Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism, and the Nation (review)

Imre Szeman offers an interesting and valuable argument about the general consensus that postcolonial literature must somehow contribute to the project of nation building, even if the reality is that postcolonial nations either are in the process of defining themselves or are caught in situations which threaten the integrity of the nation itself. Since postcolonial nations are products of modernity and postnational recuperation, both literature and culture tend to favour a return to the past, thereby adding to the complexity of relating literature to nationhood in any straightforward manner. Using Canada, Nigeria, and the British Caribbean as examples, Szeman demonstrates that postcolonial nations are often zones of instability and that literature, rather than reaffirming the significance of what has been established, is often preoccupied with the task of grappling with how a nation might be forged in the midst of multiple centrifugal forces.

A constitutive element in Szeman's study is the notion of space – as against nation – as a concept that captures with some measure of accuracy the multiple forces that claim recognition within the postcolonial framework. While the birth of the postcolonial nation was a historical necessity, and while its relation to modernity was equally inevitable, the process of definition began rather than ended at that moment. Independence and the transfer of power to the new 'nation' were at best a compromise, and no sooner was that achieved than cracks and fissures began to appear everywhere. Szeman quite rightly points out that although no single term would encapsulate the process of reappraisal, 'space' would be a useful term to invoke in order to draw attention to kinds of issues that now clamoured for attention.

Szeman's analysis of Caribbean, Canadian, and Nigerian literature is framed by an essay that looks at three scholars, Frantz Fanon, Fredric Jameson, and Benedict Anderson, all of whom have dealt with the relation between nation and literature, in order to contest current readings and establish a perspective that enables a productive reading of postcolonial literature. Szeman effectively points out the merits of Jameson's notion of allegory – a defence that becomes meaningful as the book moves towards a reading of Lamming and Naipaul.

Szeman's chapters on Cabribbean, Nigerian, and Canadian literature are all significant, for very different reasons. Rather than use different examples to illustrate the same argument, he shifts emphasis and perspective as he moves from one region to another in order to demonstrate the nuances of his argument. The impulses that drive Caribbean writing are very different from those that energize Nigerian literature, and the reasons for this disparity are historical. The fundamental thesis of the book remains solid. Szeman convinces us that we cannot ignore the importance of using the nation as an important marker in postcolonial literature. But we should do so with a full awareness that a homogeneous, centripetal category called the nation was important for ideological reasons and not literary ones. Instead of simply being celebratory or subversive, major postcolonial writers have interrogated the idea of the nation, showing how we need to be aware of multiple claims and intersections that followed independence.

Szeman's conceptual model would not apply in quite the same way to other nations and regions, but it would certainly open up new possibilities for scholars who are interested in the literary history of other postcolonial nations. Would Australian or Indian writing, for instance, foreground instability in different ways? It might be equally valuable to look at vernacular literatures in the postcolonial period to see if their preoccupations are different. Szeman's book is an important contribution to postcolonial studies in that it advances a rigorous reading of a certain number of texts while keeping in mind the larger corpus that is available to the postcolonial reader.