Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 13:17:43 -0700
From: Paul Brians <brians-AT-mail.wsu.edu>
Subject: Re: postcolonial web site


Christopher Perrius continues to misconstrue what I am about:

>I didn't assume that you were trying to "teach postcolonialism"
>if that means presenting some particular theories of why
>colonialism happened or particular stances toward geopolitics as
>if they were true.  I did assume that a teacher would want to
>teach any "ism" by first presenting the claims made under that
>banner, and only then dismissing them if s/he feels compelled
>to.  And I don't object to the exposure of popular errors in the
>name of some specious democratic classroom, either, but the
>safeguard against finding oneself indoctrinating instead of
>teaching is full and fair presentation, I believe. I do not
>think that your essay fairly presents the case for the field,
>even considering the occasional qualifier or hedge, which
>hardly merit the term "dialectical."


The study from a multitude of perspectives of the literature of Africa, the
Caribbean, South Asia, etc., existed and flourished long before the field
of "postcolonial studies" began to take on its (still rather inchoate)
form. It has not replaced those studies. Sometimes it has interesting
things to contribute, but it's not my field. I have to know something about
it, and so do my students; but I happen to think that it's a map that fits
the territory rather poorly. In addition, I persist in being much more
interested in primary texts than in theoretical writing, so I am more
likely to let my teaching be shaped by the ways novels, plays, and poems
inform me than by the parameters of a particular theoretical approach like
postcolonialism.

(The next paragraph is not aimed at Perrius, but anyone thinking of raising
the obvious objection.)

Of course all readers bring preconceptions and often unarticulated
theoretical presumptions to their readings, but overly sweeping notions of
reader reception and the social construction of texts, the death of the
author, etc. strike me as dangerous half-truths. Of course authors say new
things and of course they often know what they want to achieve and of
course we often are able to discern what they want to say. If this were not
the case, academic discourse, debate through articles, interpretive essays,
and theory itself would be impossible. It is the ability to surprise and
inform that I most prize in literature. All too many theoreticians of all
stripes "always already" know what the literature is going to say, and what
categories to place it into, etc. My experience with "postcolonial"
criticism is that I am rarely surprised, informed, or entertained by what
it has to say by anything like the same degree that I am by novels, short
stories, poems, and plays. This has something to do with the aggressively
ugly and dull prose through which most theory is conveyed, but it also has
something to do--I think--with the inaptitude of the tool
(postcolonialism) for the work at hand.

What I mean by dialectic is that I posit one definition, problematize it,
try another, question that, and so on. It's not meant to be a monumental,
single-focus "position paper," but an examination of various problems with
the term as they have been put forward by various people.

For anyone who wants a sense of lively discourse very, very different from
what goes on in this list, I urge you to try the South Asia Literature List
(SASIALIT-AT-LISTSERV.RICE.EDU).  I get a couple dozen good ideas from it for
every one I glean here.

I'm leaving on a trip tomorrow, so feel free to have the last word.
Meanwhile, thanks to the several members of this list who wrote to thank me
for the page and ask if they could use it.

Paul Brians, Department of English,Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-5020
brians-AT-wsu.edu
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians




     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---