The Location of Culture

Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994) is a key text in postcolonial theory and cultural studies, emerging at a time when both fields were evolving to address complex issues of identity, power, and historical legacies. Postcolonial theory was pioneered by figures like Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, who critiqued colonialism’s psychological and social effects. Said’s Orientalism (1978) in particular helped to establish post-colonial studies as a major field in academia. Said coined the term “orientalism” to reflect the traditional othering of Middle Eastern and Asian countries in what was vaguely dubbed the “orient” in imperialist Western discourse. Meanwhile, cultural critics like Stuart Hall focused on how power is embedded in culture and representation. 

Bhabha’s work bridges these fields, challenging traditional colonial binaries of colonizer and colonized. Emerging during the 1990s, Bhabha’s work represents a shift in postcolonial thought from merely critiquing colonialism and imperialism to examining the manifestations of identity, power, and representation in a postcolonial world. Whereas earlier postcolonial theorists like Said focused on how the West constructs knowledge of “the orient,” Bhabha shifts the focus to the negotiation of identity within colonial spaces. He argues that colonial subjects are not passive victims but active participants in reworking the terms of their subjugation through practices of