A Postcolonial Document Analysis of Confluence

Abstract

In this chapter, I describe the approaches used in this study and argue for the necessity of a postcolonial analysis of confluence. I also outline this study’s focus on historical continuities by attending to the temporal (that which is dynamic and changing and that which is continuous yet carried through time). I outline what is drawn on (partially) from Foucauldian genealogical analysis and how this method departs from this. I also illustrate how the method used in this study attends to material continuities (how projects of nation building relied/rely on eugenic and racial knowledge formations and disciplinary processes and laws) through an attention to processes that discursively frame people to construct, legitimize, and authorize violence. By acknowledging that all our interpretive and discursive structures are subject to historical influence, it is also pertinent that we disclose the horizon of these interpretations. As Hans-Georg Gadamer made very clear in his magnum opus Truth and Method, every person has a historically effected consciousness, making claims to objective knowledge impossible. Through our concurrence with this position, we can appreciate that all vantage points are partial, contingent, and subject to representation and interpretation. The horizon of interpretation in this study is committedly focused with an attention to the levels of analyses and contribution provided by postcolonial theory.