KEY CONTRIBUTORS Homi Bhabha Wesley Shumar Received: 11 January 2010 / Accepted: 11 January 2010 / Published online: 29 January 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract Homi K. Bhabha is not only a major postcolonial theorist, but he has also become an important thinker for education. This article reviews the major themes of Bhabha’s work as it applies to education. The article also cautions us that the pressures in scholarship are to ‘‘reify’’ thinkers and their concepts and then ‘‘spend’’ those concepts like currency in the academic marketplace. This form of commodification is antithetical to progressive scholarly work. The article encourages a resistance to this form of commod- ification through a more complex engagement with the theories developed by Bhabha and an appreciation of the contradictions in the process of that engagement. Keywords Postcolonial theory Á Poststructuralism Á Commodification Introduction Homi Bhabha has been thought of as one of the main architects of postcolonial theory (e.g., Huddart 2006). Bhabha, himself is a product of the multicultural processes about which he theorizes. He was born in Mumbai, India and did his undergraduate work at the University of Bombay (now the University of Mumbai). He pursued a Masters and Doctorate at Christ Church, Oxford University. After working at several universities in the UK and the United States he is currently the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Department of English and the Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College, London. Bhabha is a kind of modern day Socratic figure. While his writings have been few, his influence has been great (Moore-Gilbert 2003). In his book on Bhabha, Huddart (2006) suggests that Bhabha is one of the most important thinkers in postcolonial theory. Critics often talk of a ‘‘trilogy’’ of thinkers in post-colonial theory, which includes Said, Spivak and Bhabha (Young 1995). W. Shumar (&) Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA e-mail: shumarw@drexel.edu 123 Cult Stud of Sci Educ (2010) 5:495–506 DOI 10.1007/s11422-010-9255-9