Before We Get Too Far Away From Bhabha

Hey, I just wanted to post some of the key concepts from “Sly Civility” before we move away from Bhabha. The idea of unisonance or the “contemporaneous cultural cohesion connection its national subjects through the undifferentiated simultaneity of an aural imaginary” remains paramount to Bhabha’s discussion of the place of text and speech in the broader colonial discourse. He continues to argue that one of the signs of civility is a group of individuals engaged in spirited public discussion, connecting their opinions of government with those of others. Later in the essay, Bhabha clarifies that this public voice must emanate from truly democratic representatives of the people and not from members of a service trained by the government to represent a people. A system, operated by the government, with the purpose of forming representatives of a people creates an irony of reference and erases “all that is taken as second nature within Western civility.” The process of recordation facilitates this irony of reference by deconstructing the natural link between democracy and discussion. A text, written for the purpose of conducting government, becomes an object that transcends both temporal and territorial boundaries. It creates a sort of intermediate authority which serves only to widen the gap between the Colonizer and the Colonized. Bhabha identifies this concept as the syntax of deferral and insists that it is a “colonial temporality and textuality of that space between enunciation and address.” The emergent problems associated with a written text as a form of government provide the origin of colonial miscognition. Within the process of appropriation and forced segregation between Colonizer and Colonized, both entities assume a sort of perverted form of unity. They are faced with the prospect of adopting two identities, one pertaining to the single unit of empire, and the other, a retention of original identity eg “democrat and despot, individual and servant, native and child.” Bhabha centers this discussion around the idea of less than one and double. He maintains that “the position of authority is alienated at the point of civil enunciation – less than liberty, in Mill’s case – and doubles at the point of colonialist address.” He seems to establish a parallel between the gaps of speaking and writing, and confused identities.
These concepts were just the ones that struck me as particularly important. My thoughts and explanations are by no means comprehensive and if anyone would like to modify or add to them…please do.