Home > Features > Critiquing neocolonial discourses on the Tibet question

Critiquing neocolonial discourses on the Tibet question

By Pranjali Bandhu |

GEOPOLITICAL EXOTICA: TIBET IN WESTERN IMAGINATION By Dibyesh Anand Borderlines, vol. 30, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London, 2007. pp. 190; Price not stated

Dibyesh Anand’s book is an interrogation of exoticized Western representations of Tibet and Tibetans , and analyses of their significance for the Tibet question — an important current issue in world politics. As an academic working in a Western university, Anand challenges what he calls the parochial (Euro- and America-centric) nature of mainstream international relations (IR) theory. According to him, IR is exclusively focussed on issues of power and security from the point of view of the powerful Western nations within a framework of states. IR, in general, has not encouraged an intimate knowledge of non-western countries. Issues central to the lives of common people in the third world have been largely marginalized and silenced, even while the discipline claims universal applicability overlooking its narrow, masculinist, ethnocentric approach.

In the view of the author, critical theories like social constructivism, feminism, postmodernism and poststructuralism have exposed the discursive process of mainstream IR and in this way have made a space that allows for contestation and recognition of different possibilities of being international. But they largely still remain West-centric. An effective challenge to the dominant paradigms of IR can therefore only be mounted from a postcolonial critical attitude. Following Spivak, he asserts that it is only through an interaction with non-Western context, material and agents of knowledge that the dominant ‘Occidental’ theories of interpretation can be challenged and redrawn (p. 2).

Taking the issue of Tibet, “Geopolitical Exotica” explores asymmetrical power relations in the discursive production of “Tibet” as a specific site of West/non-West encounter. Cultural representations of the non-Western ‘Other’ lie at the core of Western colonial and neo-colonial discourses. In the specific case of Tibet, the poetics (how Tibet is represented) and the politics (what impact these representations have on the identity discourses of Tibetans) support particular Western foreign policy regimes. These images of Tibet have been appropriated by Tibetans-in-exile and are deployed by them in their effort to gain independence. The asymmetry of power relations is reflected in the fact that the reverse Tibetan exoticization of the West does not impact the West’s construction of its own identity. The Western stereotyping of Tibet and Tibetans has a history and many components, as the author elucidates in his book, but the most prevalent image is one of Tibetans as victims requiring outside, particularly Western, help. The author points out that this outside support is coming at a price (p. 21); the link between knowledge production and national interests remains close as ever.

Strategies of representation involving Othering are many on the part of the imperial West and Anand enumerates them in his second chapter, “Imagining the Other”. In most cases, the Western gaze debases non-Westerners, idealising only some of them. Tibet has been one non-Western region, with which Europeans have by and large identified. The third chapter is a (partial) story of Western interactions with Tibet during various historical periods and the production of images of Tibet in the process. His account of Tibet — as perceived by various authors like Kipling), academic experts like Waddell, travellers like David-Neel and in popular fiction and films — makes interesting reading. As an instance, the term ‘Shangri-la’, invented by a British author, is taken up. Probably inspired by the name of a mythical kingdom in the Himalayas called Shambhala, it has come to mean a repository of mental peace, spiritual and material wealth, and embodies western yearnings at a particular point of time in their history, rather than denoting the cultural and historical reality of Tibet. Younghusband ’s — that notorious imperial adventurer’s — account of Tibet is also taken up for analysis. It is characterized as employing various colonial representational strategies including gaze, debasement, moralization, infantilization and self-affirmation, which justified the British invasion of Tibet as ennobling for them and as civilizing for others (p. 46).

The fourth chapter is devoted to a political analysis of Britain’s role in framing the Tibet question in terms of sovereignty, suzerainty, autonomy and independence While going into the history of British colonial policy in Tibet, Anand reflects that Tibetan relations with its neighbours (especially the Mongols and Hans) was based on a combination of religion and politics and on principles of patron-client relations that cannot be so easily rendered into the modern Western idioms of territorial sovereignty, nation state and separation of religion and politics. For arriving at a just solution to the Tibet question, the concept of sovereignty needs to be historicized as well as its linkages with imperialism laid bare (p. 81).

Chapters 5 and 6 present how Tibetanness is being articulated in the Diaspora and shows that there are creative tensions within Tibetan identity articulations and between these articulations and ‘Exotica Tibet.’ The author focuses on identity discourses circulating mainly within the Diaspora, though these constitute only a very small percentage of the total Tibetan population, because of the difficulties of researching in Tibet itself. It certainly is not the case that the popular articulations of Tibetans in Tibet are copies of the elite discourses of the Tibetan Diaspora, which represent Tibetan culture as unique and different and emphasize a link to past traditions overlooking oppressive and exploitative elements of their culture, religion and history. At the same time, Diaspora Tibetans present themselves as a modernising, democratising society, which helps their integration in a globalised world.

In the struggle for national identity the key symbol is the figure of the Dalai Lama. Anand’s observation that it is the West that has created the image of the present Dalai Lama as the personification of Tibet is important. The current Western support for the Tibetan cause is based on ‘Exotica Tibet’ and its dominant representation of Tibetans as inherently spiritual and peaceful people. This restricts the alternatives available to Tibetans, many of whom are disillusioned with the Dalai Lama’s insistence on non-violence and his renunciation of the demand for independence in favour of genuine autonomy within China. Anand quotes Tsering Shakya: “If the Tibetan issue is to be taken seriously, Tibet must be liberated from both the Western imagination and the myth of Shangri-la” (p. 105). The author also notes the fact that while the international support for Palestinians often comes from third world countries, Tibet support groups are more common in the civil society of the first world largely due to the accommodation of Tibetans to western discourses of human rights, environmentalism, peace and non-violence, emphasis on universal compassion rather than strident nationalism and the Dalai Lama’s consistent appeals to the Western elite for help and support. The fact that Tibetans turn for support to former colonizers rather than to formerly colonized, and they choose public relations and media over political alliance, has come in for criticism among Tibetans and some of their supporters.

In the final chapter, Anand examines the symbolism of Dharamshala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, from the point of view of critical postcoloniality. Also called “Little Lhasa”, the effects of tourism and consequent commodification are apparent, while it simultaneously symbolises resistance and regeneration. Influences of popular Indian culture are also evident. Identity in this sense is hybrid, fragmented and fractured.

Though cast within an academic framework, Anand’s study can certainly be used fruitfully by those active in the pro-Tibet and anti-imperialist movements. But the limitations of postmodernist and postcolonial theories are also visible in his work. Critical postcoloniality can point out to ethnocentrism in the garb of universalism, but it remains partial in its approach and has not developed into a holistic theory that can uncover all aspects of an unequal world due to its aversion for ‘metanarratives’. Following postmodernism, poststructuralism et al it avoids a class analysis of capitalism, without which no emancipatory theory can emerge. Critical theories were designed by Western intellectuals who got integrated into advanced capitalist society after the failure of the Soviet Union and its allies to provide an alternative path. With all its distortions late capitalism came to be perceived as the “end of history.” Postcolonialism too remains mainly a critical theory; it allows third-world intellectuals to make a space for themselves in the first world, but without having to actually find a way and take up the task of overcoming the real divisions between dominating imperialist countries and subordinated neo-colonial ones.