Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Misplaced Polemics against Postcolonial Theory: A Review of the Chibber Debate

This field review provides a critical interpretation of Vivek Chibber's generative polemic, Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Capitalism.Situating Chibber's work within a long history of Marxist critiques of postcolonial theory, as well as within an even longer interdisciplinary debate over method catalyzed but not caused by poststructuralist thought, this review argues that Chibber fails to articulate an adequately materialist account of capitalism in the colonial and postcolonial world. It then examines recent initiates of scholars of postcolonial studies to develop materialist methodologies in the wake of poststructuralism's disciplinary hegemony.