ABSTRACT
One aspect of colonialism that Bhabha reads with particular care is the discourse of stereotypes. Obviously colonialism has been a political and economic relationship, but it has importantly depended on cultural structures for its coherence and justification. Because it is not self-evident that colonial relationships should exist at all, something needs to supply an explanation for colonialism. One explanation has often been the supposed inferiority of the colonized people. Through racist jokes, cinematic images, and other forms of representation, the colonizer circulates stereotypes about the laziness or stupidity of the colonized population. These stereotypes seem to be a stable if false foundation upon which colonialism bases its power, and are something we should perhaps simply dismiss. However, this chapter will argue that their stability is not quite as assured as it seems, and that the strange anxieties underlying stereotypes can be productive for critics writing against colonialism. The stereotype is a form of anxious colonial knowledge, and Bhabha’s writings on this anxiety revise traditional studies of colonialism. The best place to begin is the third chapter of The Location of Culture, which extends Edward Said’s classic book Orientalism.
