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Postcolonialism: South/African Perspectives
Author(s): Michael Chapman (Author, Editor)
- Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Publication Date: 26 Sept. 2008
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 185 pages
- ISBN-10: 1847185991
- ISBN-13: 9781847185990
Book Description
This collection poses two overarching questions: Is there a role for the literary imagination in postcolonial studies? And where might one locate South Africa or, more generally, South/African perspectives, in a field delineated primarily by northern institutional purposes and practices? While engaging with contemporary debates the essays seek to turn current postcolonial emphases on theoretical formulations and issue-driven interpretation towards the subjective experience of literary texts in specific contexts. The Introduction, “Postcolonialism: A Literary Turn”, suggests a template of ‘late postcolonialism’ beyond empires writing back to the centre. Instead, ongoing challenges include settler identity, past and present; independent or compromised African/diasporic voices; the character of the postcolony in which the pre-modern, modern, and postmodern contest a single though heterogeneous place, or space; and the ‘voicing’ of the silent subaltern alongside the ‘postcolonialising’ of Nobel laureates Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee. Despite the utopian political pronouncements of many postcolonial projects (the West’s own undoing) this collection wishes to stimulate us―students, academics―to see afresh, and comparatively, across worlds. In this, a literary turn may achieve an ethical dimension.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Postcolonial studies in South Africa obviously has important work to do.”Robert J.C. Young, New York University
About the Author
Michael Chapman is a professor of English at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. His publications include Soweto Poetry (1982; 2007), South African English Poetry: A Modern Perspective (1984), The “Drum” Decade: Stories of the 1950s (1989; 2001), and the literary history Southern African Literatures (1996; 2003). His collection of essays, titled Art Talk, Politics Talk: A Consideration of Categories, appeared in 2006.
