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.