Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 05:14:27 -0500 (EST)
From: 00acking-AT-bsuvc.bsu.edu
Subject: Re: poco lit course readings


Dear Judith, I know this is blowing one's own horn, but I assume that I
have been doing something like this for about two decades. As have people
like Bill New, Helen Tiffin. 

What has bothered me about Postcolonial studies is how often they really
only continue a simple response to Imperialism and are addressed to a
Western readership. Achebe in the context of what is Nigeria is much moree
interesting than Achebe as anti-colonialist. Ditto Soyinka. Ahmed's
criticism of Said in In Theory makes a similar point but from the
perspective of political commitment.

Nationalism was taken up in most Commmonwealth and 'postcolonial'
literature and other arts departments after colonialism, when it was safe,
and government policy. As those employed directly or indirectly by the
government it was confortable to be nationalist 'radicals' at the time. I
feel something similar is happening about postcolonialism now. During a
time of economiv globalization, multinational business, government
affirmative action for diversity, etc., postcolonialism becomes a safe
radicalism, a form of modernisation for those who share in the elites.
Somehow in the process the actual writings have been kipnapped from their
own contexts to be used in American and European cultural wars. 

My feeling is that one not only needs to compare literatures, but needs do
serious work in their actual societies. It is useful to talk about the
various ways works contest assumed notions of whatever is assumed. Bruce 



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Bruce and Adele King
221 North Alden Road; Muncie, IN 47304, USA
Phone: 765-282-3569; Fax: 765-285-5877

>From May 10-July 15: King,  chez Rossetto,
11 rue des Tournelles
75004 Paris. Tel: 33-1-48-04-88-60

On Tue, 15 Apr 1997 TABRON-AT-BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU wrote:

> Hi Alpana,
> 
> Perhaps this collection is too pedestrian for the task, but I'm having a
> field day reading "Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism",
> a book edited by Charles Bernheimer apparently under the aegis of the 
> American Comparative Literature Association (Johns Hopkins, 1995). The
> book is a collection of three committee reports to the association on
> "the state of the field" from 1965, 1975, and 1993, and accompanying
> essays discussing the state of the field, the reports, the definition
> of comparative literature, the status of translation, etc. I don't know
> if there are any essays I would recommend alone; the interest of the book
> is following the discussion among the various authors -- but one may
> address your purpose.
> 
> I particularly love this sentence from Rey Chow's essay, "In the Name of
> Comparative Literature":
> 
> "The many different types of postcolonial writings which continue to be
> produced in the "single" language of English or French should require us to
> rethink comparative literature's traditional language requirements, so that,
> in principle at least, it should be possible for some students to do work
> in comparative literature using one language (even though I very much
> doubt that that would ever be the case)."
> 
> I love it because I think that's exactly what "commonwealth studies" or
> "world literature written in english" needs to be: comparative work (in the
> sense of deeply aware of the historical and cultural production of said
> work) in literatures from the different parts of the former commonwealth
> but having between them the common characteristic of having been written
> in english (for varying and often interestingly problematic reasons.)
> 
> Judith Tabron
> Brandeis University
> Waltham, Massachusetts U.S.A.
> tabron-AT-binah.cc.brandeis.edu
> 
> (enjoying this book)
> 
> 
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