ABSTRACT
The production of the native is in part the production of our postcolonial modernity. Before elaborating on the relation between 'native' and 'modernity'. Because of the symptomatic way non-white peoples are constructed in postcoloniality, and because 'symptom' is conventionally regarded in a secondary, derivative sense, many critics of colonialism attempt to write about these peoples in such a way as to wrest them away from their status as symptom or object. The result is certain inevitable subjectivizing, and the anti-imperialist project runs a parallel course with the type of feminist project that seeks to restore the truth to women's distorted and violated identities by theorizing female subjectivity. As an issue of postcoloniality, the problem of the native is also the problem of modernity and modernity's relation to 'endangered authenticities.' Apart from the general attribution of 'anonymity' to native artists, 'native works' have been bifurcated either as timeless (in which case they would go into art museums) or as historical.
