embattled imperial contexts out of which they came and in which they were felt to be necessary" (Culture and Imperialism [1994] 16). Inversion versus subversion Theorists inspired by deconstruction, such as Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, criticise inversion as failing to overcome binaries. Inversion is sometimes contrasted with "subversion", with the observation that subversion breaks down a binary whereas inversion retains it. As Partha Bramerjee summarises the controversy in subaltern studies, "It appeared as if the consciousness of protest and resistance was always already implicated in the terms of the dominant discourses themselves, for inversion and negation had to depend on the continued existence of the dominant as the necessary Other." Homi Bhabha asks: "Can the aim of freedom of knowledge be the simple inversion of the relation of oppressor and oppressed, centre and periphery, negative image and positive image?" His answer is that hybridity is to a preferable strategy, "negotiation rather than negation". This rejection of inversion is a source of contention between postcolonial theorists such as Spivak, Said and Bhabha, and identity-political anti-colonial theorists associated with Afrocentrism, black consciousness and various nationalisms. References Prathama Banerjee, review of Subaltern Studies X Ward Churchill, Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens Howard Adelman, "Optimism and Pessimism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Homi Bhabha, excerpt from "The Commitment to Theory" and in The Location of Culture, pp.18-28. Postcolonialism