Connecting the Local and the Global: The Imbrication of Histories, Theories, and Literatures in Post-colonial Studies

BOOK REVIEWS Connecting the Local and the Global: The Imbrication of Histories, Theories, and Literatures in Post-colonial Studies Debjani Banerjee Calcutta, India Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1995. 526 p. Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose, eds. Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies. New York and London: The Guilford Press, 1994. 256 p. Françoise Lionnet. Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. 196 p. Anne McClintock. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 1995. 449 p. Ileana Rodríguez. House I Garden INation: Space, Gender, and Ethnicity in Post-colonial Latin American Literatures by Women. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994. 223 p. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. 570 p. 1 he formal dissolution of empire in the twentieth century has had a very specific kind of impact on the production of knowledge. Out of the complex phenomena of decolonization that sometimes takes the form of war and sometimes diplomatic exchanges, is born the epistemological category of post-colonialism. As a literary and cultural category, post-colonialism is galvanized by political energies that connect language, representation, and economic power. It provides a space to critique the centrist assumptions of Western histories as well as to explore the marginalized narratives that have been excluded, exoticized, or co-opted. This simultaneous interrogation and shift of focus have been enabled by the development of post-colonial studies both as a theoretically intense area and as a challenge to the literary canon. The accretion of textual and theoretical discourses around postcolonialism is examined in great detail in the books under review. The two anthologies, The Post-colonial Studies Reader and Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory seek to cover the different theoretical topoi that draw and re-draw the boundaries of post-colonial literature. The other books under review—House I Garden INation; Imperial Leather; Postcolonial Representations; and Writing Women and Space—discuss these theoretical discourses in specific contexts. Together, these books demonstrate that post55 56Rocky Mountain Review colonial studies is a heterogenous field where language, readings, and meanings are severely contested. The contestation begins with the term post-colonial itself. Post-colonial emphasizes the temporality and the spatial boundaries of colonization; it pronounces the end of the formal aspects of colonialism and therefore can be interpreted to suggest a clean break with the consequences of colonialism. This last implication has generated considerable discomfort with the term post-colonial. The editors of Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory cover much of the debate about the semantic aspects of post-colonial studies , particularly in the section "Theorizing Post-coloniality: Intellectuals and Institutions." Anne McClintock's essay in this section is concerned with the homogenizing potential of the label "post-colonial." Her reading leads her to believe that the term is rarely used to signify multiplicity; moreover, she is uncomfortable with the model of linear history that "post-colonial" draws on. The essay by Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge, also in this section of Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory, theorizes the term post-colonialism and argues for an exclusion of the hyphen. The writers of the essay assert that postcolonialism in its unhyphenated variety will become the dominant post-colonial practice: "It must be possible to acknowledge difference and insist on a strongly oppositional postcolonialism as crucial to the debate, without claiming that this form is or has been everywhere the same wherever a colonizer's feet have trod" (289). This excerpt draws attention to another set of issues that are concerned with the limitations of post-colonial studies—which are the countries that can be considered "truly" post-colonial? Mishra and Hodge call for a distinction between post-coloniality in white settler colonies including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and those that racially and ethnically separated the colonizers and the colonized. The colonial formations in these two segments being entirely different, their juxtaposition within post-colonial studies becomes something of a problem. By and large, Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory draws on Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America as...