Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism, and the Nation

259 Pages·2003·0.72 MB·English

by  Imre Szeman

Zones of Instability

Zones of Instability
Literature, Postcolonialism, and the Nation
Imre Szeman
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore and London
∫
2003 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2003
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Szeman, Imre, 1968–
Zones of instability : literature, postcolonialism, and the nation /
Imre Szeman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn
0-8018-6803-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Commonwealth literature (English)—History and criticism.
2. Nationalism and literature—Commonwealth countries—History—
20th century. 3. Postcolonialism—Commonwealth countries.
4. Commonwealth countries—In literature. 5. Caribbean Area—In
literature. 6. Postcolonialism in literature. 7. Decolonization in
literature. 8. Nationalism in literature. 9. Nigeria—In literature.
10. Canada—In literature. I. Title.
pr s
9080 . 97 2003
%
820.99171241—dc21
2002154083
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
For Maria, Joseph, and Maya

A Brechtian maxim: ‘‘Don’t start from the good old things but the bad
—walter benjamin,
new ones.’’ ‘‘Conversations with Brecht’’
. . . of reanimating already existing themes, of arousing opposed strate-
gies, or giving way to irreconcilable interests, of making it possible,
with a particular set of concepts, to play different games . . .
—michel foucault,
The Archaeology of Knowledge
I do not say that the world will be reduced to the expedients and
grotesque disorder of the South American republics; or that perhaps we
may even return to a state of savagery, and prowl, gun in hand, in search
of food, through the grass-covered ruins of our civilization. No, for
such adventures would imply the survival of a sort of vital energy, an
echo of earlier ages. Typical victims of the inexorable moral laws, we
shall perish by the thing by which we thought to live. Machinery will
have so much Americanized us, progress will have so much atrophied
our spiritual element, that nothing in the sanguinary, blasphemous or
unnatural dreams of the Utopists can be compared to what will actually
—charles baudelaire,
happen. Intimate Journals
It is not enough to try to get back to the people in that past out of
which they have already emerged; rather we must join them in that fluc-
tuating movement which they are giving a shape to, and which, as soon
as it has started, will be the signal for everything to be called in ques-
tion. Let there be no mistake about it; it is to this zone of occult insta-
bility where the people dwell that we must come; and it is there that our
souls are crystallized and that our perceptions and our lives are trans-
—frantz fanon,
fused with light. The Wretched of the Earth

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Politics of Postcolonial Nationalist Literature 1
1. The Nation as Problem and Possibility 22
2. Caribbean Space: Lamming, Naipaul, and Federation 65
3. The Novel after the Nation: Nigeria after Biafra 116
4. The Persistence of the Nation: Literature and Criticism in Canada 152
Conclusion: National Culture and Globalization 199
Notes 209
Index 237