File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-11-06.145, message 154


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




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