Postcolonialism, Politics of Gender, and American Studies: An Introduction

Canadian Review of American Studies Volume 23, Number 1, Fall 1992, pp: 93-94 93 Postcolonialism, Politics of Gender, and American Studies: An Introduction Christine Bold Versions of the following papers were presented at "North America and the Pacific Rim," the 1991 conference of the Canadian Association for American Studies, organized by professors Ann Cowan and Peter Buitenhuis of Simon Fraser University. In different ways, these essays challenge traditional assumptions about the territory and methodologies of American Studies. Each author engages what Henry Louis Gates Jr. calls 11 the colonial paradigm,"1 situating the United States ·withina larger framework of political and cultural colonization and resistance, in order to conduct textual readings and argue interpretive strategies. At times the writers' gaze is trained on U.S. subject matter, as conventionally conceived; at other times, they traverse the "rim" of U.S. culture, as Helen Buss puts it, dwelling on the rich complications and hybridities which occupy cross-cultural spaces. The suggestiveness of postcolonialist approaches for the practice of American studies is multiple. Such a perspective implicitly destabilizes exceptionalist definitions of American national identity; it seeks to trace the sociopolitical interests of conventional cultural categories; and it can expose blind spots within American scholarly, intellectual, and popular discourse. In terms of Canadian readings of American culture, our geopolitical place on the rims and margins of the United States looks newly powerful. 94 Canadian Review of American Studies The three essays presented here are particularly interested in the methods by which constructions of gender and sexualities intersect with the discursive production of nations and nationalisms. By reading the rhetorical ruses of selected cultural texts, these authors rewrite some of the literary, political, and historical narratives with which we understand American culture. Together, these pieces demonstrate that opening up this field can only enrich our explorations and debates as scholars of American studies. Endnotes 1. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Critical Fanonism," Critical Inquiry 17 (Spring 1991): 457. ...