Vivek Chibber Research Articles

Class structure without politics or history?

This review essay considers Vivek Chibber’s social theory of capitalism critically and develops some of the themes that a historicist social theory of capitalist stability should integrate theoretically. I start by outlining Chibber’s notable book and present its key claim about the materiality and primacy of class structure in terms of economic decision-making. I then point out the limits and antinomies of structural theory as a historical explanation, sketch the contours of a historicist methodology and provide examples of three political phenomena that are irreducible to the class structure but that have been central for the reproduction of capitalism. The final section considers the political consequences of my historicist criticism of Chibber.

Book Review: A glitch in the matrix: Vivek Chibber and the cultural turn

Chibber’s The Class Matrix and Confronting Capitalism aim to rescue class from the cultural turn. Rather than thinking that mass media mollified the working class, he suggests we re-investigate capitalism itself. We can then see how hard capitalism makes it to take risks for the collective. Chibber’s solution is to shift people from ‘individualistic to solidaristic’ ways of thinking through lived practices, rather than the arts. This review argues, however, that by excluding the culture industry from encouraging solidaristic ways of thinking, Chibber removes a crucial tool in the socialist armory: the way in which artistic representations can help us see ourselves and the world differently.

The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn by Vivek Chibber (review)

The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn by Vivek Chibber (review)

The Scope of Area Studies in the Era of Globalization

Area Studies has always been approached ambivalently since its political birth after the Second World War. Despite a quiet acknowledgement of the contribution of Area Studies in the production of knowledge from the local lens to correct the ‘universal’ Western perspective of the knowledge produced by social sciences, questions are raised about its very existence in the era of globalization. This paper addresses the problematic of the marginalized position of Area Studies. The discussion will include; i) articles by Arif Dirlik, Ravi Arvind Palat, Tessa Morris-Suzuki to address the problematic of marginalization of Area Studies; ii) the articles by Edward Said, Aijaz Ahmad, Dispeh Chakrabrty, Vivek Chibber, and Kuan-Hsing Chen to assess the limits of Postcolonialism and Marxism in deconstructing Eurocentrism of Area Studies; and finally iii) the scholarly debates by Asef Bayat, David Ludden, Neil Smith, Naoki Sakai, Christian von Soest, and Alexander Stroh to discuss the utility of comparative method as a bridge to ford the rifts between Area Studies and social sciences. It is necessary to broaden the scope of Area Studies by engaging in cross-regional as much as cross-disciplinary research with the social sciences and other disciplines which are trying to meet the demands of transnational pressures generated by the global capitalism. The selected scholars highlight the need to revise Area Studies by proposing new approaches to free it from Eurocentrism and to make it more interdisciplinary to meet the demands of globalization.

Book Review: Vivek Chibber: Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

Book Review: Vivek Chibber: Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Misplaced Polemics against Postcolonial Theory: A Review of the Chibber Debate

This field review provides a critical interpretation of Vivek Chibber’s generative polemic,Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Capitalism.1Situating Chibber’s work within a long history of Marxist critiques of postcolonial theory, as well as within an even longer interdisciplinary debate over method catalyzed but not caused by poststructuralist thought, this review argues that Chibber fails to articulate an adequately materialist account of capitalism in the colonial and postcolonial world. It then examines recent initiates of scholars of postcolonial studies to develop materialist methodologies in the wake of poststructuralism’s disciplinary hegemony.

Dominacja bez hegemonii – pojęcie władzy w studiach postkolonialnych szkoły Subaltern Studies

Subaltern Studies is a research project that has been created in the early 80’s and is still active. It was formed around the Subaltern Studies publishing series, which has up until now ten volumes. It gained worldwide recognition with the entry into the American academic world by the publication of Selected Subaltern Studies in 1988 with the preface of the then world-renown post-colonial studies theorist, Edward Saïd. The selection was made jointly by Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Guha is considered the “founding father” of the group, while Spivak is the most recognizable character whose essay Can the subordinates speak? gained the status of a canonical text. His representatives and representatives lecture in a number of world-renowned universities. In my article I analyze concept of power in Guha’s book Dominance without hegemony, recognizing it as a representative example of postcolonial theory of the Subaltern Studies project. I also present the criticism of Guha’s concept of power developed by American sociologist Vivek Chibber, according to which the thesis formulated by Guha about the “specifically Indian” road to capitalism (“domination without hegemony”), understood as an unsuccessful formation of democratic power, contrasted with this western successful road, is a typical form of power under capitalism. A typical form of democracy in capitalism is dominance based on the systematic exclusion of the working class from the power structures, this exclusion does not indicate the non-existence of the working class, but only that it is subjected to class domination.

Limits of the Universal: The Promises and Pitfalls of Postcolonial Theory and Its Critique

AbstractThis article seeks to reassess the potential merits and weaknesses of the Subaltern Studies project through the prism of Vivek Chibber’s much-publicised and controversial bookPostcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. By critically examining Chibber’s work, the article aims to better pinpoint exactly what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ with the Subaltern Studies project, while drawing out some productive points of engagement between Marxism and postcolonial theory more generally. In particular, we argue that an understanding of the origins of capitalist modernity remains a relatively unexplored omission within postcolonial thought that problematises their broader project of ‘provincialising Europe’. Against this backdrop, the article explores the affinities between Leon Trotsky’s notion of uneven and combined development and postcolonialism, demonstrating how the former can provide a theoretical solution to the problem of Eurocentrism that the Subaltern Studies project correctly identifies but inadequately conceptualises.

On the particularities of postcolonial studies, or how postcolonialism has become obsolete

I draw first on Vivek Chibber's argument that postcolonial studies fails to provide an adequate basis for a theory of human rights and a practice of global solidarity. I then introduce the Warwick Research Collective's elaboration of a new theory of world literature constructed around the concept of “combined and uneven development.” I conclude by proposing a way out of the limitations of postcolonial studies.

Haiti and Mozambique: Postcolonial Literature in the Context of Combined and Uneven Development

In this essay, I compare two narratives from different nations, Haiti and Mozambique, in order to analyze intersections between the postcolonial contexts in which each fiction is embedded. Two theoretical perspectives inform my reading of Nadine Pinede’s “Departure Lounge” (2011) and João Paulo Borges Coelho’s Campo de trânsito (2007). I draw first on Vivek Chibber’s argument that postcolonial studies fail to provide an adequate basis for a theory of human rights and a practice of global solidarity. I then introduce the Warwick Research Collective’s elaboration of a new theory of world literature constructed around the concept of “combined and uneven development”. My discussion of “Departure Lounge” and Campo de trânsito subsequently focuses on the fictional portrayal of emergent practices within traditional societies experiencing a process of modernization and the effects of the world capitalist system. I conclude by proposing a way out of the limitations of postcolonial studies.

Marxism, Postcolonial Theory, and the Specter of Universalism

Following recent debates between Vivek Chibber and leading postcolonial theorists, I probe into what is missing in these exchanges. I focus on the figure of the ‘tribal’ in modern India in Ranajit Guha’s Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India and Alpa Shah’s In the Shadows of the State, both of which claim to offer emic perspectives on subaltern politics and history. Yet both works, despite their undeniable differences, display a striking universalism that puts them, paradoxically, in the company of Chibber. This universalism, which we may call the resisting subject, is about the Other and about us simultaneously, the former constituted by the latter as an abstract object of analysis and as a key symbol of intellectual vanguardism. Are we not better off abandoning such universalisms and searching for ways in which Marxist theories of culture can be melded with postcolonial theories of capitalism?

‘ … half-sick of shadows’: figure and ground in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s imagination of the subaltern

ABSTRACTThis essay moves the category of the subaltern out of the exclusive domain of colonial historiography and resituates it in the context of contemporaneity. Taking my cue from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s insistence on the dream of postcoloniality in the realm of the global, I examine two ‘empirical anomalies’ that redefine subaltern insurgency, cultivate democratic reflexes, and defeat the expectations of their moment and milieu. Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial theory and the specter of capital serves as a framing device to elicit the still-persuasive dimensions of Spivak’s landmark essay for our historical moment. While I remain unpersuaded by both his premises and his conclusions, his argument does throw Spivak’s interventions in the project of Subaltern Studies into relief. My method throughout, in the manner of Spivak and Paul de Man, is one of interruption and undoing; my aim is to delineate what Spivak describes as ‘the resistance fitting our time’.

Recovering Reparative Readings of Postcolonialism and Marxism

This article offers critical readings of two works that are symptomatic of a troubling repudiation of postcolonialism and Marxism by each other. Locating itself within the subfield of postcolonial international relations, John Hobson’s The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics (2012) dismisses Marx as imperialist and Lenin (and various forms of neo-Marxism) as Eurocentric. Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (2013) renews the Marxist attack on postcolonialism, ironically casting subaltern studies as a form of orientalism. I argue that the relative lack of attention in these polemics to reparative possibilities immanent within the theoretical formations being criticized is disabling, forcing us to choose positions that insist on the priority of some axes of marginality over others. In the tradition of feminist intersectionality, my critiques of these texts insist on reading their respective theoretical antagonists in ways that bridge the supposed gulf between postcolonalism and Marxism.

Vivek Chibber and the spectre of postcolonial theory

In this critical assessment of Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, the author argues that the book contributes appreciably to the materialist critique of postcolonial studies, but that its effect is weakened both by its tone and its failure to identify its object precisely enough. In conflating the historiographic project of ‘Subaltern Studies’ with ‘postcolonial theory’, Chibber misrepresents the histories of each of these formations and also the institutional relationship between them. He is at his most compelling in his commentary on capital’s ‘universalising tendency’, in which he demonstrates that arguments about capitalist globalisation do not require one to anticipate an increased homogenisation of the world or, more narrowly still, the progressive universalisation of ‘western’ norms, values and modes of social life. His critique of the deep-set postcolonialist conviction as to the radical difference and incommensurability between ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ worlds is also very valuable. But because he does not utilise the full resources of Marxist and anti-imperialist theory – above all, the theory of uneven and combined development – Chibber fails to diagnose ‘postcolonial theory’ for what it is: a conjuncturally distinct version of ‘Third Worldism’. He wrongly accuses it, instead, of ‘Eurocentrism’.

Passages from Marxism to Postcolonialism: A Comment on Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

The 2013 publication of Vivek Chibber’s book Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital has reignited debates over the relative merits and demerits of Marxism and postcolonialism. This article reviews the debate and raises some critical questions about Chibber’s engagement with questions pertaining to universalism and capitalist development. Focusing on Chibber’s critique of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe, the article contends that whereas Chibber is right in arguing for a concept of universal history, the approach he offers towards this end pushes in the direction of Eurocentrism. As an alternative, the article proposes the possibility of crafting passages from Marxism to postcolonialism in order to move beyond Eurocentrism in the historical-sociological study of capitalist development.

Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber (review)

Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber (review)

Looking for Resistance in All the Wrong Places? Chibber, Chakrabarty, and a Tale of Two Histories

AbstractThis study rethinks Dipesh Chakrabarty’s engagement with Marx and Vivek Chibber’s recent critique of postcolonialism in order to offer a new reading of the state of postcolonial studies. It explores the Hegelian dimension of Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe and interprets Chibber’s critique of postcolonialism as an attempt to save the Enlightenment from capitalism. The study draws on a number of Marxist theorists to synthesize these two positions, ultimately proposing a class-oriented politics that points beyond capitalism. By accounting for the unevenness capital produces, the article explores the possibilities for a politics of history that is oriented not toward the past but toward the future, in particular, a future beyond capitalism.

To think without abstraction: on the problem of standpoint in cultural criticism

Within the Marxist critical tradition, abstraction has figured as a reversible concept, designating two apparently contrary tendencies: dematerialisation and concretisation. Thus, for Adorno, ‘the extreme abstraction' represented by Hegel's thought consists in ‘its ideal of presentation, the negation of presentation’, while for Lukács abstraction is a principle of reification, meaning concretisation. This essay begins by outlining the implications of this reversibility of abstraction, using Marx, Adorno, and Lukács, as well as the recent work of Vivek Chibber, whose Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital helps clarify some of the contemporary misuses of the term ‘abstraction’. The second half of the article turns to the question of the possibility of a thought without abstraction. The key figure for this discussion is the theoretician of new media Vilém Flusser, whose book Into the Universe of Technical Images outlines an account of technical images that, I argue, enables us to think both the reversibility of abstraction and the possibility of a thought that is not subject to abstraction.

Vivek Chibber. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

Vivek Chibber. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

On Vivek Chibber's Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

Review Symposium Commentary