From postmodernism to postcolonialism

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
Oscar Wilde

I certainly do not wish to assert that Axess should renounce seriousness now that we are presenting the magazine in a new form. But one may nevertheless agree with Oscar Wilde in the quotation above: even as regards serious subjects the external style is vital. As, during the spring and summer, we have been developing a new layout, we have been governed by a desire to make it more accessible on several levels—in terms of both the immediate reader experience and external factors such as distribution, sales and marketing.

The fact that we have now reduced our format does not mean that the scope or the level of ambition has been reduced. On the contrary. As regards text, the magazine has become more extensive than before, and Axess also continues to retain its core—the analytical, in-depth essay—as well as the aim of establishing a meeting place for cross-fertilisation between academic and journalistic cultures. New features, however, possess a clearer commitment to cultural subjects and a greater dynamic between shorter and longer articles.

Beneath these developments, there is continuity. In this issue we carry on the critical analysis initiated in the previous issue of theoretical trends within social science and the arts. If in the last issue we scrutinised the cluster of shared intellectual concepts which have often been termed postmodernist, and which gained an increasingly secure foothold in universities and colleges from the 1970s onwards, in this issue we focus on a specific offshoot of this tradition, namely the formation of postcolonial theory, whose figurehead Edward Said is discussed in three theme articles.

In both my journalistic and academic work I have been able to record how the consequences of Said’s influence have become more evident. In newspaper columns and academic essays at undergraduate and doctoral level one sees Said’s ideas repeated every day. An academic industry has developed around Said, the most tangible results of which are many hundreds of “scientific” books, more or less directly modelled on his Orientalism. Often it is a question of researchers and writers who seize upon some older account, so as to be able to uncover orientalist thinking in it. The most disturbing of this if often the lack of knowledge of, and curiosity about, the foreign culture revealed by the Said-influenced study. Unlike those orientalists whom they are criticising, the Saidists are often exclusively interested in contemporary Western culture and its evils.

That the shared intellectual concept has achieved such great penetration is presumably the result of the fact that it offers a simple way of appearing to be critically minded and well read. As is clear from the texts in this issue of Axess, there are, however, a number of weak points in Said’s theoretical construct. It is especially gratifying to be able to provide articles by two of Said’s best-known critics. As one of the foremost Arabists of our time, Robert Irwin has devoted a comprehensive study to Said’s theories. So has Ibn Warraq, who on his part has become known as a critic of Islam—with starting points reminiscent of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Like Ali he lives under an assumed identity as a result of constant threats. Mohamed Omar, for his part, illuminates early research into the Orient primarily from a Swedish perspective.

Politically, religiously and ideologically there is very little which unites the three theme-contributors to this issue, and this needs to be emphasised in a Swedish context, where criticism of academic theories of Said’s kind tend to be dismissed as an expression of an unambiguous right-wing perspective. But, as is evident from the international critique of both postmodernism in general and Edward Said’s theories in particular, it is actually a question of a scientific attitude which cuts right across the political map.

By Johan Lundberg
Editor-in-Chief

Translated by Phil Holmes