APQ - APPON PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Postcolonial studies are an important discipline for understanding and engaging with the Global South. Its main thrust is to push back the practice and effects of colonialism to enable affected societies to freely pursue their collective goals unimpeded from colonial influences. Existing works of postcolonial studies rely heavily on the theories of Marxism, deconstructionism, psychoanalysis, and post structuralism for their analysis of the colonial situation and reactions to it. This paper aims to defend the argument that contrary to Vivek Chibber's position, the subaltern studies historians are right in their cultural turn in pursuit of freedom and emancipation. However, their position is open to attack for lack of adequate historiographical framework to ground their analyses. Chibber tries to fill the vacuum by proposing Marxist socialism. The paper proves this to be grossly inadequate for the purpose, due to its economism, anti-nationalism and undue reductionism. This opens the door to Hegelian historicism, which provides a more comprehensive framework for radical anticolonial and pro-national aspirations. This paper therefore rejects Vivek Chibber's main argument against postcolonial theory, and his choice of Marxist socialism as the panacea to the problems of the Global South. As an alternative, the Hegelian historicist narrative is recommended, due to the broadness of its perspectives and its exceptional accommodation for nationalist, cultural and linguistic aspirations in decolonization. Hegelian historiography proffers the insight into the divide of “internal colonisation' and 'external colonisation'. We show that the matters with which the subaltern studies historians are primarily concerned finds accommodation in Hegel's theory. The paper is established within a theoretical framework of sociopolitical dialectics using a problem-centric approach.The paper therefore recommends Hehelian dialectics as ideal for a theoretical framework for subaltern studies since it foreshadows radical theories such as E.K. Ogundowole's self-reliancism, decolonisation of minority nationalities and freedom from internal colovisation.

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