more traces: ahmad on said on gramsci

“The idea of the ‘inventory of traces’, eloquent and legitimate in itself, was to be inflated- by Fredric Jameson among others- into the idea that Third World societies are constituted by the experience of colonialism and imperialism. Now, the notion of a ‘colonial subject’ – or ‘post-colonial subject’, for that matter- presumes, of course, that we are indeed constituted by colonialism; then, in quick succession, by post-coloniality; if we are not constituted by colonialism, then the term ‘colonial subject’ is theoretically meaningless.

The original Gramscian idea of an ‘inventory of traces’ presumes that there is a personality, a cultural location, upon which those traces are inscribed; it presumes that there are other ‘traces’ into which these traces are woven, so that the personality that emerges out of this weave, this overlap, is conditioned not by a specific set of traces but by the whole of its history.”

-Ahmad, Aijaz 1992. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. New York: Verso, p. 171-172.