welcome back to the course on postcolonial literature

now in our previous lecture we discussed the various meanings of the term postcolonialism

and we also explored the various nuances of the two components the word colonialism as

well as the prefix post which comes together to form the word postcolonialism in todays

lecture ah we will try to understand the relevance of the term postcolonialism from within the

field of literary studies but before we begin our discussion on that it is important to

note here that the word postcolonialism unlike say for instance the word imagism was not

specifically coined to signify a particular kind of literature

in fact the use of the term postcolonialism which can be traced as far back as the late

nineteenth century had little connection with the field of literature till almost the late

nineteen eighties and ah till that time in fact the word postcolonialism was primarily

used as an adjective to refer to conditions or situations which occurred or existed after

the end of colonial rule in places like america for instance or india

so in this context postcolonialism meant post-independence and it was almost always used the word postcolonialism

was almost always used with a hyphen separating post from colonialism now it was only since

the late nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties that postcolonialism became an integral

part of literary discussions and it brought together two already existing areas of study

within the field of english literature

if you look at the slide then you will see that the first area which got incorporated

within the field of postcolonial literature was referred to as commonwealth literature

and the other area was referred to as the study of colonial discourse or colonial discourse

analysis so these two separate aspects came together to form the field of postcolonial

studies and they in a way form the roots of postcolonial literature as a field of literary

studies

so therefore it is very important to understand these two constituent parts if we want to

explore postcolonial literature at any length so today let us start with the category of

commonwealth literature now the word commonwealth signifies a grouping of nation a grouping

of those nations or those nation states which were once british colonies the british empire

which had reached its peak in terms of occupied territory by the nineteen twenties and here

you can see it the map of the british empire nineteen twenty one

this empire as depicted in this map by the shaded area in this map had started breaking

up from nineteen forties and in fact india was one of the first nation states to break

away from the british empire now the sovereign nation states which were emerging out of the

british empire and which shared a common history of british colonialism voluntarily decided

to form a confederation with the british monarch as its head and this confederation of sovereign

states which were once british colonies came to be known as the common wealth and ah this

grouping of nation of course still exists

and ah this is a map of the states that form the commonwealth today and ah if you see that

the highlighted areas in green are the countries which are the member states if you look at

this map carefully you realise that not all countries which were british colonies are

now part of the commonwealth of course ah some states which were once part of the commonwealth

ah decided to leave later on for instance the african state of gambia or more recently

maldives

ah they have left the commonwealth initially they were part of the commonwealth but there

is one country which though it was a british colony at one point of time was never really

a part of the commonwealth of nations and that country which is conspicuous by its absence

is of course the united states of america now if you remember your history you will

know that the united states of america was part of the british empire was ruled from

britain till seventeen seventy six

indeed even today america celebrates the fourth of july every year as its date of independence

from the british rule but this erstwhile british colony does not feature in the list of commonwealth

nations and it is of course an anomaly and this anomaly is only one of the anomalies

which plague the concept of commonwealth and in fact the number of anomalies got compounded

when the term commonwealth started being used by the academicians to designate a particular

kind of literature

the first major attempt to use the term commonwealth to denote a specific literary category was

made in nineteen sixty four when the university of leeds in england organised what was called

the first commonwealth literature conference and this conference was an effort to bring

under a single umbrella the significant amount of english literature that was coming out

of the once colonised part of the british empire

for instance by the time of the conference by the nineteen sixties authors like r k narayan

from india v s naipaul from the west indian island of trinidad chinua achebe from nigeria

all this authors who belonged to the once colonised part of the world colonised by britain

were being regularly published in britain and in america and their names had become

quite familiar with in the field of literary studies

now this conference organised by the university of leeds was an attempt to bring authors like

naipaul narayan achebe to therefore and to form a field of literary studies around their

works and this ah field of literary studies was referred to as a field of commonwealth

literature now just like in the political group of commonwealth nations america remains

conspicuously absent even the category of commonwealth literature the literature of

america never featured

but what was even more curious was that the category of commonwealth literature never

included the literature of britain in spite of the fact that britain was and still is

very much a part of the commonwealth of nations and it was the metropolitan country of the

colonial empire but in spite of that british literature was never a part of the category

that was studied and discussed using the name commonwealth literature

the indian born novelist salman rushdie hmhmmm while attending another conference on commonwealth

literature held nearly twenty years after the first conference at leeds noted that there

was in fact a politics going on ah behind how the term commonwealth literature the category

commonwealth literature was being used his argument was that commonwealth literature

was used to group under itself all the english literatures that were emerging from the once

colonised parts of the world but it did not include british literature

because it wanted to segregate the literature english literature emerging from the colonies

as a separate group of literature now why this segregation according to rushdie there

was no way that such a significant amount of english literature could be altogether

avoided but the next best thing was according to rushdie to separate this amount of literature

coming from the colonies under a separate category so ah and to label them in a manner

that they can be identified as english literature which was not really at par with british literature

so it was a category of inferior kind of english literature almost at this was according to

rushdie the hidden politics that was being played out in the metropolitan universities

when the commonwealth literature was being discussed as a category what also concerned

rushdie was that within the field of commonwealth literature the authors and their works were

arranged in neat subgroups according to their nations of origin it was thus expected that

an author born in india will write only about india

and his or her writings will represent an essence of indianness that was unique and

that was uncontaminated by anything else that is for instance a novel by r k narayan for

instance was supposed to embody a unique essence of indianness that was assumed to be different

from say the essence of australianness that one might find in the writings of someone

like patrick white which in turn was supposed to be different from say the essence of west

indianness that was supposedly found in the work of v s naipal

now such an attitude towards literature was problematic at two different levels firstly

the post sixteenth century period of european colonialism was also marked by a tremendous

amount of human movement people moved around a lot because travel was much easier compared

to earlier times and they moved around either because they could afford to travel or because

they were displaced forcibly evicted due to various economic and political reasons

take the case of rushdie for instance salman rushdie was born in bombay he then went to

england as a student and subsequently settled down there his family in turn moved from india

to pakistan and settle down in pakistan now rushdie of course has written a lot about

india but he has also written about britain as well as about pakistan so does this make

rushdie an indian author does it make him a pakistani author does it make him a british

author what is that national category under which we should keep the works of rushdie

it is a problem it is a conundrum and if it is so difficult to pin down an author coming

from ah one of the ex-british colonies then it is not difficult to imagine how impossible

it would be to pin down entire cultures within the confines of one nation state or another

ah take for instance again the example of another indian author rabindranath tagore

now tagores work proved to be very influential in south america after his poetry was translated

by the argentine author victoria ocampo

similarly the technique of magic realism the literary technique of magic realism which

was invented by authors like gabriel garcia marquez in south america during the nineteen

sixties and nineteen seventies influenced various indian novelists including salman

rusdie now commonwealth literature the category of commonwealth literature by not factoring

in this interconnected nature of literary and cultural influences as well as the problematic

relationship of authors from ex-colonies with the land of their origin was feeling as a

category

a category through which works of authors as different as rushdie achebe naipaul and

narayan can be studied together the attempt to read literature by using national framework

was also problematic in another way the literature that a commonwealth nation like india for

instance produces is produced in many different languages isn't it english is definitely one

of the languages in which indian literature is produced but that is far from being the

only language in which indian literature is produced

now though the commonwealth literature though the category of commonwealth literature used

the concept of nation and natio.. national traditions to group authors and their works

it never really looked beyond the english literature that was coming out of the colonies

and as the case of india shows us that such a focus on english literature is not only

a very limited focus but it is also not in sync with the complex literary landscape that

the erstwhile colonies of britain presented

so common wealth literature therefore soon became an unworkable category both it was

not international enough and because it was not national enough not international enough

because it did not take into account the cross-cultural influences and the cross territorial affiliations

of the authors coming from the once colonised parts of the world and simultaneously not

national enough because it was not taking into account the various kinds of non-english

literature that was also emerging out of the colonies

however the most problematic aspect of the category commonwealth literature was the way

it connected the literature coming out of the colonies with the colonial empire the

notion of a commonwealth headed by the british monarch is almost inevitably informed by a

spirit of nostalgia for the bygone days of the british empire indeed the category of

commonwealth literature can be interpreted at one level as an attempt to culturally keep

together an empire which was no longer a political reality huhummm.. (coughing) sorry

but political decolonisation was achieved by the nation states that emerged out of the

shadow of british rule through a prolonged anticolonial struggle and the authors who

came out of these parts of the world the once colonised parts of the world where is to this

anticolonial legacy as well as to the legacies of colonialism it is therefore no wonder that

the feeling of nostalgia for the colonial empire that lurked and i would say still lurks

behind the term common wealth would make the label of commonwealth literature unattractive

to some of the very authors that it supposedly describes

and ah this kind of a version towards the category of commonwealth literature was perhaps

best displayed when the novelist amitav ghosh refused to let his novel the glass palace

be considered for the two thousand one commonwealth writers prize one major reason for this decision

as ghosh writes in ah his letter that he sent to the award giving committee had to do with

the nostalgic memorialisation of the colonial past which informed the idea of commonwealth

according to ghosh such glorification or such glorified memorialisation of the colonial

past was precisely what he was trying to resist through his novels like the glass palace and

therefore he could not allow it to be included ah within the race for a prize that had the

word commonwealth associated with it and this was true for many writers who were emerging

from the ex-colonies of britain they were writing against the idea of the colonial empire

yet the category of commonwealth literature remained largely impervious to these elements

of anti-colonialism so by the nineteen nineties commonwealth literature as a literary category

was losing favour and it was losing favour for various different reasons we have already

discussed them but in this slide i have enumerated them

so common wealth literature of erstwhile colonies as a category firstly because it neither included

the literature of erstwhile colonies like america nor did it include the literature

of metropolitan britain it was also problematic because it did not take into account the cross-cultural

influences and the cross territorial affiliations of authors from the ex-colonies it did not

take into account the non-english literatures that was emerging from commonwealth nations

like india for instance

and finally the category of commonwealth literature involved a nostalgic glorification of the

legacies of colonialism so these were the various problems because of which the category

of commonwealth literature was ah um.. losing favour within literary circles and it started

losing favour by the nineteen nineties and nineteen nineties was the time when postcolonial

literature emerged as a replacement

ah if we look at the kind of literature that was being grouped together using the term

postcolonial we will see that there is not much difference between postcolonial literature

or what was being discussed as postcolonial literature and the archive of commonwealth

literature for instance authors like r k narayan derek walcott yinghua tiango chinua achebe

salman rushdie all of them who were being read under the banner of commonwealth literature

were also relevant within the category of postcolonial literature

however though the literature remained the same almost the same the critical approach

to this literature underwent a sea change as we will see later in this course unlike

commonwealth literature the field of postcolonial studies is underlined by a keen awareness

of the fact that both cultures as well as people who produce these cultures both of

them are incessantly travelling they are crossing borders they are intermixing with one another

and they are not fixed within national boundaries

also it is worth noting that though postcolonial literature too concerns itself primarily with

literature written in english it unlike common wealth literature there is a genuine attempt

to incorporate non-english literatures within its can and one good example would be ah the

works of mahasweta devi the bengali author mahasweta devi which forms today ah part of

the canon of postcolonial literature it is very much a part of ah discussions on postcolonial

literature today and the original works of mahasweta devi of course are all in bengali

and not in english

however having said this ah one should also admit that postcolonial literary studies still

predominantly confined itself to english language and even though i said that devi’s works

are popular within the field of postcolonial literature yet they are accessed only as translations

in their translated forms ah and gayatri spivak a name that will later encounter during this

course is one of the major theorist of postcolonial literature and also the translator english

translator of mahasweta devi’s work

however the most radical change in the approach to literary texts that distinguishes postcolonial

literature from commonwealth literature is the former's focus the focus of postcolonial

literature on anticolonial resistance whereas commonwealth literature was informed by colonial

nostalgia by a glorification almost of the legacies of colonialism postcolonial literature

is informed by a highly critical approach towards colonialism

indeed postcolonial literature is not merely a grouping of literature that has emerged

out of the colonies or or ex-colonies of britain rather it is a grouping of literature which

attempts to subvert and undo the effects of colonial violence this critical attitude which

informs the postcolonial studies today is a legacy of what i have referred to earlier

in this lecture as colonial discourse analysis and we will learn more about this concept

of colonial discourse analysis in our next lecture thank you