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