The Post-colonial Intellectual

Arif Dilrik emphasizes the significance of the post-colonial intellectual in ‘The Post Colonial Aura’.  Is the postcolonial intellectual a displaced subject? Dilrik posits that “postcolonial intellectuals are the producers of postcolonial discourse”.  Why can this not be thought in terms of the discourse producing and sustaining the postcolonial intellectual? In one way, the postcolonial intellectual sees himself as an emancipated subject in so far as he is no longer bound by the constraints that accompany the usage of the idea of a Third World intellectual. The argument presented by critics is that the Third World as a term was inadequate and “vague” in so far as it could not encapsulate  heterogeneous historical circumstances. The specificity attached to it meant that the third world subject was locked in a fixed position both structurally and geographically. Thirdly the term could not account for societies and populations that shifted with changing global relationships. This objection is quite valid, the fixing of societal locations permitted the identification of Third World intellectuals. Postcolonial does not permit such identification. If the postcolonial intellectual is not located in one place then Dilrik is right in questioning whether there is something called a postcolonial consciousness that constitutes the identity of the postcolonial intellectual. He argues there is a postcolonial consciousness that could not be grappled previously with the term Third World. To him, this consciousness is discursive and represents an attempt to “regroup intellectuals” of uncertain location under the banner of a postcolonial discourse. Intellectuals need to  participate in the discourse to defines themselves as such. The postcolonial intellectual cannot be understood outside of the discourse that he produces and participates in. At the same time, it is important to note that written into the idea of a ‘postcolonial’ is a break with time- as having coming after and being a product of the workings of colonialism. As such, the postcolonial intellectual is not “outside the history of western domination”, it is in a “tangential relationship to it”. To my mind then, the postcolonial intellectual inhabits, in the words of Homi Bhaba a “space of inbetweenness”, a hybridity. Central to the discourse he participates in is the “repudiation of master narratives” and a critique of Eurocentricism, though this understanding of discourse is also something that Dilrik contests for being exclusive on several grounds. For instance, in so far as ‘postcolonial’ is thought of in discursive terms it ignores those who come from postcolonial societies themselves. But most importantly, to my mind Dilrik is concerned with the problem that even though postcolonial critics engage in a repudiation of master narratives ultimately  the "critical gaze" reproduces the “universalist pretensions” of the First World academy. How then are we to understand the postcolonial intellectual and its hybridity?