Gyan vs Washbrook

       I found the dialogue/debate between Gyan and Wasbrook quite useful with respect to the possibilities/limitations created by the move towards a postmodernist/poststructuralist method of history writing. Although, I do agree with Gyan’s critique of the Orientalist project, and its tendency to essentialize, distance and oppose the other, however I find this whole concept of a “post foundational” history quite unsettling. I agree with Gyan in his assertion that we need to move beyond essentializing categories, and make sure we are cognizant of the historically contingent nature of our categories, but I think he fails to historicize his own position. Furthermore, as Washbrook argues, categories/concepts do not have to be necessarily essentializing in nature. Rather, they can treated as particular tools to make sense of historical reality. I am forced to question whether the solution to grand totalizing theories really can be found by having  no definitions at all, no concepts and no categories. Isn’t it more important to be aware of the way in which we employ the categories that we employ rather than doing away with them?

                Also, I don’t understand the problem of using particular identities such as class, structures, and individuals in order to center one’s narrative. Obviously, these categories must not be the sole basis of one’s causal explanation, and must be viewed as subjective and historically contingent formulations, however I don’t quite understand this need to move away from any kind of foundation on which to base historical analysis. To be sure, even though Gyan is constantly critiquing the dominant categories we employ, yet he is ultimately concerned with the “third world” – a category he refers to throughout the text. I also found Washbrook’s critique of the way in which the emancipatory potential of the post foundational histories is curtailed due their emphasis on positionality quite important Indeed, in order to be political, we have to quite explicitly pin down our subject of emancipation rather than always focus on the ever shifting positions/relational concepts that tend to depoliticize the subject. I mean what more can post foundational critiques offer us other than making us aware of the conflation of the subject and the object in historical reality.

                I think the Washbrook’s critique however is also quite contradictory as well  – at one point he argues that totalizing themes aren’t really a problem, yet he then criticizes postmodernist scholarship precisely because it too attempts to rely on these abstract totalizing themes and theories. Also, I am not sure what Washbrook himself has to offer rather than a critique of post foundational history - what other alternative is there?