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READING POSTCOLONIAL TEXTS
Autumn 2015
Tutor: Denise deCaires Narain (D.Decaires-Narain@sussex.ac.uk) Office: B268
Course aims: to provide you with an introduction to postcolonial studies and to some of the
ways in which the legacy of colonialism has affected writing and other forms of culture. By the
end of the course, you should be familiar with some of the key issues raised in postcolonial
discourse and be able to summarize some of the key critical concepts involved in the field. You
should also have an understanding of the significance of postcolonial discourse as a way of
thinking about cultural production and be able to apply this understanding to interpreting and
comparing literary texts – attending to the formal and aesthetic properties of these texts as well
as to their socio-cultural contexts. Some of the topics and issues include: travel; difference;
language; diaspora; violence; resistance; gender; sexuality; hybridity; memory; haunting;
intertextuality; canonicity; orality; nationalism; belonging; indigeneity; ‘race’; ecocriticism; the
tourististic; ‘native’; globality; solidarity.
The writing assessment for this course allows you to reflect on what you have learned in
creative and critical ways in a portfolio of 3,000 words which is drawn from the writing
exercises you will be required to do each week; the first 1,500 words is due in week 7 and the
rest in week 13. The portfolio is worth 90% of the mark for the course and comprises:
4 pieces of 750-words each OR: 2 pieces of 750-words each and 1 piece of 1,500-words.
Each of these two submissions is worth 45% of the total mark. The remaining 10% of your
assessment is in the form of a group presentation; groups will be allocated at the start of term
Primary Texts (listed in the order they will appear on the course – full outline will be up on
SyD by the start of term)
1. The first three are easily available online in various places: ‘An Outpost of Progress’,
Joseph Conrad (Poland/UK);
& ‘The Beach of Falesa’ Robert Louis Stevenson (Scotland)
‘Shooting an Elephant’, George Orwell (UK)
The following two stories will be made available on SyD as pdfs
‘Eat labba and drink creek water’, Pauline Melville (Guyana/UK) (from her collection
of short stories Shapeshifter);
‘Toba Tek Singh’, Sadat Hassan Manto (India/Pakistan).
2. ’House of Hunger’ ‘Black Skin What Mask’, Dambudzo Marechera (Zimbabwe) from
his collection House of Hunger.
3. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (Dominica/UK).
4. Foe, JM Coetzee, (South Africa/Australia).
5. Cereus Blooms at Night, Shani Mootoo (Trinidad/Ireland/ Canada).
6. ‘Women of Algiers in Their Apartment’, Title story and afterword Assia Djebar
(Algeria/France).
7. READING & WRITING WEEK
8. By the Sea, Abdulrazak Gurnah (Zanzibar/UK).
9. I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, Mourid Barghouti (Palestine/Egypt).
10. Potiki, Patricia Grace (New Zealand).
11. A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua/USA).
12. Course review and final assessment workshop.
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Useful Postcolonial anthologies and texts:
The Empire Writes back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, Ashcroft,
Griffiths & Tiffin (eds); (this text is often referred to as a ‘foundational’ poco text: it is a
little dated now but not a bad place to begin)
The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin (eds); (this reader includes a
very wide range of extracts form important poco essays so it includes a really good spread of
ideas/issues/areas – but the extracts are often quite short so you may find that you need to go
to the originals eventually)
Beginning Postcolonialism, John McLeod; (this offers a narrative account of the poco with
some key ideas explained with reference to a selection of literary texts)
Feminist Postcolonial Theory, eds. Reina Lewis and Sara Mills (this reader is an excellent one
if you want to make gender an important part of your approach to the poco)
Into the Nineties: Post-Colonial Women’s Writing, A Rutherford, L Jensen & S Chew eds.;
(this is a less theoretically focused collection on women’s writing which includes some interesting
interviews etc)
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, P.Williams and L.Chrisman
(eds);(this collection includes the bulk of several key poco theoretical interventions; this is quite
a ‘heavy duty’ reader but useful if you really want to get to grips with some key ideas)
Postcolonial Discourse: An Anthology, ed.,Gregory Castle;(this reader is organized around
specific poco geographical areas so it offers a good grounding in the particular issues associated
with specific areas/histories/ideas)
Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction,Robert Young;(this offers an excellent overview
of the historical cntexts that define contemporary ideas of the postcolonial)
An Anthology of Colonial and Postcolonial Short Fiction, eds, Dean Baldwin and Patrick J.
Quinn.(this is a useful text if you are interested in reading a wider range of poco literary texts –
it’s a collection of short stories that includes short introductions to the regions it covers: Africa,
Caribbean, New Zealand, Australia, Indian, England; it also includes the texts by Stevenson
and Rushdie that we will study on the course and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness which, though
not set reading for this course, you may find a useful to text to have read as so many poco
theorists make reference to it)
Relevant journals include the following but there are many others: Wasafiri; World Literature
Written in English; Kunapipi; Callaloo; Journal of Postcolonial Writing; Interventions; Ariel; Journal of
Commonwealth Literature; Moving Worlds; Third World Quarterly; Transition; Postcolonial Text;
Postcolonial Studies; Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Reading & writing exercise FOR WEEK 1:
Please come to the seminar with 500 words of notes in which you reflect on the problems
and possibilities afforded by the category ‘postcolonial’ when it is applied to writing and
culture, using any of the five stories listed for week 1 as your focus. During the Summer
break, make a list of any recent news items that you might think might be usefully
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interpreted through a postcolonial perspective – make a note of the relevant websites,
newspaper clippings, images, books or films in case you decide later to make one of these the
subject of one of your assessment pieces.
Week 1: Travel, exploration, adventure & discovery in colonial and postcolonial studies.
- Please read the stories (by Conrad, Stevenson, Orwell, Melville & Manto) listed under 1
above; the questions and quotes below may help focus your reading – or you may come up
with questions of your own:
What kinds of issues do the two texts raise in relation to attitudes to empire and
colonialism?
What role does gender play in the construction of ‘the native’ as ‘other’?
What ideas of ‘travel’ do these texts imply?
How do these two texts position you as a reader – explicitly and implicitly?
Start working on a definition of the term ‘postcolonial’ – make a list of the problems and
possibilities of the term and bring them with you to the first class. There are many postcolonial
Readers and Anthologies but the following quotes provide a useful starting point. Please dip
into the other readers listed below to get a fuller sense of how the term, ‘postcolonial’
continues to be debated. The Empire Writes Back, Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, eds (1989)
offers a very wide definition of the term:
We use the term ‘post-colonial’ to cover all the culture affected by the imperial
process from the moment of colonization to the present day [i.e. approx. ¾ of the
world’s population). […] In this sense this book is concerned with the world as it
exists during and after the period of European imperial domination and the effects
of this on contemporary literatures. (p.2)
Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory (1994)
suggest an engagement with colonial and postcolonial discourses in relation to the production
of knowledge:
Colonial discourse analysis and post-colonial theory are thus critiques of the
process of production of knowledge about the Other. As such, they produce forms
of knowledge themselves, but other knowledge, better knowledge it is hoped,
responsive to Said’s central question in Orientalism: ‘How can we know and respect
the Other? (p.8)