Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 17:58:17 -0500 (CDT)
From: christopher alan perrius <caperriu-AT-midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Post-col. web site



First, a request: PLEASE do not repost the contents of posts you
are replying to without good reasons of citation.  Is it fair to
make others scroll through these long copies?

Now, a response to the web page created by Brian.

I think it's a very good thing to have a critical introduction
to any theory of culture/reading for undergrads, and it is hard
to find appropriate readings for this.  Although I feel that you
have raised very legitimate (and familiar enough)
complaints about the field, I wonder about the pedagogical
value of your one-sided criticism. I think that students should
be taught the conflicts, as Gerald Graff has put it: they should
read various positions and make their own judgements, although I
think that the teacher should also teach canons of rationality
and argument, to help students resist the mystifications of both
oppositional critics and official knowledge.
	Let me respond specifically to your list of problems
with the term, and suggest that these
problems are not as simple as you seem to argue,
and open these issues up to the list members who haven't
visited your site.
You begin:
	"Taken literally, the term "postcolonial literature" would seem
to label literature written by people living in countries
formerly colonized by other nations. This is undoubtedly what
the term originally meant, but there are many problems with this
definition."
-->Many would say that the field does not define an object
"postcolonial lit" but a critical approach, "postcolonial theory
or criticism."  Your assumption that the term defines its object
already prejudices the whole essay.  Perhaps "poco theory"
defines an _inquiry_.

"First, literal colonization is not the exclusive object of
postcolonial study."
-->You began by taking it "literally," and now complain that the
field is not literal about its object--it was _you_ who said it
was literal, not others.

"Second, works written during colonization are studied under
this heading."
-->Again, literal-anxiety. If you take the field as an inquiry
into how to oppose or prevent the violence of colonialism, or
simply into how it worked and literally ended in many places but
continues in other forms there and in the old forms in other
places, obviously we must look at both colonial and
"postcolonial" history.  

"Third, some critics argue that the term misleadingly implies
that colonialism is over ..." [when it's a neo-colonial world.]
-->It does, if you're too literal.  "Democracy" misleadingly
implies that all people in the US actually have equal  control
over their government.  I don't think that students have trouble
with the idea of approximate terms, or will be as stubbornly
literal as you seem to worry by your emphases.
 
"Fourth, it can be argued that this way of defining a whole era
is Eurocentric,"
-->A sticky issue, for sure, but you don't provide any
justifications for so defining the era: the global reach and
undeniably vast impact of colonialism insofar as it propelled
the whole world into modernity, so that everyplace in the world
either modernizes or must very re-actively work not to.

"Fifth, many "postcolonial" authors do not share the general
orientation of postcolonial scholars toward engaging in an
ongoing critique of colonialism."
-->Must objects of study agree to the way they've been labelled
to legitimate the study??  This does raise the problem of
ideological orientation.  Are "conservative" authors not
"postcolonial" even though they treat events and themes that
fall under the inquiry? Again, "postcolonial" and any
_particular_ brand of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism,
anti-racism, socialism, liberalism, etc should not be
synonymous, but that some (ok, many) critics write as though
this is the case doesn't delegitimate the whole
field.

"Sixth, "postcolonialism" as a term lends itself to very broad
use." [eg, problem of Irish: Yeats was a reactionary 
nationalist.]
-->Again, equating a field of inquiry with a particular
politics.  By focusing on this problem repeatedly, you are
leaving out all of the interesting issues!  One of which Yeats
exemplifies: the problem of nationalist movements in
decolonization, on a political level, and nationalism's
ethnocentric orientation as a rejection of Enlightenment
humanism on a philosophical level.

"Postcolonial" is also a troublesome term because it draws some
very arbitrary lines. South African writers Athol Fugard and
Nadine Gordimer are often excluded from postcolonial courses,
although their works were powerful protests against apartheid."
-->  In this case, is "it" (the term) drawing arbitrary
lines, or are professors who don't teach Gordimer (I've seen
her taught in po-co courses). Are you demanding that there be a
coherent canon in order to take the field seriously? Can you
name a field that has a coherent canon?  Or explain why it
should have one?  Again, this is a conflict with important
arguments on several sides that students should engage.

"In practice, postcolonial literary studies are often sharply
divided along linguistic lines in a way which simply reinforces
Eurocentric attitudes. Latin American postcolonial studies are
seldom explored by those laboring in English
departments... Because of these failures to cut across
linguistic boundaries, the roles of England
and France are exaggerated over those of the colonized regions." 
-->Disciplinary boundaries are a vexing issue in all humanities
fields, certainly.  But "the roles" vis a vis what? Not in terms
of instigating and carrying out modern colonialism, obviously.
Roles as producers of literature in postwar era?  In creation of
culture in colonized lands?  On the contrary, much po-co work is
precisely "recovery" work: uncovering the slighted histories of
the colonized, a project underway for a while in feminism as
well.  I'd think that this is a crucial thing to mention in an
intro for students.

There are essays on the term in Chrisman and (who? sorry!)'s
anthology, and good critiques of the field by Arlif Dirlik and
others.

Finally, while the web is convenient and all, it certainly is
not a comprehensive source for historical information. I wonder
to what extent you are relying on the web for the historical
background you mention?


Chris Perrius 
University of Chicago
Dept. of English

Reviews Editor
Jouvert: A journal of postcolonial studies
http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/



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