File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-12-06.070, message 215


Date: Fri, 06 Dec 1996 09:45:52 +1000
From: Julia Ravell <jravell-AT-looksmart.com>
Subject: Re: migrant literature


> > Liam, I was interested in this book and am going to try and
> get to it -
> > I'm looking at  Sri lankan poco expatriate writers andam
> currently
> > struggling with the notion that expat writers (Ondaatje,
> Selvadurai,
> > Gunesekera, Yasmine Gooneratne et al) all middleclass
> elites somehow
> > manage to present a *less* truthful account of SL than the
> people who
> > stayed behind (also English educated elites). I've been
> keeping the
> > shattered mirrors metaphor in kind, but  now a couple of
> colleagues I was
> > talking to are suggesting that perhaps the expatriates too
> have their own
> > *truths* (I've been trying to work out how emigration made
> a difference,
> > going into the homeland/identity/etc suitcases.  Any
> thoughts you have
> > will be much appreciated. Tina
> 
> Liam Connell
> 
> ________________________________________
> Liam,The point you raise about essentialism and its relation to 
"authenticity" comes up frequnetly in p-col discussions and I think 
deserves some further comments since oppositional politics often rely on 
essentialised notions of identity. Spivak's point about "strategic 
essentialism" acknowledges both the difficulties of basing identity on 
homogenised/reified categories such as race, gender, class, ethnicity 
etc and the necessity of such categories as a means of combatting 
oppression. Rey Chow also has some interesting things to say about 
"endangered authenticities" and "invented histories" (see also Eric 
Hobsbawn) mobilised by pcol authors and their role in maintaining 
binarist models of subjectivity. Related questions are, Who has the 
right to speak for the (post)colonial subject? What ideological function 
does "truth" perform in the narratives Christina's investigating, and in 
Orientalist historiographies in general?
I hope this adds something.
cheers,
Julia Ravell,
Uni of Melbourne.


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