- The zenith of Russian domination is now convened with new strategic players like China and the United States, who have maintained settler economic dominance in the Global South.
- The United States legitimizes and justifies its domination by constantly restructuring the global capital and finding solutions to global inequality/poverty, which has made baits of the notion of the civilizing mission.
- Chinese intervention in Central Asia through BRI and beyond has led to the collapse and resurrection of global finance slipping the Central Asian economies into depression and devaluation.
Introduction
Colonialism is a phenomenon of imperial domination with the nation’s subjugation into ravaging clutches and vicious circles of exploitation and slavery. It involves economic and political control over the dependent territory, which is attributed to social and educational reforms much for the benefit of the colonizers. This was evidently seen in the case of the Central Asia (Satellite States) which were subjugated to the rule of the Soviet Union till its apparent fall in 1989. At present, the inherent rise of the post-colonialism phenomena does not include or maintain political allegiance or don’t venture into ameliorating societal fabric; it is a sheer direct influence and exercising of power through economic terms only. This argument has drawn the attention of academicians who are closely working to find the hidden vested motives of the colonial propeller, and the acceptance of this new form of colonialism has become the subject of argument in the canon of the larger political philosophy.
The zenith of Russian domination is now convened with new strategic players like China and the United States, who have maintained settler economic dominance in the Global South. This is outlined in the Postcolonial theory envisioned by Frantz Fanon in his books “Postcolonialism and the Ethics of Difference” and “The Wretched of the Earth,” where he mentions that colonialism is destructive and seen as a machine of naked violence. Further, Edward Said’s path-breaking work, “Orientalism” applied Michel Foucault’s “technique of discourse analysis” to evaluate and interpret the knowledge about the revolts of non-Europeans which is elaborated by Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Influenced by them, Homi K Bhaba’s hybridity, R Siva Kumar’s alternative modernity, and Derek Gregory’s colonial present-geopolitics have depicted the unfair human treatment and toxic forms of subjugation implied with economic disempowerment. Therefore, it draws attention that these postcolonial subjectivities are being framed and controlled through discursive practices.
This article aims to analyse the phenomenon of neo-colonialism in former colonies by understanding the implications of the new power in terms of recognition and revolt by the colonies. The expected outcome is to problematize this question of deviation from Russo-centric assumptions to modern forms of colonialism, which has been an intellectual blind spot or an unacknowledged phenomenon of economic slaughter, emphasizing the creation of a voracious habit for procuring and fulfilling its national interests. This has constructed a strong narrative of the US and China as intervening powers in Central Asia.
Logic and Deliberations of Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism examines “the experiences of societies and governments and the impact of the Western forms of knowledge and power, which marginalize the non-Western world”. It is sought to “understand the world as it is and as it ought to be”. It is largely concerned with the response of the third world to the huge imbalance between global power and wealth accumulation.
The international order currently is in a standoff between the privileged and excluded, precisely the North and the South. The South is liable to recast the episodes of flawed versions of the civilizational missions accompanied by humanitarian aid. Succumbed to the same structural pattern, neocolonialism in the postcolonial territories exercised identical roles in a new economic and social form of subjugation.
Thomas Keenan has been critical while analyzing the conceptual dilemma for contemporary discourses on human rights. He opines that superpowers like the US and China get this unethical right to purge for human accession to resources and to establish a regime based on the ideology they follow. These nations do not consider it a moral responsibility to emancipate and free them; instead, it’s their repository to clamour and denial for such existential rights. An apt example would be the post-soviet states of Central Asia which are pushed to be democratic in nature and are subjugated to open free trade with an absolute advantage for the powers dwindling in the region.
The developed countries think it’s their aboriginal right to intervene to amend the societal order by posing as benevolent. This hidden motive of realism depicted in the state’s dictatorial behaviour has to be curbed by these independent sovereign nations by turning down the pages of history. This would end the superpower triumphalism; otherwise, states would end up perceiving and acknowledging as a complicit actor to seek justification which acts much for their inconvenience.
This historical mutation is revamped where the powers become the dispensers of global capital, making them the postcolonial elite. These elites are involved in the development progression to cosmopolitan with the exclusion from culture and local politics. This makes them feel they are tolerant powers that they aren’t in reality. This founding gesture of enlightenment cannot disrupt and create violent tendencies or something forfeited in the name of progress.
Central Asian voices are dispelled and subdued by US and China’s energy corporations such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, CNPC, CNOOC etc which give little or no space for indigenous development of local companies like Kazay Munai Gas.
Edward Said portrays how Western academia and their policy elites rely on a distorted lens to construct a particular idea. This is of the so-called ‘Orient’, a binary offering a distinct dualistic way of thinking where the inhabitants show opposite characteristics. The Western discourses have constructed non-Western states and peoples as ‘other’ or different from the West, making them appear inferior, ridden with poverty, exotic, hedonistic, backward, primitive, hyper-masculine, aggressive, non-rational childlike, and effeminate. In an asymmetric attempt to accomplish it, the United States legitimizes and justifies its domination by constantly restructuring the global capital and finding solutions to global inequality/poverty has made baits of the notion of the civilizing mission. This makes the West being attributed with positive attributes of rationality, masculinity, civilization, and modernity, which is now followed by the recent hegemons rising in the East like in the case of China. Deconstructing literary and historical materials is essential to comprehending how imperialism’s epistemic endeavours mirror and perpetuate them. The coming to a consensus of value-free knowledge shows that “knowing the Orient” is used as a scapegoat for all players to dominate the region. For example, the New Great Game phenomenon shows how China and the U.S. attempt to expand the geographical and historical terrain by extracting and exploiting energy resources while simultaneously working on building democratic governance.
Frantz Fanon secured economic exploitation through the “leadership of the comprador ‘bourgeoisie’, a segment of the indigenous managerial class”. Through the discussion, the colonizer’s identities, which are allied with foreign economic interests, look at the colonized as subjected to serving the masters as obedient slaves. But as per the Marxist tradition, with the rise of the role of intellectual revolution, these revolutionaries seeking the help of the lumpenproletariat (degraded stratum of the society) must use force to expel the colonists. This is where populist societal, political, and economic movements are seen in the Third World rig of countries. This anti-neo colonial revolution is highlighted in ‘On National Culture’, one essay seen in ‘Wretched of the Earth’ highlights that each generation of people needs to discover the mission to fight for it. Further, the binary of racialized othering is not just a debate in history. Still, it revolves around the contemporary debates of nuclear politics, national security, nationalism, culture, international aid, and the struggle for indigenous rights.
An important quasi-canonical contribution of Gayatri Spivak’s works on the problematic representation of the transparency of the subaltern speech. Scholars argue that the attempt to “speak for themselves” must be done by removing intermediaries (such as experts, imperial administrators, judges, and local elites). This, in turn, would generate authentic truth based on experiences. The only problem is that experience is constituted through representation which is hard to recognize as it is withering away due to constant suppression. Nevertheless, transparency and authenticity are impossible until the imposition of power is there. This is the very case of Central Asia, whose voices are dispelled and subdued by US and China’s energy corporations such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, CNPC, CNOOC etc which give little or no space for indigenous development of local companies like Kazay Munai Gas.
The toxic form of subjugation of epistemic violence and disempowerment has many enduring effects that must be curbed with conscious efforts. The oppressive form of necro politics in post-independent states engulfed in the trail of elite-subaltern nations has to be anti-synthesized.
Earlier, in the colonial phase, the members of Idle No More were not forbearers, but they shared concerns and attached to the local population for reforms despite the substantial differences. But, in the present times, this kind of phenomenon is absent. It analyses the conundrum of vexing double-bind, which has been shifted from ‘responsibility-based culture’ to ‘rights-based culture, where the former is long delegitimized, and the latter shows increasing commitment to corporatism (debt trap diplomacy) in philanthropy. While one knits the post-colonial legacy of constant intervention in weaker and sublime states, the most accepted example would be that of the US-led war in Afghanistan which has its impending implications on Central Asia, Chinese intervention in Central Asia through BRI, and beyond, leading to the collapse and resurrection of global finance slipping the Central Asian economies into depression and devaluation. This kind of spatialization of its occasion has a devasting impact on economic, political, and social indicators of the fabric of the state.
Conclusion
With this constant globe-girdling, it becomes imperative for such states at a vantage point to defend their solidarities with new social movements. The Central Asia state’s people are involved in mitigating the redistribution of capital and fighting for their civil liberties. These movements act as a catalyst to bring a new world order where the dependency on superpowers and the core-periphery relations between developed and developing/ under-developed states are mitigated. The fundamental result is to reverse the structures of global finance (referred to as restricting), which have destroyed local economies. This tendency to alter credit baiting has a far-reaching consequence with a tail end of a vicious trap that debt-ridden countries cannot escape so easily.
Many contemporary authors opine and classify social movements against the neo-colonizers as a sense of politics of refusal. In Mohawk, “Interruptus: A Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (2014)”, Audra Simpson puts forth that minorities who are non-recognized are often not reconciled in the societal system when often the West is guided by the liberal values that they portray. To liberate oneself, it is observed that resurgence is the best way to achieve self-determination. In Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways to Action and Freedom (2005), Taiaiake Alfred continues that a healthy and lasting resurgence leads to transforming the neo-colonial condition. Further elaborated in “Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (2011)”, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson talks about the protection and reintroduction of local traditions of governance and culture to enhance the social experience of the nation. Earlier during the Soviet period, Central Asia was following Communism with Socialism and this drastic shift to Democracy made its geopolitical terrain vulnerable paving the way for great powers to intervene with their own strategic selfish interests. It is hence necessary for Central Asia to alter it by reviving its historical legacy. This, in turn, will build an intellectually educated indigenous people who would embody in self-reflective revitalization advocated by Glen Coulthard in his work “Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (2014)”. He challenges the abstract universalism of Western philosophy, which has created a hierarchical structure between settler and colonized, and this must be revised.
Nations in the wield of constant acceptance, face the dilemma of stopping such investments and indirectly accepting their apex supremacy, like Central Asia falling prey to Chinese loans. These often pose a negative connotation that we fail to deter, making us equally responsible for garnering it. Hence one would often encounter the debate of either aligning oneself on a rational path or being a silent, unfortunate beneficiary often referred to as the postcolonial informant or Spivak’s gift. Therefore, one can connotate that colonialism in the name of modernity is the most important progenitor. This toxic form of subjugation of epistemic violence and disempowerment has many enduring effects that must be curbed with conscious efforts. The oppressive form of necro politics in post-independent states engulfed in the trail of elite-subaltern nations has to be anti-synthesized. This altering effort is definitely time-consuming, but the change in the methodological dogmatism or developmental logic of core concepts of hybridity and alterity is the need of the hour.
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Lakshmi Karlekar is a PhD Research Fellow at the Department of International Relations, Political Science and History at the CHRIST (Deemed to be) University, Bengaluru. Views expressed are the author’s own.
Shashank Pandey 
Balaji Subramanian 
Aayush Pal