Can the Literary Speak? Institutionalization and Radicalism in Contemporary Postcolonial Criticism
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This article explores the relationship between contemporary postcolonial criticism and the notion of the “literary.” I argue that postcolonial criticism is currently undergoing a crisis—the signs of which emerge in treatments and normative categorizations of postcolonial literary texts. Today, the literary dimension of postcolonial literary texts is often coerced into a highly institutionalized and codified set of norms—in part as a result of postcolonial studies’ movement from being a marginal field to occupying a central position in the humanities. In my article, I take a closer look at a number of recent works, including Gayatri Spivak’s Death of a Discipline (2003), Derek Attridge’s The Singularity of Literature (2004), and Neil Lazarus’s “The Politics of Postcolonial Modernism” (2005). One common aspect characterizing these recent works is that they all express unease about the institutionalizing effects haunting the field today, while at the same time calling for a return to the literary dimension of literary texts. However, these critical works generally tend to identify distinctly modernist/postmodernist aesthetic strategies as representative figures of the literary, while leaving out or, in some cases, even debunking other literary forms, such as realism. The potential danger inherent in such theoretical discourses is that they may possibly repeat an institutionalized formula that legitimizes an equation of certain literary strategies with certain political convictions. What is needed, I argue, is an expansion of aesthetic and political codifications in contemporary postcolonial studies: the development of a critical perspective which is broad enough to include literary strategies not necessarily corresponding to modernist/postmodernist criteria, and thus not necessarily corresponding to the dominating socio-political convictions promoted by postcolonial studies. The endeavours of such a development, I argue, should not be seen as yet another attempt to formulate another generalizing theory about the literary in all postcolonial texts, but rather be seen as a provisional investigation of the reasons underlying the current malaise of institutionalization, and hence an exploration of the ways in which the field of postcolonial studies may potentially move beyond its state of institutionalized paralysis.
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between contemporary postcolonial criticism and the notion of the “literary.” I argue that postcolonial criticism is currently undergoing a crisis—the signs of which emerge in treatments and normative categorizations of postcolonial literary texts. Today, the literary dimension of postcolonial literary texts is often coerced into a highly institutionalized and codified set of norms—in part as a result of postcolonial studies’ movement from being a marginal field to occupying a central position in the humanities. In my article, I take a closer look at a number of recent works, including Gayatri Spivak’s Death of a Discipline (2003), Derek Attridge’s The Singularity of Literature (2004), and Neil Lazarus’s “The Politics of Postcolonial Modernism” (2005). One common aspect characterizing these recent works is that they all express unease about the institutionalizing effects haunting the field today, while at the same time calling for a return to the literary dimension of literary texts. However, these critical works generally tend to identify distinctly modernist/postmodernist aesthetic strategies as representative figures of the literary, while leaving out or, in some cases, even debunking other literary forms, such as realism. The potential danger inherent in such theoretical discourses is that they may possibly repeat an institutionalized formula that legitimizes an equation of certain literary strategies with certain political convictions. What is needed, I argue, is an expansion of aesthetic and political codifications in contemporary postcolonial studies: the development of a critical perspective which is broad enough to include literary strategies not necessarily corresponding to modernist/postmodernist criteria, and thus not necessarily corresponding to the dominating socio-political convictions promoted by postcolonial studies. The endeavours of such a development, I argue, should not be seen as yet another attempt to formulate another generalizing theory about the literary in all postcolonial texts, but rather be seen as a provisional investigation of the reasons underlying the current malaise of institutionalization, and hence an exploration of the ways in which the field of postcolonial studies may potentially move beyond its state of institutionalized paralysis.
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