From: L.J.Connell-AT-sussex.ac.uk (Liam Connell) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 11:02:26 GMT Subject: RE: joyce/Rushdie > From: Greg Tropea <greg_tropea-AT-macgate.csuchico.edu> > > To state that there is no such thing as "post-colonial" seems to me to be an > exercise in hyperbole. (One whose spirit I agree with, by Don't get me wrong is was never my intention to suggest that the term shouldn't be used, it clearly has an important function in grouping together certain types of activities and theoretical practices. I do use the term - albeit with some discomfort, which is all that I was originally trying to signal. However it does strike me that at this point in the debate a title such as _*The* Post-Colonial Question_ somewhat underestimates the extent to which the issues surrounding the term can be grouped together as a *single* question: a point only emphasised by the diversity of the subjects and positions which the collection contains. Its nearly 20 years after _Orientalism_ and the book has been so usefully critiqued that it is frustrating to read so many works that seem happy to simply reproduce an undifferentiated, Foucaudian analysis of hughly diverse political situations. Regardless of how useful this term has been there is a serious danger of creating an Orientalism of the post-colonial, which treats all these situations as being the same. I'm sure Spivak has said something of the sort somewhere. If anything I would refer people to my original reference, Aijiz Ahmed, particularly his essay on Jameson. All of his arguments there against totalising theories seem to me highly relevant to the directions post-colonial studies ought to be moving in. I have to concede to being guilty in this respect myself from time to time - but I would urge caution at all times. Liam --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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