Making a Mess of Things: Postcolonialism, Canadian Literature, and the Ethical Turn

In his introduction to Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Philosophy, and Theory David Parker argues that 'in "advanced" literary circles for most of the 1970s and 1980s, few topics could have been more uninteresting, more depassé, less likely to attract budding young theorists, than the topics Ethics and Literature' (1). In response to 'the demise of modern humanism' and the moral failures of the twentieth century, Todd Davis and Kenneth Womack suggest in their preface to Mapping the Ethical Turn, 'many critics during the poststructuralist era have doggedly and determinedly sought to place distance between themselves and any mention of an ethical or moral perspective in their work' (ix). The increasing interest in the intersection between ethics and literature reflected in the work of critics such as Wayne Booth, Martha Nussbaum, and Richard Rorty, however, points to the resilience of ethical questions in literary criticism and theory. Given that poststructuralist theorists' reconceptualization of linguistic signification and artistic representation has substantial implications for the intersection between literature and ethics, though, this 'ethical turn' in theory and criticism has not been simply a reversion 'to a dogmatically prescriptive or doctrinaire form of reading' (Davis and Womack, x). Instead, it has involved a sustained effort to reframe ethical considerations in the wake of poststructuralist scepticism towards metanarratives, emphasis on the rhetoricity of texts, and highlighting of the seduction of mimesis – the problem, that is, with viewing literature as simply a window onto the world.

As Parker argues, though, literature continues to be 'rightly esteemed as a highly particularized, complex and richly contextualized mode of ethical reflection ... because it is able to ponder moral questions in ways unavailable to conventional philosophical discourse' (12). Though poststructuralist theorists have thoroughly complicated how literature might be seen as 'pondering' moral questions, their challenging of the metaphysical foundations of Western philosophy arguably has reconfigured ethical considerations in literary criticism and theory, rather than banished them. Indeed, what many theorists, led by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, have turned away from is not so much ethical considerations as it is the faith in a transcendental truth on which moral principles can be founded. Many recognize that poststructuralism has rendered an invaluable service in deconstructing the metaphysical and ideological assumptions underpinning Western philosophy, forcing a general reckoning with the moral and philosophical foundations of traditional Western rationalism and aesthetics – including our understanding of meaning in literary texts. Such poststructuralist anti-foundationalism has had a profound influence on postcolonial criticism, feminist criticism, and cultural studies, with critics deploying poststructuralist theory to highlight the ways in which Western logocentrism has underpinned highly stratified regimes of power in terms of class, gender, and race. As Gauri Viswanathan demonstrates, for instance, the development of English studies, which was well advanced in the colonies before it was adopted in England itself, was thoroughly bound up with the machinery and objectives of colonial power: 'the Eurocentric literary curriculum of the nineteenth century was less a statement of the superiority of the Western tradition than a vital, active instrument of Western hegemony in concert with commercial expansionism and military action' (166–67). Viswanathan provides a telling reminder of how upholding the moral value of literary texts can be a 'masking of conquest,' a covert reinforcement of hegemonic values. Indeed, Parker concedes that 'one of the permanently valuable legacies of the political literary theory of the seventies and eighties has been precisely to keep reminding us of the historically and culturally contingent basis of formations like ethics and the so-called literary canon, which therefore cannot be unproblematically conceived of as timeless or universal' (5).

In considering the implications of this ethical turn for Canadian literature and literary criticism, there is probably no better illustration of the continuing urgency of ethical considerations than the ongoing engagement with the legacy of colonialism. In Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End, John Willinsky argues for the importance of situating contemporary education within this larger historical context, to keep in view how that history has effectively been an education 'in how to divide the world,' in how 'to read the exotic...