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Inversion in postcolonial theory


The concept of inversion in postcolonial theory and subaltern studies refers to a discursive strategy which opposes or resists a dominant discourse by turning around its categories and re-enacting an asymmetrical relation with the terms the other way around. The term can be used with positive, negative or neutral value-connotations.

The term derives from studies of modalities of resistance by the Subaltern Studies school, but reflects concerns pervasive from the earliest days of post- and anti-colonial writing. Ranajit Guha refers to inversion as one of the modalities of peasant revolt in colonial India, noting practices such as forcing landlords to carry peasants on Sedan chairs. Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth (1961) provides an extensive discussion and partial advocacy of inversion in a social context defined by strong binaries. A reversal of the coloniser's monopoly on violence is taken to be necessary to break out of the master–slave dialectic, a learnt sense of cultural inferiority and the learned helplessness of the colonised. The term "inversion woodcuts" also appears in peasant studies as a description of imagery such as an ox killing a butcher (e.g. James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 166-72).

The term has become useful as a way of theorising violence. Definitions of terms such as racism and sexism are contested, and theorists who use structural or institutional definitions thus refuse to typify actions against members of structurally dominant groups by structurally subordinate groups, or prejudicial beliefs against members of dominant groups, with these terms. Actions such as Palestinian suicide bombing, the 9/11 attacks, land reform in Zimbabwe, the writings and actions of Valerie Solanas and SCUM, and what are treated by the state as racially motivated crimes against white people, would be examples of cases where the term would be used. Ward Churchill's essay On the Justice of Roosting Chickens is an example of this kind of analysis from an author sympathetic to inversion.


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