File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2000/postcolonial.0007, message 43


From: "Eric Dickens" <eric.dickens-AT-wxs.nl>
Subject: Questions
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 12:44:22 +0200


5th July 2000

Dear Scholars of Postcolonial Literature ,

I'll try and keep it short, since Tony Alessandrini has already almost
written me off as slightly on the garrulous side of Polonius.

Matters brought up by me and not yet answered very thoroughly:

1) Why is it that what is termed "postcolonial studies" is, in fact, an
examination of novels written in English, by people who have discovered that
the colonial powers did some pretty bad exploitation of other parts of the
world? Why do the other colonialisms simply not count?

2) Given the fact you can park yourself anywhere and polemicise on the
internet, why do so many scholars find what Tony terms "the American
imperium" so attractive as a place to exercise their freedom of speech and
pick up their salaries? What's wrong with Singapore, Germany or Australia?

3) Why is it that when a minority is discovered within English-speaking
countries, such as the Quebecois, some scholars feel the necessity to
immediately point out how racist and inward-looking they are? Motes and
beams?

4) Why do we need words like "liminicity", "differance", "subaltern",
"carnival", "heteroglossia", etc. I'm not a linguistic Luddite, and I
appreciate philosophers have to break new ground,  but I do think there must
be simpler ways of getting these points across to the uninitiated, without
creating a kind of coterie of vocabulary, an in-crowd of Bakhtinian
Derring-do. One awful misnomer is "Eurocentric", considering the fact that
Europe hardly gets a look in, and what is actually meant is the domination
of colonial and ex-colonial countries where the English-language virtually
keeps out all others.

It was therefore most interesting to read the Todd S. Purdum article about
Spanish in California which Marwan Dalal posted to our group. I admire the
fact that Marwan often says "this e-mail has a clear political motivation"
at the end of things he sends. Claiming the overweening superiority of the
English language is also highly politically charged. But any criticism of
this frequently gets shrugged off as bitching.

Best wishes,

Eric Dickens




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