CULTURE IN GLOBAL CONTEXTS: DEBATING THE POSTCOLONIAL
Spring Term 2015
Dr. Denise deCaires Narain
Office: B268
E-mail: D.Decaires-Narain@sussex.ac.uk
Office Hours: Wednesday 11.00-1.00
Dr. John Masterson
Office: B329
E-mail: j.e.masterson@sussex.ac.uk
Office Hours: Monday 2.00-3.00 and Thursday 2.00-3.00
Key Information
Reading
The central text you need to purchase for this elective is Colonial Discourse and
Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. As
you will see from the week-by-week breakdown of the module below, significant
portions of your primary reading will be drawn from this collection. As such, you
must bring a copy of it with you to every session. When you are required to
engage with material that does not appear in the Williams and Chrisman Reader,
this will be made available to you as PDFs via Study Direct. It is also imperative
that you come to each session having read this material and with a copy of it in
front of you. We will be relying on this to generate the kind of interactive
discussions we will all benefit from.
Approach
The elective is co-taught be Denise deCaires Narain and John Masterson. We are
both members of the School of English with strong research interests in
postcolonial studies. We will work together to introduce you to the key issues
from the primary reading for each week. Rather than formal lectures, we will
approach the material using presentations we believe can lead to engaged and
engaging class discussion. We will use a host of textual, artistic, visual, filmic,
musical and other examples to flesh out some of the more theoretical and
conceptual issues we will be exploring in this elective. We have provided some
indicative study questions for each week below. These are designed to help you
when it comes to preparing for each session. They are not definitive, however,
and we will introduce more in the course of our respective discussions. We will
also be relying on you to formulate your own for the purpose of class
consideration.
Attendance and Participation
We are excited by the challenges and possibilities of an elective such as this and
are looking forward to working with an array of students drawn from a wide
range of disciplinary backgrounds. Sussex prides itself on its interdisciplinary
approach to teaching, learning and research and we believe Culture in Global
Contexts: Debating the Postcolonial works in this spirit. In order for it to be a
success, however, we are very much reliant on your regular attendance and
active participation as each week will involve group work in the seminar. We are
keen to establish a mutually respectful and collaborative dynamic that will allow
the kind of lively and productive debate we have in mind. As you will discover in
the opening weeks, this elective is all about questioning and re-evaluating ways
of seeing and thinking. As such, we will be relying on you to come to every
session having completed the required reading, made notes on it, raised
questions about it and be prepared to use these as springboards for class
discussion.
Assessment
The assessment for this course comprises 4 pieces, each 500 words long. Please
see Study Direct for details regarding the e-submission of work. Information
about the particular form of these pieces will be outlined in your first seminar
and you will also be given a handout to this effect.
Week 1 - Introductory Debates: The Where, When, Who, How and Why of the
Postcolonial
Primary Reading:
‘Indicative Chronology’ and ‘Introducing Postcolonial Studies’ – Neil Lazarus
from The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Studies (2004) (SyD)
Plus Introduction to Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, eds.
Williams and Chrisman
Introductory presentations by DN and JM focusing on a series of ‘keywords’
associated with postcolonial studies. These will serve as a catalyst for class
discussion.
Points for discussion in Week 1:
How and why did the discourse of postcolonial studies come into being?
How might we characterise some of its principle preoccupations?
How and why does it remain such a hotly disputed and intensely selfreflexive field of cultural inquiry?
Week 2 – Postcolonial Legacies (1): Power/Knowledge Production and the
Other
Primary Reading:
Edward Said – Introduction to Orientalism (1978) in Colonial Discourse and PostColonial Theory: A Reader, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman and Said’s
2003 Preface to Orientalism (SyD)
(Texts: Delacroix & Picasso, ‘Women of Algiers in their Apartment’; The Colonial
Harem, Malek Aloulla)
Points for discussion in Week 2:
Why is Orientalism often seen as the ur-text for postcolonial studies?
What is the significance of Said’s various returns to this seminal text
throughout his life?
How might we characterise the primary advances of Said’s work?
How and why has Orientalism proved to be such a contentious and
contested text?
How is Said’s idea of orientalism gendered?
Week 3 – Postcolonial Legacies (2): Race, Place, Culture and Resistance
Primary Reading:
Aimé Cesaire from Discourse on Colonialism in Williams and Chrisman Reader
and Frantz Fanon – ‘The Fact of Blackness’ from Black Skin White Masks (SyD).
Screening of first half of Isaac Julien’s film on Fanon
Points for discussion in Week 3:
To what extent might Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism be considered a
‘touchstone’ when it comes to anti-colonial discourse? Consider the crucial role
of context in this regard.
How effective is Fanon’s combination of psychoanalytic and quasi-Marxist
approaches in BSWM? In light of this, why do you think the text has been so
influential in postcolonial studies?
How does Julien ‘translate’, mediate and critique Fanon’s work in his film?
Week 4 – Postcolonial Perspectives: States of Emergency/Emergence –
(Dis)Locating Fanon
Primary Reading:
2nd half of Julien film plus Fanon from The Wretched of the Earth in Williams
and Chrisman Reader and ‘Algeria Unveiled’ (SyD)
Points for discussion in Week 4:
Given the approach taken in Julien’s film, as well as your reading for this
week, what do you consider to be the central preoccupations of The Wretched of
the Earth?
Is it very much a product of its time or do some of its central concerns
continue to resonate today?
In light of your reading of The Wretched of the Earth and ‘Algeria
Unveiled’, what issues are raised by Fanon’s ‘adoption’ of Algeria in his life and
work?
How might these anticipate some of the gender issues we will come on to
discuss in more detail next week?
Week 5 – Postcolonial Feminist Subjects
Primary Reading:
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
Colonial Discourses’ and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ in
Chrisman and Williams Reader
Extracts from Sisterhood is Global;
Student research activity – bring in own examples for week 6
Points for discussion in Week 5:
- What does Morgan take for granted in documenting the ways that ‘sisterhood is
global’?
- What are the key issues that disrupt assumptions of a universal sisterly
solidarity according to Mohanty and Spivak?
- How can we respond to texts across cultures – or in a global context – while
also avoiding speaking for the other’?
Week 6 – Postcolonial Rhythm and Blues
Primary Reading:
Paul Gilroy, ‘Urban Social Movements, ‘Race’ and Community’ and bell hooks
‘Postmodern Blackness’ in Chrisman and Williams Reader
Examples include Brathwaite ‘Folkways’ & Nichols’ i is a long memoried woman;
Points for discussion in Week 6:
-
Why are popular cultural formations so significant in Gilroy’s arguments?
Is popular culture more resistant to the dictates of dominant Western
forms?
What notions of ‘identity’ do Gilroy and hooks suggest?
How might we connect the ‘post’ in ‘postmodern’ and ‘postcolonial’?
Week 7 – Assessment Week
Week 8 – The Postcolonial Essay: Language and Critical Dissent
Primary Reading:
Chinua Achebe’s ‘The African Writer and the English Language’ and Ngugi wa
Thiong’o ‘The Language of African Literature’ in Williams and Chrisman Reader
and extract from Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s ‘A History of the Voice’ (SyD)
Points for discussion in Week 8:
To what extent are postcolonial ‘politics of language’ debates haunted by
Caliban, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Friday, from Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe?
How do the rhetorical, as well as theoretical approaches taken in Achebe’s
and Ngugi’s essays capture their particular positions in relation to these ‘politics
of language’ debates? Which piece do you find most persuasive and why?
In light of your reading of Brathwaite’s ‘A History of the Voice,’ what are
the specific political and aesthetic implications of his arguments about ‘language’
and ‘voice’ when situated in Caribbean and/or Afro-Caribbean contexts?
Week 9 – The Postcolonial Tourist/The Postcolonial and Eco-criticism
Primary Reading:
Selections from Anthony Carrigan – Postcolonial Tourism: Literature, Culture,
and Environment (2012) (SyD)
‘Ivory and Elephants’ from Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals,
Environment, eds. Graham Huggan & Helen Tiffin (SyD)
Points for discussion in Week 9:
In light of the reading for this week, to what extent might we argue that
debates around postcolonial tourism and/or ecology are some of the most
politically invested (and radical?) to have emerged from the field in recent years?
How do these debates encourage us to think differently about discourses
such as ‘development’?
To what extent do these debates invite us to reconsider notions such as
‘globalization’ and/or ‘the global village’?
- ‘Down with tourism?’ Carrigan poses this provocation in his introduction to
Postcolonial Tourism – what are the implications of his question in relation to the
broad remit of a course like this with an emphasis on reading across cultures in a
global context?
Week 10– The Postcolonial in Contemporary Media: the example of Sport
Primary Reading:
Writing cricket and rugby – selections from C.L.R. James and J.M. Coetzee (SyD)
Extract from: Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture eds., Hilary Beckles
& Brian Stoddart & short story/poem from the collection The Bowling was
Superfine, ed.,Stewart Brown (SyD)
Football in the postcolonial world (SyD)
Points for discussion in Week 10:
Why are cricket, rugby, football fields et al some of the most intense,
literally and/or figuratively, arenas in which the postcolony strikes back?
How and why is it so important to frame these debates in relation to often
complex, and contested, historical contexts?
Is there anything about debates concerning ‘postcolonial sport’ in the 21st
century that suggest important departures from those of the 19th and 20th
centuries?
- Where do women fit in this debate?
Week 11 – Re-viewing the Postcolonial
Primary Reading:
Graham Huggan, ‘Writing at the Margins: Postcolonialism, Exoticism and the
Politics of Cultural Value’ in The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins
(2001) (SyD)
Sarah Brouillette, ‘The Industry of Postcoloniality’ in Postcolonial Writers and
the Global Literary Marketplace (2007) (SyD)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – ‘Jumping Monkey Hill’ in The Thing Around Your
Neck (2009) (SyD)
Points for discussion in Week 11:
To what extent is postcolonialism a form of fetishisation/reification?
Are there any avenues open to writers/artists/critics et al to resist these
hegemonic processes? Consider this question in light of Adichie’s short story.
What are the ‘politics’ of literary prizes when it comes to thinking about
postcolonial writers, particularly in the 21st century?
- Is ‘literary tourism’ inevitable when reading postcolonial texts? How might we
read otherwise?
Week 12 – Course review and writing workshop