Vivek Chibber on When Anti-Imperial Theory Meets Capitalist Critique

In 2013, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber sent tremors through the intellectual landscape. A Marxist critique of the Subaltern Studies collective, the book didn’t just challenge a school of thought—it reopened a long-standing fault line between universalism and particularism, between the claims of class struggle and the politics of cultural difference. Chibber’s provocations still echo force us to ask whether postcolonial theory has become too invested in identity at the expense of material critique.

This isn’t a new debate. Postcolonial theory, emerging from the ashes of empire and the rise of postmodernity, has long been suspicious of universal narratives. Thinkers like Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha positioned the subaltern and the hybrid as resistant figures—unassimilable by the logics of Enlightenment modernity. To them, universalism reeked of colonialism: another totalizing discourse masking the violence of European reason. Better to honor opacity, translation, fragmentation. Better to provincialize Europe.

But Chibber says: not so fast. His argument is blunt. Subaltern Studies—and by extension much of postcolonial theory—romanticizes cultural difference while ignoring the basic material realities of capitalist domination. By insisting that non-Western societies operate according to fundamentally different logics, postcolonial theorists unwittingly echo the Orientalist frameworks they claim to resist. They preserve the exotic as something ontologically distinct. And in doing so, Chibber argues, they abandon the universalist potential of human emancipation.

Theory Snapshot: Universalism, Revisited

Chibber is not calling for a naïve return to Eurocentric Marxism. Instead, he proposes a strategic universalism—one that sees capitalism as a global structure producing shared forms of exploitation, even as it interacts with local conditions. Cultures may differ, but labor exploitation, class inequality, and commodification transcend borders. The task, then, is not to deny cultural specificity, but to locate it within a shared political economy.

This is where the controversy sharpens. Critics like Spivak argue that Chibber flattens the very texture of colonial and postcolonial life—its linguistic play, psychic wounds, and epistemic violence. They fear that a universalist framework, no matter how well-meaning, risks drowning fragile histories in the flood of capital. For them, theory is not just a map of oppression but a practice of listening—attuned to silences, fissures, and refusal.

Case in Point: Theory in the Age of Aesthetics

The Chibber–Subaltern debate might feel abstract, but its stakes are visible everywhere in today’s culture. Take the rise of “decolonial aesthetics” on social media—hashtags, fashion lines, and art exhibitions that center Indigenous knowledge or non-Western cosmologies. While often celebratory and reparative, these movements also walk a fine line between genuine resistance and commodified difference. What does it mean to “decolonize” your wardrobe while wearing $200 sneakers made in a sweatshop?

Here, Chibber’s critique regains urgency. Without a robust account of labor, capital, and exploitation, the politics of difference can slide into liberal multiculturalism—diversity without justice. Postcolonial theory, if unmoored from material analysis, risks becoming a style: aestheticized resistance, marketable otherness, dissent without teeth.

Why It Matters

The deeper question is this: can we speak of global justice without some shared political language—something like a universal? And if so, who gets to define it? Postcolonial theory taught us to mistrust grand narratives. But in the face of climate crisis, digital empire, and neoliberal exhaustion, Chibber reminds us that retreating into cultural particularism might be a dead end.

We don’t need a return to Eurocentric Marxism. But perhaps we do need a version of postcolonial thought that dares to think globally—not just culturally, but economically and structurally. One that can hold difference and commonality in tension, without letting either become dogma.

Cultural Appropriation or Appreciation? A Critical Look at Power, Exchange, and Respect

“Cultural appropriation” has become one of the more controversial and confusing terms in liberal discourse over recent decades. From Purim costumes to fashion runways, the boundary between inspiration and theft, between tribute and offense, often remains blurry—emotionally charged and conceptually vague. But beyond the headlines and hashtags lies a deeper question: When does cultural exchange become exploitation?

To answer that, we must ask not only who is borrowing from whom—but how power operates within that exchange.

Between Appropriation and Appreciation

Cultural appropriation occurs when members of a dominant culture adopt symbols, practices, or aesthetic elements from a marginalized culture—typically without context, understanding, or consent. More than mere borrowing, appropriation often strips these elements of their original meaning, commodifies them, and reproduces existing power dynamics.

It’s not just about hurt feelings—it’s about extraction. Entire cultures, often historically oppressed, are mined for their symbols, while those adopting them gain profit, prestige, or style. Meanwhile, the original communities continue to suffer exclusion, stigma, or discrimination for the very same expressions.

Cultural appreciation, by contrast, is grounded in respect. It begins with genuine curiosity, relationship-building, and recognition. It involves learning from the source, giving credit, and understanding the historical and emotional depth of specific traditions.

The key difference lies not only in what is done—but in how, and by whom. Who holds power? Is the culture being commodified or celebrated? Are members of the originating culture included, compensated, and heard? Appreciation isn’t just aesthetic—it’s ethical.

An Anthropological View: Cultural Diffusion and Inequality

Anthropologists have long studied “cultural diffusion”—the process by which ideas, technologies, and styles move across societies. No culture is static or sealed; all are shaped by movement, encounter, and exchange.

But diffusion isn’t always equal. In colonial and postcolonial contexts, dominant cultures often absorb elements from the margins without reciprocity. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai reminds us that globalization intensifies this imbalance: symbols are severed from their original lifeworlds and turned into consumable trends.

Examples: Fashion, Music, and Food

Fashion: Fashion houses have repeatedly faced backlash for using Native American, African, or East Asian motifs without credit. A model in a feathered Indigenous headdress isn’t just “dressing up”—she’s participating in a long history of erasure and exoticization.

Music: Elvis Presley built a career on Black musical styles that were stigmatized when performed by Black artists. Today, white rappers or K-pop stars often adopt Black aesthetics without engaging the communities and histories behind them.

Food: Fusion cuisine can be creative and delicious, but when upscale restaurants repackage immigrant dishes while ignoring their cultural roots—or the economic struggles behind them—it becomes erasure, not tribute. Foods born out of hardship become luxury trends, with no mention of the people who created them.

Why It Matters

No culture is pure or isolated—cultural exchange is a fundamental part of being human. But without critical reflection, it can reproduce the very injustices it claims to transcend. To distinguish inspiration from appropriation, we must ask: Who profits? Who is silenced? Who gets arrested for dreadlocks, and who gets a Vogue spread?

At its best, cultural exchange can be a space for solidarity and mutual growth. But that requires humility, not entitlement. Respect begins with listening—not only to flavors, sounds, and styles—but to the people and histories behind them.

Power/Knowledge in the Age of AI: The Algorithmic Structuring of Discourse

In the 1970s, Michel Foucault unsettled the idea that knowledge simply reflects reality. Instead, he argued that knowledge is produced—and always entangled with power. His term “power/knowledge” emphasized that what we accept as “truth” is shaped by institutional forces, discourses, and practices. Now, in the age of artificial intelligence, Foucault’s insight feels less like theory and more like a diagnostic manual.

As algorithms increasingly mediate decisions about employment, policing, healthcare, and credit, the Foucauldian lens offers a vital way to understand what’s at stake. AI does not merely process neutral data. It reflects, encodes, and often amplifies the existing hierarchies of the societies that build it.

Power/Knowledge and Discourse

Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge insists that power is not just top-down domination. It works through language, norms, institutions, and everyday practices. Importantly, it operates by shaping what can be said, thought, or known within a particular context—that is, through discourse.

Discourse, for Foucault, doesn’t just describe the world; it constructs it. Medical discourse, for example, doesn’t just report on bodies; it defines what counts as illness, deviance, normality. Similarly, AI systems are not just technical tools—they participate in the formation of what Foucault would call “regimes of truth.”

Algorithms as Discursive Machinery

Algorithms today function like contemporary discursive infrastructures. They decide what content you see, which loan you qualify for, whether you’re flagged as a threat, or how your resume is ranked. On the surface, these systems appear objective—neutral pipelines of rationality. But beneath that veneer lies a mess of social assumptions and historical data sets.

Take algorithmic bias. Facial recognition systems have been shown to misidentify Black faces at far higher rates than white ones. Predictive policing tools target neighborhoods already over-policed. Resume-screening AIs inherit gender bias from previous hiring data. These aren’t flaws; they are expressions of the power/knowledge nexus. The data reflects historical inequalities; the algorithms perpetuate them.

By embedding past norms into present-day decisions, AI systems naturalize and automate inequality. They make historically produced outcomes appear as logical outputs. In Foucault’s terms, they manufacture truths that reinforce dominant discourses while marginalizing others.

AI, Surveillance, and the Digital Panopticon

Surveillance, another core Foucauldian theme, finds new life in algorithmic governance. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault examined how modern power works not through violence but through observation, normalization, and internalized discipline—the logic of the Panopticon.

Today’s digital platforms operate as dispersed, data-driven Panopticons. Our clicks, purchases, emotions, and movements are tracked and analyzed, producing knowledge that serves commercial and governmental interests. This surveillance isn't passive; it is formative. It shapes behavior through subtle nudges and predictive interventions, defining what is visible, valuable, and possible.

Why It Matters

Understanding AI through Foucault doesn’t mean rejecting technology. It means rejecting the myth of neutrality. If knowledge is always political, then so is data. If power shapes discourse, then AI—our new discourse engine—must be examined not just for accuracy but for ideology.

Rather than treating algorithmic decisions as mere technical outcomes, we should ask: Whose truths do they encode? Whose voices are excluded? Only then can we begin to imagine more just, transparent, and accountable uses of technology.

Foucault never saw an algorithm, but he understood that power rarely announces itself. It whispers through norms, codifies itself in language, and now, increasingly, speaks in code.

See also: Algorithmic Culture and Surveillance Capitalism: what we’re really selling when we scroll

Intersectionality Explained: Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Theory and Social Justice Movements

In academic papers, protest chants, and social media captions alike, one word has become central to the language of social justice: intersectionality. But like many terms that go viral, its original meaning often gets flattened. To understand its depth, we need to go back to its origins—specifically, to the work of legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Crenshaw introduced the concept of intersectionality in two landmark essays in 1989 and 1991. Writing from a legal standpoint, she argued that the framework of anti-discrimination law, much like dominant feminist and anti-racist discourse, often failed to account for people who sit at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. Her foundational example? Black women.

Legal Roots: The DeGraffenreid Case

Crenshaw illustrates her argument with a 1976 case, DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, where five Black women sued GM for discrimination. The court rejected their claim, asserting that there was no specific category of “Black women” under the law—only "Black" or "women," separately. GM argued that since it hired Black men and white women, it could not be discriminatory.

The legal system, in this logic, could only address discrimination one axis at a time. The unique experience of Black women—who faced exclusion not just as women, and not just as Black people, but as both—was made invisible. Crenshaw’s intervention was to name this erasure, and to offer a new framework for seeing how systems of power interlock.

What Is Intersectionality, Really?

At its core, intersectionality is not just about identity—it’s about structures. It examines how race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, and other axes of identity intersect to shape experiences of oppression or privilege. It rejects the idea that any one aspect of identity is primary. Instead, it shows how different forces compound and complicate each other.

Importantly, Crenshaw never meant intersectionality as a buzzword. It was a critique of institutional blindness. Today, it remains a powerful analytic tool—one that has extended far beyond the courtroom.

Movements in Motion: #MeToo and Black Lives Matter

Take #MeToo. The mainstream media often framed it as a women’s movement led by white actresses. But its originator, Tarana Burke, created it as a space for Black and brown girls to speak out about sexual violence. Intersectionality helps explain why survivors of color face different barriers to justice—legal, cultural, and economic—than their white counterparts.

Or consider Black Lives Matter. Co-founded by three Black women—two of them queer—BLM has from the start insisted on an intersectional vision of justice. It’s not just about race, but about how race intersects with gender identity, sexuality, class, and geography. That intersectional grounding is what allows BLM to challenge police brutality while also advocating for trans rights, housing, and reproductive justice.

Intersectionality and Us

In a world that often demands simplicity, intersectionality insists on complexity. It doesn’t let us reduce someone to a single category or explain injustice with a single cause. It calls us to see the full picture—even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it resists easy solutions.

When we ignore intersectionality, we risk designing policies, movements, or conversations that leave the most vulnerable behind. But when we use it with care, it becomes a lens that clarifies rather than blurs. Crenshaw’s theory reminds us: justice must account for the whole person, not just the part that fits our framework.

See also: What is Intersectionality and How it Screws You Over

Symbolic Anthropology and Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”

Symbolic anthropology is a branch of cultural anthropology that interprets cultural practices as systems of symbols and meanings. Instead of treating rituals and customs as curious facts, symbolic anthropologists ask what they mean to participants and how they express broader worldviews. A classic example that captures the heart of this approach is Horace Miner’s satirical 1956 article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema.” At first glance the Nacirema seem like an “exotic” tribe obsessed with magical practices and bodily purification. But a closer, more interpretive reading reveals that Miner is actually describing modern American culture through a deliberately strange lens.

Interpreting the Nacirema

Miner’s article describes a North American tribe whose fundamental belief is that the body is inherently ugly and prone to disease. To combat this, the Nacirema engage in elaborate rituals: they visit a “holy-mouth-man” twice a year to forcefully abrade their mouths, daily engage in ritual ablutions at personal shrines lined with “charm-boxes,” and subject themselves to painful “temple” ceremonies in the community’s latipso. These practices sound bizarre until readers realize that the latipso is a hospital, the holy-mouth-man is a dentist, and the charm-boxes are medicine cabinets. Miner’s point is not to ridicule Americans but to show how any culture looks strange when observed from the outside—a key tenet of cultural relativism. The article invites readers to question their assumptions about what is “normal” and to reflect on how easily we exoticize others.

Symbolic Anthropology and Thick Description

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz argued that to understand a culture we must engage in “thick description”—a rich, contextual interpretation of practices rather than a bare catalog of actions. The Nacirema article exemplifies why thick description matters. A “thin” description of the Nacirema would simply list rituals and label them irrational. A “thick” description situates these rituals within the tribe’s worldview, showing how beliefs about purity, self-improvement and social status underpin everyday routines like brushing teeth or checking the medicine cabinet. Symbolic anthropology therefore doesn’t just describe what people do; it deciphers what their actions signify within a larger web of meanings.

Critiquing Ethnographic Representation

“Body Ritual among the Nacirema” also critiques the way anthropologists write about other cultures. By adopting a condescending tone and exoticizing familiar practices, Miner exposes the ethnocentric biases that have plagued anthropology. He shows how scholars have historically reinforced a hierarchy between “civilized” and “primitive” peoples, justifying colonial domination. Contemporary symbolic anthropologists are mindful of these critiques: they strive to let participants speak for themselves, contextualize rituals, and avoid reproducing stereotypes. In this sense, the Nacirema article is as much a commentary on academic writing as it is a satire of American culture.

Why It Matters Today

In an era of global media and instant judgments, Miner’s piece remains relevant. Social media feeds are full of quick takes on cultural practices—be it a viral TikTok dance or an unfamiliar religious ceremony—that often lack nuance. Symbolic anthropology reminds us to pause, ask deeper questions, and consider the meanings behind actions. By approaching cultural differences with curiosity rather than judgment, we cultivate empathy and resist ethnocentrism.

For more on how Miner’s satire works, see our in-depth analysis in “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema / Miner – Analysis and Explanation.” If you are interested in learning how anthropologists develop rich, interpretive accounts, check out “Clifford Geertz’s ‘Thick Description’ explained.”

Algorithmic Culture and Surveillance Capitalism: what we’re really selling when we scroll

Data‑driven advertising isn’t just a new business model; it’s a cultural and political revolution. In her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019), Shoshana Zuboff argues that tech giants have created a new economic logic built on the extraction and monetisation of human experience. Far from simply providing search engines, social networks or video platforms, these companies systematically gather behavioural data, predict our actions and sell those predictions to the highest bidder. The result is a transformation not only of the market but of subjectivity itself – an evolution of what Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer once criticised as the culture industry: a system that turns art and thought into commodities, shaping consciousness for profit.

What is surveillance capitalism?

Unlike industrial capitalism, which commodified labour, surveillance capitalism commodifies behaviour. Zuboff traces how Google discovered that the “data exhaust” users leave behind when they type queries or navigate maps could be analysed to predict future behaviour. Over time, the company moved from simply improving services to predicting and influencing users, selling targeted advertising based on what it knows we will do next. Facebook, Amazon and hundreds of data brokers followed suit. This process, she argues, is not consensual; users’ data are taken without meaningful permission and used to train algorithms that shape what news we see, who we date and what we buy. The system thus operates through asymmetrical power: companies know everything about us, while we know little about how their predictions are made.

Algorithmic culture and the data economy

Scholar Ted Striphas coined the term algorithmic culture to describe how cultural forms are now curated by code. Streaming platforms decide which songs we hear and which films are recommended; social media feeds rank and filter posts. These processes are not neutral. They are designed to maximise engagement and, consequently, advertising revenue. The algorithms learn our preferences, not just to satisfy them, but to nudge them in profitable directions.

This dynamic mirrors Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge: power is productive, creating new desires and identities rather than simply repressing them. By analysing and organising our activities, algorithms generate knowledge about us that can then be used to influence us. In this sense, we participate in our own governance; we train the systems that will shape our future choices. Zuboff calls the resulting behavioural predictions surveillance assets – raw materials that can be packaged and sold in markets we rarely see.

From the culture industry to digital panopticon

Adorno and Horkheimer warned that mass‑produced culture turns individuals into passive consumers. Zuboff extends this critique: we are not just consuming standardised products; we are producing data that enable corporations to anticipate and mould our behaviour. Michel Foucault’s image of the panopticon – a prison design in which inmates never know when they are watched – is a useful metaphor here. In the digital realm, surveillance is continuous and often invisible. As Foucault observed, power produces subjects who police themselves. Today’s apps encourage us to share our locations, monitor our workouts or track our sleep, embedding surveillance into everyday life.

Why it matters

Surveillance capitalism raises urgent questions about democracy, autonomy and resistance. When a handful of companies control the infrastructure through which we communicate, shop and learn, they exercise unprecedented influence over public discourse. The data economy can exacerbate social inequalities, as predictive policing algorithms target marginalised communities or loan algorithms deny credit based on opaque criteria. As Zuboff notes, the danger is not just privacy loss but a future in which our behaviour is subtly engineered by entities we cannot hold accountable.

Understanding these dynamics is crucial for cultural studies. Theories of power, ideology and subject formation provide tools to analyse how algorithms are reshaping society. By recognising the continuities between the culture industry of the mid‑20th century and today’s digital economy, we can better grasp the stakes of our seemingly trivial acts of liking, scrolling and sharing. Informed critique is the first step toward developing forms of collective resistance and alternative infrastructures that prioritise human autonomy over profit.

Love, Friendship, and Responsibility: Hannah Arendt Between Augustine and Heidegger

Though best known for her work on totalitarianism, judgment, and the nature of political freedom, Hannah Arendt’s writings are also laced with quiet, profound reflections on love, friendship, and personal responsibility. Unlike many modern thinkers who draw a sharp line between public and private life, Arendt believed that emotions — especially love and friendship — play a subtle but vital role in shaping our moral and political world.

Her reflections on these topics emerge not from sentimentality, but from a philosophical lineage stretching from St. Augustine, whom she studied in her doctoral dissertation, to Martin Heidegger, her former teacher and one-time lover. Together, these influences helped shape her nuanced understanding of human relationality — one that resists both romantic idealization and cold abstraction.

Augustine’s Love and the Condition of the Heart

In her early work on Augustine, Arendt explores his concept of caritas — a form of love oriented toward the eternal. Augustine, she notes, was deeply concerned with the restless, loving nature of the human heart: “our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” For Arendt, this revealed something fundamental about human existence — that we are beings drawn beyond ourselves, always in relation to something or someone.

But she diverged from Augustine’s theological teleology. For Arendt, love wasn’t about transcending the world, but about anchoring us within it. While romantic or religious love might seek fusion or salvation, political love — or what she sometimes called amor mundi, love of the world — requires accepting the world’s plurality and imperfection.

Heidegger’s Influence and the Ethics of Responsibility

Arendt’s complex relationship with Heidegger, both intellectual and personal, shaped her sensitivity to the power of thought, solitude, and authenticity. Yet she broke decisively from Heidegger’s political choices and metaphysical inwardness. Where Heidegger turned away from the world during the Nazi period, Arendt turned toward it.

Her concept of responsibility is deeply personal, yet always situated. We are not just responsible for abstract humanity — we are responsible for our friends, our neighbors, the world we share. This is where friendship enters her political vision. True friendship, Arendt believed, is a space where freedom and thought can flourish — a relationship not of fusion, but of respect, honesty, and shared presence.

Politics Begins With the Personal

In Men in Dark Times, Arendt’s portraits of friends and thinkers — from Walter Benjamin to Karl Jaspers — reveal how deeply she valued the intimacy of intellectual friendship. It is not a retreat from politics, but a foundation for it. When the world becomes dark, friendship keeps alive the possibility of clarity, dialogue, and courage.

In an era when public discourse is increasingly transactional and relationships are commodified, Arendt’s reflections offer a radical alternative: politics rooted in care, responsibility, and the dignity of being with others. Love does not replace judgment. But without it, judgment loses its grounding.

To love the world, as Arendt proposed, is not to deny its failures. It is to remain committed to it — and to each other — even when doing so is difficult.

Hannah Arendt's thought:

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

The Human Condition

Eichmann in Jerusalem

Arednt's "Banality of Evil" Explained

Arendt On Violence

On Revolution

Hannah Arendt and the Essence of Civil Disobedience

The Political vs. the Social: Why Hannah Arendt Distrusted the Welfare State

To Think Is to Resist: Why Hannah Arendt Saw Thinking as a Political Act

Rebirth as Freedom: Arendt’s Idea of Natality as Political Hope

What Makes Us Political? Arendt and the Right to Appear in the World

What Do We Judge By? Hannah Arendt, Kant, and the Crisis of Conscience

When Revolution Fails: Hannah Arendt and the Question of Just Rebellion