influence the social formation of diversity and
> inclusion, a contribution to the evolution of "postcolonial 
> discourses". i
> count as evidence a contribution to the Sussex University Diversity 
> week
> (March 2005), a forthcoming seminar with Nceku Nyathi and Jack 
> Whitehead
> (October 2005) for the Higher Education Academy, "Student diversity and
> diversity in the curriculum"; and my growing activism in the 
> Association
> of Union Teachers  activist e-list, and my representational and 
> advisory
> work as an AUT officer with responsibility for race and ethnicity.
>
> Unless i'm awfully mistaken i am not only living in a space of 'Post' 
> that
> is the 'postcolonial condition', but my voice, interests and activism 
> are
> also conspiring through my educative practice to be shaping 
> postcolonial
> discourses, social formations, and a future of hope inclusive of all of
> humanity
>
>
> Why am i unable to agree with Jean's claim about the 'Post?
> i am unable to agree with Jean on the matter of there being no 'post' 
> in
> the light and dark of all the available post-colonial discourses and
> initiatives.
>
> There is much extant evidence in propositional academic discourses that
> complement first person, and second person group analytic accounts of
> people's lives, alongwith psychoanalytic self-reflective literature 
> such
> as Farhad Dalal's Race, Colour and the Processes of Racialization 
> (2002),
> which is now pointing to the immanence of the 'post' of the 
> 'postcolonial
> condition'. The shit we are in is the postcolonial condition as my
> postcolonial doctoral colleague, Nceku Nyathi, at Leicester University,
> succinctly puts this. I agree with the judgements he brings to his 
> pithy
> assertion.
>
> I do believe a "Tradition of the 'Post' " in respect of postmodernism 
> and
> poststructuralism while slower to establish in Action Research is being
> evidenced in the Action Research Journal (Foldy, March 2005)..
>
> Richardson and Lather have both powerfully influenced the thinking in
> Teacher Self-Study practices and Action Researchers. Rigoberta
> Menchu's 'testimonio', the research story of the indigene, has 
> influenced
> contemporary Participatory Action Research and autoethnographic 
> approaches
> without doubt.
>
> i've presented what i believe to be a thoughtful and rigorous enough
> argument to suggest a particular move is happening, a moment, a 
> 'critical
> postcolonial turn' is happening, now, in  Action Research.
>
> As far as i can see from the evidence of Jean's claims, and my own, we
> both appear to be contributing to the evolution of social formations of
> the 'post' in postcolonialism. Conjoint in our postcolonial intentions,
> while differentiated by our contributions to a postcolonial montage. 
> That
> seems wholly acceptable to me.
>
> Two final observations. First, the 'post' that denotes the 
> 'postcolonial
> condition' is remarkably 'live', like a live electrical cable, when
> tracing the development of Jean's own scholarship over the past twenty
> years. With no mention of colonialism and postcolonialism in her first
> edition of Action Research P & P's contrasted with the extremely 
> tightly
> articulated account of her 'postcolonial' commitment in her posting to
> this list.
>
> This shift from 'one space' where one's race, ethnicity, and collusion
> with whiteness is entirely uninterrogated in one's account of Action
> Research principles and practice (1988), no entry in the index under
> colonial or postcolonial in the second edition (2002) and the
> transformation in Jean's posting in which, like the Matrix, she flips 
> into
> a 'present & future' space in which the postcolonial influence in 
> Jean's
> action research practice and thinking is publicly outlined. Between 
> 2002
> and 2005 there does seem to have been a generative transformation in
> Jean's postcolonial thinking. From this generative transformation 
> alone i
> infer evidence of the nature and existence of the 'post'; though only 
> Jean
> could attest to the aetiology of this transformation through her 
> research
> story.  It seems that once a certain ethics and politics of
> postcolonialism is acknowledged as part of one's internal, inner, 'I'
> knowledge (Nyathi and Murray, 2005; McNiff, 2002) then we have some
> evidence of the existence of what Young refers to as a "politics and
> philosophy of postcolonialism". Jean's posting is an example of
> postcolonial practice in AR whether one cares to 'name' it, or not, as
> indicative or suggestive of the 'post'. I believe Jean's posting 
> provides
> me with evidence that the 'post' of postcolonialism is being put into
> Action Research.
>
> I choose to name it thus: 'Post', the post of postcolonialism.
>
> Secondly, Jean's posting is the first time i have ever read, from a
> distinguished Professor within the canon of Action Research, such a
> profound commitment to a postcolonial and decolonizing agenda in an
> educational research project that uses first and second person dialogic
> enquiry within and across universities to examine the impact of race 
> and
> ethnicity on one's practice as a professional educator. While i have 
> been
> reading Jack's professions of this kind in his recent papers. This is a
> powerful commitment to the 'post' that Pushkala Prasad, Robert Young, 
> and
> I seem to have in mind.
>
>
> Summary Reflections:
> As the facilitator of an Action Masters programme - the live and extant
> evidence of my decolonizing agenda as i encourage studnets to tell 
> their
> own stories of organization while reflecting in the 'new scholarship' 
> of
> Critical Management Studies, i accord Jean that privilege of voice that
> derives from a virtue of respect and humility for the authority of
> scholarship Jean has evidenced in her contribution to social 
> formations of
> Action Research and professional practice. However, i could not, and 
> would
> not willingly, be able to extend a similar authority to Jean in her
> comments concerning postcolonialism, and the 'post'. This is why i 
> felt i
> needed to respond to Jean's comment about the 'post'.
>
> As a white Western professor who has recently begun to publicly avow 
> her
> postcolonial interests as part of her Action Research project, i can't 
> say
> that my postcolonial consciousness has been in any way shaped, 
> mediated or
> influenced by Jean's accounting for her practice of dismantling 
> whiteness,
> interrogating her own racial identity for its impact on her practice, 
> or
> questioning her discourse for its vestigial colonialism as a Western
> scholar. In that one sense i could say i have had no ostensive or 
> lexical
> evidence of the 'post' of postcolonialism in Jean's practice. And in 
> that
> one sense i could find myself almost agreeing with Jean's claim about
> the 'post'. In as much as evidence of the 'post' has to be first of all
> evidenced in our first person embodied values and commitments to social
> justice an social action, i do see that the 'post' of postcolonial has 
> not
> been extant or made evident to me through Jean's writing's.  But in
> reading Jean's posting, in accepting the honesty of her words and the
> integrity of her actions, I can 'see' her commitment to postcolonialism
> (Mutse Atsi). Most likely,  a commitment to the 'post' in 
> postcolonialism
> in Young's propositional sense, which in my life and practice, i 
> encounter
> and validate as i draw on Young's proposition alongside my own live
> experiences to frame how i explain my 'real life' as a
> colonial/postcolonial dialectic.
>
> However, i am unable to offer a similar disposition towards the 
> authority
> of Jean's postcolonial ideas because they are not yet established 
> within a
> tradition, or canon of postcolonialism: what Bullough and Pinnegar 
> refer
> to as an 'authority of scholarship'.
>
> In making this postcolonial observation i speak from the authority of 
> my
> lived, subjective experience of the 'post' as in the postcolonial
> condition that my family, friends, Arab and South African relatives 
> find
> themselves in today. Writing from lived, subjective experience has that
> quality of 'dialogic validity' crucial to the creation of 'good'
> knowledge, through which practice i am producing research accounts, 
> some
> research stories, some research propositions, yet both of which 
> confluence
> to enable a sensible account of my 'subaltern knowledge' as a 
> mixed-race
> educator: examples of which can be accessed from my College web space 
> at
> www.rac.ac.uk/~paul_murray/default.htm
>
> Songa Mbele.
>
> Best wishes to all.