Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 19:50:59 -0500 (CDT)
From: Shauna Baldwin <sbaldwin-AT-execpc.com>
Subject: Re: "Post-Colonial"


At 09:09 AM 5/7/96 -0400, you wrote:
>Shauna:
>Of course in a sense you're right, and lot's of people have made the argument,
>from Fanon through Nandy, and I agree wholly with them and have cited the 
>argument in my own work. What I was trying to do is to situate for myself
>anyway what goes by the name of archival research.  foucault notwithstanding,
>I don't know if I want to dismiss even the most plodding kind of research
>which tries to understand one damn thing after another in a "real" time and
>space.  The most exemplary kind of contemporary scholarship which does not
take the line that decolonization if largely a psychological factum is the
Subaltern group, and I take that for myself as a caution.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the Subaltern group but whoever they are, your
taking them "as a caution" is of interest to me... please excuse my
ignorance of theory -- but since, as a writer, I feel somewhat the object of
your endeavours, I am compelled to inquire, most respectfully:

I assume that theories of post-colonial lit are founded on representative
samples of post-colonial lit. If so, don't scholars need to address the fact
that writing stories or novels is a psychological, philosophical,
historical, artistic, analytic, and indeed a pedagogic activity? Why would
you feel cautioned by a school of thought that acknowledges that process?

>Do you see the stumbling block I am pointing to?  It's fairly easy to discount
>it in the age of De Certeau, Foucault, Lefebvre et al, but I guess I feel 
>some kind of trepidation that only the ignorant person can feel as he
>psychologizes "history" away as construction, figment or whatever.  Of course
>I am more comfortable regarding decolonization as PARTLY a matter of breaking
>free of the psychical trauma of colonization, but I FEAR taking the easy road.

Samir, the easy road is a linear one, the time line of history. What I am
suggesting is indeed difficult: a much more wholistic, contextual and
interdependent interpretation of  an artistic work. The hard part for a
reviewer or scholar is studying the multiplicity of influences on a writer's
ouevre. That takes time and study -- maybe the 90 vols are the route :-).
After all, Gandhi took the time to write them, and all we are called upon to
do is read -- in context, watching the growth and progression of the
writer's mind in response to events of the day. 

Regards. Shauna.



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