Explores literary works from Africa, Asia, India, Latin American, Ireland and/or the Caribbean alongside classics from the Western canon that address key colonial and post-colonial issues and concepts: imperialism, nationalism, globalization, empire, resistance writing, feminism, hybridity, border-crossing, exile and cultural translation. Introduces major voices in post-colonial literary and cultural studies, Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, and Gayatri Spivak.
Code
CL3081
Name
POST-COLONIAL LIT. & THEORY
Credits
4
Pre-requisites
None
Co-requisites
None
Can be taken twice for credit?
No
Discipline
CL (Comparative Literature)
Level
Undergraduate
Type
Regular
CAMS ID
2597
Last update with CAMS
To approach postcolonial studies as a critique of colonialism; but also to see its broader relevance as a deconstruction of any discourse of power (e.g. extreme nationalism) that seeks to legitimize exclusion
To approach postcolonial theory as an intertextual “genealogy” in which each theorist builds on and extends the work of previous thinkers
To place postcolonial literary texts in terms of the specific historical, socio-cultural and linguistic contexts in which they emerged
To recognize the stylistic and generic specificities (rewriting history, national allegory, magical realism etc.) of postcolonial literature
To appreciate the comparative scope of postcolonial theory (orientalism, the third space, the role of the intellectual etc.) in its application to literary texts, but also to recognize its limits
To be critical of postcolonial theory as the intellectual production of postcolonial intellectuals who risk silencing the subalterns they wish to empower
To explore the potential of culture (which includes literature, but also other forms like performance and the web), to resist discourses of power through messages of survival and self-affirmation
To go beyond representations of French identity in terms of baguettes and berets or laicité, and discover the postcolonial face of a hybrid, multicultural France