Writing Back / Reading Forward: Reconsidering the Postcolonial Approach

By submitting six novels selected from India, South Africa and the Caribbean to contrastive readings, this study traces the scope of literary interpretation in a postcolonial context. More than simply providing a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of each text, it challenges both the benefits and limits of a postcolonial approach.

Predicated upon the opposition of writing back and reading forward, the author challenges some of the established concerns or preoccupations of the field. Postcolonial theory, framed by several binary assumptions, e.g. the dichotomy of coloniser/colonised, perpetrator/victim, powerful/powerless, has frequently led to a partial vision regarding postcolonial subjects as well as literatures. By submitting six selected novels from India, South Africa and the Caribbean to contrastive readings, the book maps out the scope of literary interpretation, also and in particular in a postcolonial context. More than simply providing a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of each text, this study challenges both the benefits and limits of the postcolonial as a critical theoretical approach.

Autorentext

Laura A. Zander studied English Literature, Linguistics and Law at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich. She received her doctorate from the English Department at LMU, after completing her MA in English simultaneously with her postgraduate judicial service traineeship. She has been teaching both English Literature and Law (Digital Forensics) at LMU and Goethe University Frankfurt.

Klappentext

Predicated upon the opposition of writing back and reading forward, the author challenges some of the established concerns or preoccupations of the field. Postcolonial theory, framed by several binary assumptions, e.g. the dichotomy of coloniser/colonised, perpetrator/victim, powerful/powerless, has frequently led to a partial vision regarding postcolonial subjects as well as literatures. By submitting six selected novels from India, South Africa and the Caribbean to contrastive readings, the book maps out the scope of literary interpretation, also and in particular in a postcolonial context. More than simply providing a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of each text, this study challenges both the benefits and limits of the postcolonial as a critical theoretical approach.

Inhalt

Postcolonial theory Literary criticism J. M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country Robert Antoni's Divina Trace Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger Earl Lovelace's Is Just a Movie Nadine Gordimer's No Time Like the Present South Africa India The Caribbean