Inversion Versus Subversion
Theorists inspired by deconstruction, such as Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, criticise inversion as failing to overcome binaries. Inversion is sometimes contrasted with "subversion", with the observation that subversion breaks down a binary whereas inversion retains it. As Partha Bramerjee summarises the controversy in subaltern studies, "It appeared as if the consciousness of protest and resistance was always already implicated in the terms of the dominant discourses themselves, for inversion and negation had to depend on the continued existence of the dominant as the necessary Other."
Homi Bhabha asks: "Can the aim of freedom of knowledge be the simple inversion of the relation of oppressor and oppressed, centre and periphery, negative image and positive image?" His answer is that hybridity is to a preferable strategy, "negotiation rather than negation".
This rejection of inversion is a source of contention between postcolonial theorists such as Spivak, Said and Bhabha, and identity-political anti-colonial theorists associated with Afrocentrism, black consciousness and various nationalisms.
Read more about this topic: Inversion In Postcolonial Theory
Famous quotes containing the word subversion:
“In a democracy—even if it is a so-called democracy like our white-élitist one—the greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)