Interdisciplinary Measures: Literature and the Future of Postcolonial Studies (Liverpool University Press - Postcolonialism Across Disciplines)

225 Pages·2008·3.88 MB·English

by  Graham Huggan

Interdisciplinary Measures
Postcolonialism across the Disciplines 1
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Postcolonialism across the Disciplines
Series Editors
Graham Huggan, University of Leeds
Andrew Thompson, University of Leeds
Postcolonialism across the disciplines showcases alternative directions for
post colonial studies. It is in part an attempt to counteract the dominance in
colonial and postcolonial studies of one particular discipline – English literary/
cultural studies – and to make the case for a combination of disciplinary know ­
ledges as the basis for contemporary postcolonial critique. Edited by leading
scholars, the series aims to be a seminal contribution to the field, spanning
the traditional range of disciplines represented in postcolonial studies but
also those less acknowl edged. It will also embrace new critical paradigms and
examine the relation ship between the transnational/cultural, the global and the
postcolonial.
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Interdisciplinary
Measures
Literature and the Future
of Postcolonial Studies
Graham Huggan
Liverpool University Press
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First published 2008 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool L69 7ZU
Copyright © 2008 Graham Huggan
The right of Graham Huggan to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978­1­84631­109­3 cased
978­1­84631­110­9 limp
Typeset in Amerigo by Koinonia, Manchester
Printed and bound in the European Union by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Section I. Literature, Geography, Environment
1 Decolonizing the Map: Postcolonialism, Poststructuralism
and the Cartographic Connection 21
2 Unsettled Settlers: Postcolonialism, Travelling Theory
and the New Migrant Aesthetics 34
3 Postcolonial Geography, Travel Writing and the Myth of Wild Africa 49
4 ‘Greening’ Postcolonialism: Ecocritical Perspectives 64
Section II. Literature, Culture, Anthropology
5 Anthropologists and Other Frauds 93
6 African Literature and the Anthropological Exotic 106
7 (Post)Colonialism, Anthropology and the Magic of Mimesis 130
8 Maps, Dreams and the Presentation of Ethnographic Narrative 142
Section III. Literature, History, Memory
9 Philomela’s Retold Story: Silence, Music and the Postcolonial Text 155
10 Ghost Stories, Bone Flutes, Cannibal Counter­memory 166
11 Cultural Memory in Postcolonial Fiction: The Uses and Abuses
of Ned Kelly 182
12 (Not) Reading Orientalism 196
Index 210
v
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements are due to the following parties for reprinted material:
Percy Tresize (photographer) and the Aboriginal custodians of Quinkin Cave
(cover image); Postcolonial Studies and the Institute of Postcolonial Studies (intro­
duction); Ariel and the University of Calgary (chapters 1 and 8); The Journal of
Australian Studies and University of Queensland Press (chapter 2); Modern Fiction
Studies and Johns Hopkins University Press (chapter 4); Comparative Literature
and the University of Oregon (chapter 5); Routledge/Taylor & Francis (chapter
6); Cultural Critique and University of Minnesota Press (chapter 7); Journal of
Commonwealth Literature and Sage Publications (chapter 9); Cambridge University
Press (chapter 10); Australian Literary Studies and University of Queensland
Press (chapter 11); Research in African Literatures and University of Indiana Press
(chapter 12). Every effort has been made to locate copyright holders in all cases;
apologies are given for any oversights here. Most of the work in this book
revises or updates previously published work; the original publications are as
follows, with thanks to all those involved in giving me permission to reprint
material here: ‘Postcolonial Studies and the Anxiety of Interdisciplinarity’,
Postcolonial Studies 5.3 (2002): 245–75 (introduction); ‘Decolonizing the Map:
Post­Colonialism, Post­Structuralism and the Cartographic Connection’, Ariel
20.4 (1989): 115–31 (chapter 1); ‘Unsettled Settlers: Postcolonialism, Travelling
Theory and the New Migrant Aesthetics’, in Scatterlings of Empire. Ed. Wilfred
Prest and Graeme Tulloch. St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2001.
117–27 (chapter 2); ‘“Greening” Postcolonialism: Ecocritical Perspectives’,
Modern Fiction Studies 50.3 (2004): 710–33 (chapter 4); ‘Anthropologists and other
Frauds’, Comparative Literature 46.2 (1994): 113–28 (chapter 5); ‘African Literature
and the Anthropological Exotic’, in The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins.
London: Routledge, 2001 (chapter 6); ‘(Post) colonialism, Anthropology, and the
Magic of Mimesis’, Cultural Critique 38 (1997–8): 91–106 (chapter 7); ‘Maps,
Dreams, and the Presentation of Ethnographic Narrative’, Ariel 22.1 (1991): 57–69
vii
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Acknowledgements
(chapter 8); ‘Philomela’s Retold Story: Silence, Music and the Post­Colonial Text’,
Journal of Commonwealth Literature 25.1 (1990): 12–23 (chapter 9); ‘Ghost Stories,
Bone Flutes, Cannibal Counter­memory’, in Cannibalism and the Colonial World.
Ed. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme and Margaret Iversen. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998. 126–41 (chapter 10); ‘Cultural Memory in Postcolonial
Fiction: The Uses and Abuses of Ned Kelly’, Australian Literary Studies 20.3 (2002):
142–54 (chapter 11); ‘(Not) Reading Orientalism’, Research in African Literatures
36.3 (2005): 124–36. Thanks are also due to numerous people for helping and/or
encouraging me in this project: these include my colleague Andrew Thompson
at the University of Leeds and Anthony Cond, Charles Forsdick and Richard
Phillips at Liverpool University Press. A number of mentors have sustained me
over the years, including Diana Brydon, Patricia Merivale, Bill New and Craig
Tapping at the University of British Columbia; Helen Tiffin and Gillian Whitlock
at the University of Queensland; Larry Buell, Jim Engell and Werner Sollors
at Harvard University; Chris Balme and Frank Heidemann at the University of
Munich; and Ed Larrissy and all my postcolonial colleagues at the University of
Leeds. All deserve thanks; and Sabine Schlueter, who knows how difficult I am,
deserves the most thanks of all.
viii
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Introduction
Postcolonialism as Comparatism
Few research fields can be as contested, not least by their own practitioners, as
postcolonial studies, which continues to show every inclination to choose itself
as the principal object of its own debates. Perhaps the most obvious thing to
be said about postcolonial literary/cultural criticism – and even here there are
dissenting voices – is that it is, by definition, a comparative field. That it is insuf-
ficiently rigorous in its comparisons is less obvious, though evident enough
to have attracted extensive and well-documented critique. John McLeod, for
example, in his excellent primer Beginning Postcolonialism (2000), runs through
a wearily familiar list of comparison-related criticisms. These include (1) that
postcolonialism, through its reliance on Western critical-theoretical models,
tends to replicate and reinforce the colonialist structures it sets out to dismantle;
(2) that it ‘creates a ghetto for literature from once-colonised countries within
English departments and degree schemes’ (McLeod 249); (3) that it is over-
dependent on anti-foundationalist theories of knowledge that underestimate
or simply overlook the material socio-economic conditions that remain ‘the
foundation of reality and determine how we live our lives’ (McLeod 257); (4)
that it represents the premature celebration of an unfinished historical project,
collapsing the distinction between ‘different countries which have experi-
enced decolonisation at different times and other countries which have not
experienced it at all’ (McLeod 257); and (5) that it has signally failed to address
pressing issues of economic power and class domination, in part because its
practitioners are reluctant to concede their own advantaged position within the
late-capitalist world system they affect to critique.
This list, McLeod implies, amounts to an attack on an ill-conceived mode of
comparative literary/cultural criticism whose practitioners only rarely deliver on
the political promises they perhaps never really intended to keep. Now this is to
1
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