Colonialism and "Law and Order" Criticism by Teshome Gabriel

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140 COLONIALISM AND 'LAWAND ORDER' CRITICISM

BY TESHO ME H GABR IEL

Among the Ewe people of Southern Ghana, theHigh God is an androgynous figure calledMawu-Lisa, 'Mawu' being the female principleand 'Lisa' the male. In translating the Bible intothe Ewe language, the female component wassevered from the androgynous name. Th e Ewerejected this concept of a one-sided High God,and despite the most brutal acts of'law andorder' visited on them by the 'civilising mission',have to the present time remained predominantlyanimist.Th e legacy of colonialism has not only definedthe Th ird World as non-Western b ut it has alsomade the West non-Third World. This has giventhe W estern person a world view and a readinessto regard his/her activities as the 'mainstream'.The 'Super Bowl' and the 'World Series'reinforce a world view governed by an obsessionfor superlatives in all spheres of life; one caneasily characterise this era as th e age ofhyperbo le. W hat is culturally specific is viewedas a phenomenon engulfing the globe. Evenwhen noble causes with good intentions andpositive results are involved, with implicationsfar greater than cultural specificity, globalannexation is obvious. Such is the case, forinstance, with the all-star fund-raising hymn forhunger, 'We Are the World' where 'we are'functions as a determinant, thus turning into aborderland the very people that are being aided.The Third World continues to be viewed as'dependent', 'peripheral' or 'marginal', no t

because the Third World is marginal per se, bu tbecause it is marginalised in, and by, colonialdiscourse.

In this era when even mosquitoes have adapted

to DD T it is understandable that the intellectualheirs of colonial ideology have readjusted theirrhetoric too. Nowadays, First World intellectualsenthuse over their global focus, and this idea isnot new. Te n years ago, Imm anuel W allersteinmade it a mark of his 'World System Th eor y'.For Wallerstein there is only one WorldCapitalist System, whose principal categoriesare 'core' and 'periphery', where the 'core' is thedeterminant of relations of exchange. He quotesKarl Marx, trying to enlist him in hisinterpretation. But for Wallerstein, besides pre-and no n-capitalism there is no post-capitalistformation. For him 'socialism' is subsumedunder the general category of'non-capitalism s'.Accordingly, no Third World country canbecome socialist.1 Third World countries canmove from one peripheral status to a semi-periphery within the capitalist mode; change canonly be of degree rather than of kind.

In Screen's special issue, 'Other Cinemas,Other Criticisms', the lead article by JulianneBurton, 'Marginal Cinemas and MainstreamCritical The ory ', proposes a most troublingexample of critical theory along th e lines ofWallerstein's core and periphery. There is aperfect fit here between Wallerstein's 'WorldSystem Theory' and Burton's 'Cinema-as-Spectacle':Third World film-makers can attempt to supplantthe spectacle with a non- (orpre-) spectacular by

Immanue! Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, Ne wYork, Academic Press, 1974.

atBayerischeStaatsbibliothekMue

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substituting some indigenous/autonomous discoursewhose 'otherness' is almost inevitably one of degreerather than kind.2

Just as 'socialism' is not only non-capitalism but'Socialism', so also is Thir d World cinema notonly non-spectacle but Third World cinema. The'otherness' is not only one of degree but also ofkind. 'Third Cinema' attempts to draw attentionto this fact. To hold on to the modes of operationand discourse of dominant cinema is counter toTh ird Cinema practice. Th e discourse strategyof Th ird Cinema has a more political andideological social focus. This Julianne Burtonseems unable to und erst and -no t all ThirdWorld film texts qualify as 'Third Cinema'. Theterritory is no t the map. Third Cinema in theThird World is anti-imperialist, militant andconfrontational cinema. It is neither pre- nornon-Cinema as Spectacle; it is, as Fernando Birriin the same issue of Screen puts it, 'an activecinema for an active spectator' - it is 'a cinema ofand for liberation'.3

I IIn her article in Screen, Burton argues that the'claim to transparency and unity of meaning' ofTh ird Cinema texts is not only unattainable bu timpossible. She denies this ideologicaltransparency in Th ird Cinema practices notbecause they have any hidden or 'unconscious'agenda bu t precisely because, as she suggests,'they are potentially intimidating in theirresistance to assimilation.' Such arguments tendto obscure the proven resistance of the ThirdCinema text.

The issue of transparency should be looked atwithin a specific cultural-historical context. Whatis not transparent for a Western viewer istransparent enough in its own context. Forinstance, Thir d World ethnographic films tendto be viewed as political in the co untry of theirorigin, w hile they are viewed as exotica o utsideit. Similarly, an American fiction film seenoverseas may be regarded as a documentary onAmerican life. First time visitors to the USAoften have a strange nostalgic feeling about theNew York skyline or the Statue of Liberty. Theyhave never been there before but they have'already seen it' in their past. Folks, it's the

movies! Obviously, the West is more than theThird World's exotica. Similarly, the ThirdWorld, is also 'already read', as a lack by theWest.A dialogue between the W est and the T hir dWorld is always a welcome endeavour. But what

blocks such efforts is the historical mishap theysuffered and are locked into, namely colonialismand imperialism. This has made reciprocity andpeaceful co-existence difficult to achieve. TheThird World has always tried to incorporate theWest in its culture and developmental schemes.The fact that more Third World people speakEuropean languages than Westerners speakThird World languages is a case in point. But itis the conflictual one-sidedness of the West thatdefeats and frustrates meaningfulcommunication, because of its unceasing desirefor colonial enclaves as well as culturalsynchronisation with itself. The barrier to realdialogue is thus the terms of dialogue itself.Consequently, in its desire to globalise andhomogenise world cinema and cultures, criticaltheory is also implicated.

Burton's inability to understand the specificideological predicaments of the Third World'scultural politics undermines the basis of hercriticism of Third Cinema. If it is agreed that theTh ird World is characterised by under-development and the 'lingering heritage' ofcolonial exploitation, cannot unequal economicexchange carry over into unequal symbolicexchange? For instance, Burton sets upproponents of'cultural decolonisation' in theTh ird World as though their only desire is areturn to 'pre-colonial innocence'. T his , ofcourse, denies them any awareness of theirhistory. B urton uses a selective quotation fromEduardo Galeano to legitimate her assertion that'cultural decolonisation' is 'a pervasive butillusory goa l'. She would be fairer to the spirit ofGaleano's article had she also quoted thefollowing, w hich speaks the opposite of wh at sheclaimed:

Julianne Burton, 'Marginal Cinemas and M ainstreamCritical Theo ry' , Screen May-August 1985, vol 26 nos 3-4, p13. AH other citations are included in the text.3 Fernand o Birri, 'For a N ationalist Realist, Critical andPopular Cinema', Screen May-August 1985, vol 26 nos 3-4, p90 .

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142 In general, it can truly be said that ma ny educationcenters and almost all the massive communicationmedia radiate translated messages, fabricatedoutside and designed to drain the Latin Americanmemory and prevent it from recognizing its ownreality and capacity: they induce it to consume andpassively reproduce the symbols of the very powerthat humbles it.*In the same issue of Screen Julio Garcia Espinosacomments on a similar misunderstanding of hisidea of an 'Imperfect Cinema'. 'Many peoplethought it was about making bad films'.According to Espinosa, this does not set up aneither/or situation in terms of good and badfilms, but judges from a cultural ideologicalperspective that encompasses the ideology of thework and the artistry of the maker.5 As GlauberRocha had intimated, 'technique is closer toideology than to aesthetics.' A critic brought upin a tradition which extols artistry above all elsewould assume that "an Imperfect Cinema' wasabout making bad films. And if the criticbelonged to the so-called 'mainstream criticaltheory' g roup, he/she would try to support thatassumption with selective quotations.

In her eagerness to explicate a 'critical theory'based on a vague form she calls 'psycho-dynam ics', Burton misquotes and misrepresentsThird Cinema in the Third World. Herapprop riation and [mis]use of the original text ispresented here:For Gabriel, the exploration of the psychodynatnicsof signification in Third World films is just asunnecessary as ideological interrogation, for ThirdCinema 'does not function on a psychological ormythic level but rather takes up an explicit positionwith respect to an ideological or social topic', (p 16)Here I provide the original text as i t appeared inThird Cinema in the Third World:In Third Cinema point of view does not function ona psychological or mythic level per se but rathertakes up an explicit position with respect to anideological or social topic.6

Burton then goes on to say that leading critics ofsocially-committed arts, 'posited the social-historical component of character in addition torather than in place 0/the psychological' (p 16)-the very point that, but for her deletions, I made.

This misquotation/misrepresentation is notmerely the result of a basic difference betweenthe two texts shown above. The root cause isideological and lies in the incompatibility ofstated approaches to the 'aesthetics of socialpleasure'. As Ter ry Lovell points out in theparagraphs subsequent to those quoted byBurton, 'aesthetic sensibilities are class- and sex-linked, and the politics of aesthetic pleasure willdepend on the particular ways in which thatsensibility has been appropriated and developedalong lines of sex and class.'7 The question thenis : Whose aesthetics? Whose pleasure? It is nottranshistorical or transcultural. Rather, it is aquestion of who develops it, for whom, underwhat conditions and along what lines? Burtonwould rather the West define it for the ThirdWorld. Third Cinema insists the people of theThird World do it for themselves.

More than 'the aesthetics of pleasure',therefore, the issue is one of activist aestheticsand the conditions for it. The question of socialpleasure, for the Third World film-maker is nota theoretical question but a practical one; morethan a condition of psychological alienation, it isa political issue of bread and butter.To say, as Burton does, that 'oppositional

cultural practices from the Third World bear thepromise of unifying the presently polarised viewof culture' by 'challenging cultural critics torecognise and articulate pleasure and desire associal rather than exclusively individualexperiences' (p 21), is to credit Third World filmlanguage and practice with what it does not do.Thi rd Cinema, presents 'another' film practicethat cannot be adequately explicated by Westerncritical theory of 'pleasure' and 'desire'.8 ThisThird World film-makers have said time andtime again. As the Cuban director Jorge Fragaputs it, 'We are not in favor of firing merely for

4 Eduardo Galeano, 'The Revolution as Revelation,' (trans byWalter I Bradbury), Socialist Review; no 65, September-October 1982, p 9.5 Julio Garcia Espinosa, 'Med itations on an ImperfectCinema", Screen May-A ugust 1985, vol 26 nos 3-4, pp 93-94.6 Teshome Gabriel, Third Cinema in the Third World: Th eAesthetics of Liberation, Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press,1982, p 7.

Terry Lovell, Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics, Pleasure,London, BFI, 1980, p 95.


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the pleasure of hearing the shot. We shoot inorder to hit the target."

mAs the honorary president of the Entro deCapacitacion C inematografica in Mexico C ity, Ionce went to visit the school and w as introduced toseveral professors, including a young man in a suitand tie who blushed a good deal. W hen I asked himwhat he taught, he replied, 'The Semiology of theClonic Image.' I could have murdered him on thespot. By the way, when this kind of jargon (atypically Parisian phenomenon) works its way intothe educational system, it wreaks absolute havoc inunderdeveloped countries. It's the clearest sign, inmy opinion, of cultural colonialism.10

It is indeed a sad commentary, particularlycoming from such a prominent director as LuisBunuel, but it is precisely when Th ird Worldintellectual activity is solely European-flavouredthat it runs the risk of being obtrusive, obscureand irrelevant. This kind of semiotic intellectualof the Third World is of course more at home ina European atmosphere than in his or her own.Bunuel's scepticism is shared by Third Worldfilm-makers, but it should be regarded as anopposition to 'Ivory Tower Semiotics' and not asa dismissal of semiotics. As Mar shall Blonskytartly observed, 'the reason the discourse hasnever "tak en" - never become, itself... - is thataction would be threatened by it." 1

This issue brings out in force the reason whyTh ird World film-makers/scholars should not beforced always to think in a sign system that is nottheirs. The question is whether the categoriesthat inform Western semiotics are fully relevantto the analysis of non-W estern sign system s.Western semiotics has presumed that itscategories can travel across culture s andlanguages. But language is saturated with thevalues of its own culture. To think in a languageother than one's own, is to experience a peculiarform of alienation-a kind of self-exile. Besides,Western semiotics has not developed a strategyto explain the specific mode of transformationrequired by the Third World context wheresemiotics should be an instrument of politicalaction. This has been largely ignored andunderdeveloped. It is now imperative toformulate Third Cinema semiotics in terms of its

relation between Third World concepts and itsown artistic mode to develop forms ofexplanation that account for its specificity.The position of the spectator in the Westerncinema is different from the position of thespectator in Third Cinema. The theorisation of

the Western spectator within the Althusserianframework views the subject as passive andmystified. This has been the cornerstone of theideological critique of Western cinema. Westerncinema represents and replays these mystifiedsocial relations. Third Cinema by contrastmaintains that the relation between the ThirdWorld audience in Thir d Cinema is one ofimmediate ideological lucidity. As the exiledChilean film-maker Miguel Littin states, 'Wemaintain that a cinema based upon our objectivesnecessarily implies a different kind of criticalevaluation; and we affirm that the greatest criticof a revolutionary film is the people to whom itis directed, who have no need for mediators todefend and interpret for them.' Indeed, thepoliticised spectator of the Third World filmwho has an ideological and sem iotic grip of thetext does not need, as Burton suggested, 'amediating agency, an advocate in the guise of afilm cri tic ... or other certified "ex per t"'(p 5),because this spectator, as an agent of thehistorical process, sees in films the concreterealisation of his/her political and materialcircumstances.

The issue at stake here is ideological- itdisclaims value-free semiotics. Litti n's statementshould therefore be read as a call for ideologicalmediation which is sensitive to the cultural andideological needs of both the film-maker and the

The quest for 'pleasure' and 'desire' within the Lacanianrereading of Freud suggests the notion of sexual difference.The re is, however, no cultural reading of either Freud orLacan in film texts in the Th ird World. H ere, the socialparadigm stands for the sexual paradigm as the generator ofexcess. In Thi rd C inema 'pleasu re' and 'desire' are set forthas revolutionary agencies. For further reading on this issue,see Richard Lichtman, The Production of Desire, New York,Th e Free Press, 1982, and Gilles Deleuze and FelixGuattari, Anti-Oedipus, New York, The Viking Press, 1977.9 Quoted in Peter Steven (ed) Jump Cm: Hollywood, Politicsand C ounter-cinema, Between the Lines, Toronto, 1985, p 351.1 0 Luis Bunuel, My Last Sigh: The Autobiography of LuisBunuel, New York, Alfred A Knopf, Inc, 1983, p 222.11 Marshall Blonsky (ed), On Signs, Baltimore, John HopkinsUniversity Press, 1985, p 36.

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144 audience. Th ird Cinema practices maintain thatthe Third World audience has an active andessentially constructive relation to the signsystems of Th ird World cinema. Th e spectatoractivates the sense of the text. When Julio GarciaEspinosa quoting Marx entones, 'in the futurethere will no longer be painters but rather menwho, among other things, dedicate themselves topainting'12 , he is proposing the mission of Th irdCinema-to make every spectator/readerideologically astute.

Why is it that structurally, semioticsunderplays history and everyday existence?Because, as Blonsky observed:Semiotics has been a futile gaze at the world'sseeming pleasures, its drunken stupidies; and it mayall the while have been imaginary, the way in whichwe, semiotic intellectuals, have wanted to be lovedand respected. No, a critic will answer me, semioticscan also be unpolitical, vmideological. It can yieldup a renew ed joy every time w e see the functioningof the world's semantic organization. Studyingpoetry, painting, narrative and so on, we learn thatthe world is an immense message, we enjoy all theintelligence of everythin g that is intelligible. Towhich we can respond: but spying out theworld's mean ings, you have spied out itsmisery once more. Meaning is aninstrumen t, a conduit of power.u

Why is it that a cine-structuralist variant of theSemiotic Inquiry is a calculated affront tocommon sense? When meaning is readilyaccessible, it seeks answers elsewhere, and in theprocess the subject, the lives and struggles ofhuman beings, gets lost in the shuffle. The issueis whether to regard structure or structuringabsences as the meaning of a text or to considerthe significance of the text by its place in thesocial context. W estern semiotics, as adeciphering operation, not only dismisses the'obvious' and the 'habitual' as false consciousnessbut also sets out to marginalise competingideological interpretation . The question is notwhether one can escape semiotics, b ut rather tounderstand that all sign systems are implicated inideology.

What then is Third Cinema semiotics? Thefollowing, inasmuch as they can shed more lighton the current debate, should be regarded as themain concern of Th ird Cinema semiotics.

1. T o explicate and interrogate the kinds ofintuitive knowledge spectators bring to theprocess.2. To clear the ideological confusion thatsurrounds semiotic inquiry into cross-cultural studies.3. To wed political economy of the sigifier tocritical theory of the text, and above all,To emphasise the 'ideological' as opposed tothe 'psychological' spectator.Here you have it: semiotics of everyday life,cross-cultural sem iotics, the p olitical economy ofthe social sign and, finally, a semiotics rooted inthe dialectics of struggle. Sem iotics can no longerafford to overlook these concerns of Th ir dCinema and alienate, or be alienated by, thosewho act in it.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to therealisation of the semiotic project is those texts ofThird Cinema that are resistant to the absorptiontendencies of'mainstream' critical theory. ThirdCinema texts exist within both ideology andhistory and thus need the application of a bondedhistoriography and semiotics for meaningfulexplication.

IVTh e concept of 'Th ird W orld' has been stronglyattacked by scholars both from the USSR 14 andthe USA d ue to its non-differentiation betweenone super-power and the other in their relationto the Th ird Wo rld. Burton also dismissed theconcept by calling it, 'a signifier without asignified, a term without a referent' (p 11). Thisis a neither/nor situation and is, at best, agnosticthinking. Once she has dismissed the term, shenevertheless continues to use it, equating it with'less Westernised', 'dependent', 'non-Western'and 'm argi nal', as if all these terms of analysisare the same. If Burton does not acknowledge theconcept exists, what then is her article about? .What is one to make of the Thi rd World

Quoted in Michael Chanan (ed), Tzzenty-five Years of LatinAmerican Cinema, London, BFI-Channel Four, 1983, p 29.Marshall B lonsky, op cit, p 35, emphasis added.

14 See Y Zhukov, et al, The Third World, Moscow, ProgressPublishers, 1970.


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alliance within the United Nations in whichthese countries quite frequently take a unifiedstand on issues of mutual concern? So long as werecognise 'first world' and 'second world' therewill always be a'th ir d world '. These labels arerelational; .they have an instrum ental value, notan absolute one. The real reasons for denying theterm legitimacy lie in its connotations of 'power'and 'united front' as the basis of globaldifferentiation. 15

Burton 's dismissal of the concept of 'Th irdCinema' is, therefore, quite understandable,because it too connotes power and united front.'Th ird Cinema' challenges the hegemonic holdof Cinema-as-Spectacle. Indeed, the concept ofTh ir d C inem a is unified in its difference fromHollywood or mainstream cinema. For Burtonto allege that the term has been 'widelyquestioned by many Third World film-makersand flatly rejected by oth ers' (p 6), because of itsPeron ist associations, is guilt by association. Itwould have been useful to have had a relevantreference of her allegation at this point.According to Burton, 'cultural impermeabilitybetween dominant and dependent c ul tur es. ..does not exist' (p 9). Have you ever watched aTh ird World film with native viewers of that

culture? T o do so is to find the 'untran slatable'and 'unparaph raseable' nuances of cultureforegrounded by two distinct responses: fromthose following the sub-titles and those followingthe direct address. While one group struggles tofashion a linear narrative, the other is engaged inintellectual and emotional involvement, be it inchuckles, choruses of laughter or other forms ofresponse. Cultural impermeability cannot besimply wished away.Mythical consciousness and folk narrativepoetics are specific elements of Third World filmtexts. The specificities of each Third Worldculture are unities in their own settings, but theyare also unities measured against differenceswithin a Third World context. This relationshipis a dialectical one; rather than o ppositional it isa relationship marked by differences of strategiesfor development. The 'mainstream' paradigm, onthe other hand, is measured by production valuesand the trajectory of technical brilliance. If, as itcurrently seems, mainstream cinema needs 40million dollars plus for the sheer q uality of itsproduction, Third Cinema practices can livewithout it. The unifying impulse that originally

spurred Third Cinema was and is a need for theprimacy of subject matter over materialconsiderations. To know this is to acknowledgethe energy of social commitment and visionconcentrated or lodged within it. Consequently,as I've suggested elsewhere16, we need to attendto a new critical theory that takes into accountcultural resistance to domination as its primerhetorical strategy. A genuine cross-culturalsystem of exchange, a cross fertilisation of ideas,can only occur if the notion that there cannot bediscourse without meta-discourse/messagewithout meta-message is reconsidered in light oftext and context.

To imply that mainstream critical theoryshould dominate and assimilate all others becauseof its position of power, is to speak only ineconomic terms and to collapse everything else,including social concerns into it. As Bunuel hasobserved:It seems clear to me that w ithout the enormousinfluence of the canon of American culture,Steinbeck would be an unknown, as would DosPasso's and Hemingway. If they'd been born inParaguay or Turkey, no one would ever have readthem, which suggests the alarming fact that thegreatness of a writer is in direct proportion to thepower of his country."

In this period of world hunger, nuclear threat,ideologised racism, the Debt Trap and violentconflicts in Central America, natural disasters inMexico and Colombia, the 'great' film directorsof the West, would have been mere footnotes inhistory, had it not been for the economic powerof their countries, and such notables as NelsonPereira dos Santos of Brazil, Ousmane Sembeneof Senegal, Thom as G utierrez Alea of Cuba,Mirinal Sen of India, Fernando B irri andFernando Solanas of Argentina, Miguel Littin ofChile and several Nort h Am erican and European

For an introduction to the term and concept of 'T hirdWorld' , see SD Muin e, 'The T hird World: Concept andControversy', Third World Quarterly, vol 1 no 3, 1979, pp118-128.1 6 See my article, 'Towards Critical Theory of Third World

Films' , Third W orld Affairs, 19S5 , Third World Foundationfor Social and Economic Stu dies, Lond on, January 1985,pp 355-369.1 7 Luis Bunuel, op cit, p 222.

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146 progressive film-makers, active in Nicaragua, ElSalvador, the Middle East, South Africa, wouldhave been the actual luminaries of this era.Of course, mainstream critical theory operatesunder the 'myth of the monolith' and tends toforget that there is another West, whose mainconcern is also social and political and whosestruggles to liberate cinema compares with thatof the Th ird Wo rld. Too often these film-makersare also ghettoised in just the same way as theTh ird World film-makers. As Peter Steven hasobserved:

Variety magazine and its rave reports of 'box officemagic' represent the voice of dominant cinemaBut at the same time there are other, differentvoices-different languages- calling for radicallynew types of films, and for a new approach tocinema. These voices don't h ave the backing of WallStreet and Madison Avenue but they are presentnevertheless and very active in parallel nooks andcrannies in North A merica and beyond, an despecially in the Third World.1*If anyone should claim credit for ushering in,and popularising, Third World film in Westernuniversities and cinemas, it is this progressivevoice, and not, as Burton implies, the academicinstitutions per se. Progressive faculty, studentsand film journals in the US and Europe haveplayed an important role. However, the claim tobe allied with this movement is not in itself anindication of solidarity w ith the goal of culturalliberation. What is called for, above all else, is amore coherent and constructive understandingand practice than that espoused by Burton'sconcluding remarks:

A view of culture in which the realm of ideologicalsignificance is not incompatible with the realm ofpersonal enrichment (because personal enrichment isalso viewed as a social phenomenon) would freeWestern critics from the onerous role of'diagnostician of pathologies', reaffirming insteadtheir function as guide and celebrant, (p 21)

Progressive Western voices who have graspedthe ideological agenda of decolonisation andliberation of Third Cinema have allied in co-productions and other forms of critical solidaritywith Third World progressives to bring about, inthe words of Glauber Rocha, the overthrow of'the world cinematic language' under 'the

dictatorship of Coppola and Godard." 9 In thisspirit, Julio Garcia Espinosa has said, 'Cinemacan be constructed on the ashes of what alreadyexists. Mo reover, to make a new cinema is, infact, to reveal the process of destruction of thespectacle We have to make a spectacle out ofthe destruction of the spectacle.'20 When this isaccomplished, it is then and only then thatBurton's hopes would be realised and using herown words, Western critics, would be freed'from the onerous role of'diagnostician ofpathologies', reaffirming not 'their function asguide' (whose guide?) but as co-celebrants of thesocial institution of cinema and the human arts.

Critical theory is not an innocent discipline, noris it an 'objective' phenomenon. Like any theoryof social change, it has blind spots and limits. Itis today a battleground. The pivotal questionshould rather be, to what end is 'mainstream'critical theory directed? Of what use are suchanalytic tools? To what degree are they in facttools of oppression rather than liberation?Critical theory cannot be a method of perpetualalienation, but a guide and tool for liberation.Critical theory perhaps, as never before, issymbiotically linked to the propositions ofpolitical econom y:In its concept of an ultimate goal, critical theory didnot intend to replace the theological hereafter with asocial one It only makes explicit what wasalways the foundation of its categories: the demandthat through the abolition of previously existingmaterial conditions of existence the totality ofhuman relations be liberated In the theoreticalreconstruction of the social process, the critique ofcurrent conditions and the analysis of theirtendencies necessarily include future-orientedcomponents.21

This then is the theory-praxis nexus that the

1 8 Peter Steven, op cit, p 15.Glauber Rocha, Rciolucao do Cimma Xnz-o, Rio de Janeiro,Alhambra/Em brafilme, 1 981, p 467.2 0 Quoted in Peter Steven, op cit, p 357.

2 1 Herbert Marcuse, 'Philosophy and Critical Theo ry, 'Negations, Boston, Beacon Press, 1968, p 145.


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Third World film practice suggests. Today, itbears a clear signal ot power relations within agiven society. But it cannot, and should not, beopaque to that power, or it will cease to be. Theexpressed desire of the Western intellectual,touristing in-Third World discourse, is that theTh ird Wo rld abdicate or surrender its theoreticalconcerns and responsibilities to the West. ThisTh ird Cinema film-makers understand all toowell. To them film-making has always been apolitical act. They have been incarcerated, exiledand killed not because of the lack of their owncritical theory but, in fact, precisely because ofit .22To think of'Other Cinemas' in terms of thespectacle only is disastrous. To dismiss the social

and/or revolutionary functions of'OtherCriticisms' as 'defensive' is an even graver error.To belittle the efforts of Third Cinemapractitione rs, by design or default, leads tooquickly to the temptation to speak for them byconstructing one's own fictions. Th is culturalnegation, this mechanism of confinement andtotalisation, and this system of unequal culturaland symbolic exchange, are not evidence of atheory of liberation, but rather of'law and order'criticism.Ma rx's letter to Arnold Rug e, September1843, remains the last word on the subject:

Nothing prevents us therefore from starting ourcriticism with c riticism of politics, w ith taking sidesin politics hence with actual struggles, andidentifying ourselves with them. Then we do not

face the world in doctrinaire fashion with a newprinciple, declaring, Here is truth, kneel here! Wedevelop new principles for the world out of theprinciples of the world. We do not tell the world,Cease your struggles, they are stupid; we want togive you the true watchword of the struggles. Wemerely show the world why it actually struggles,and the awareness of this is something which theworld must acquire even if it does not want to.

I would like to thank particularly, Martin BIythe,Scott Cooper, Ronnie Serr and Billy Woodbury fortheir criiical comments on this paper. I have alsoappreciated the insightful remarks of the following:IN C Aniebo, David Iyam, Naguib K tiri, HamidNaficy, Ramiah Shanker and Esther Yau.Teshom e Gabriel and Julianne B urton will bespeaking at a conference on 'Third Cinema: Theoriesand Practices' at the Edinburgh Film Festival, August11-13, 1986.

2 2 For a partial list of Latin American film-makers, jailed,exiled or killed, see, 'In Latin America They ShootFilmmakers', Sight and Sound, Summer 1976, pp 160-61.

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NAL

THIRD C INE MA: THEORIES A N D PRACTICES11/12/13 August 1986A three-day conference addressing cultural theories and practicesassociated with the notio n of Third Cinema. Critics, theorists,historians an d film-makers fromAfrica, Latin Am erica, India,Sri Lanka, and from th e Black British and American independen tsectors have been invited t o discuss a range of issues concerningthe d evelopm ent o f Third Cinema theory and practice and itsrelationship to the do minant Euro-American traditions, and th estrategies and ideo logical comm itments underpinningopp ositional forms of film/video practice.

Details from Paul Willemerv'Jim Pines, British Film Institute, 127 Charing Cross Road, London WCIH OEA; or Jim Hicke y, Festival Director,Edinb urgh Inte rnation al Film Festival, Filmhouse, 88 Lo thian Road, Edinb ursh EH3 9BZ. Tel: (031) 228-6382. Telex: 7216 5.Registration fee : 20 (includes access to con ference films).Acco mmo datio n can be arrange d throug h the EIFF Acco mm oda tion Service at the festival address.


nchenonJune17,2010


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Colonialism and "Law and Order" Criticism by Teshome Gabriel

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