The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons

276 Pages·1996·2.557 MB·English

by  Iain Chambers, Lidia Curti

THE POST-COLONIAL
QUESTION
The Post-Colonial Question brings together renowned and emerging critical voices to
respond to questions raised by the concept of the ‘post-colonial’. The essays range
from imperial histories to today’s hybrid metropolitan youth cultures, from African-
American writings to uneasy mixtures of nationalisms and religion in the post-colonial
city. Together, they explore the diverse cultures and disparate narratives which are shaping
our volatile global future.
In confronting the concept and condition of post-coloniality, the contributors move
beyond overworked metaphors of integration, the melting pot and multiculturalism.
Instead, they present a plurality of voices, bodies, populations and histories coming
from ‘elsewhere’ to disrupt the Euro-American sense of where the ‘centre’ lies.
The collection includes a new piece of fiction by Hanif Kureishi.
Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti both teach at the Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples.
THE
POST-COLONIAL
QUESTION
Common Skies, Divided Horizons
Edited by Iain Chambers
and Lidia Curti
London and New York
First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
Selection and editorial matter © 1996 Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti; individual chapters © 1996
the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permis-
sion in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0–415–10857–8 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0–415–10858–6 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-13832-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-18568-4 (Glassbook Format)
CONTENTS
Notes on contributors vii
Acknowledgements x
Preface xi
Part I Critical landscapes
1 The undone interval 3
Trinh T. Minh-ha in conversation with Annamaria Morelli
2 Route work: the black Atlantic and the politics of exile 17
Paul Gilroy
3 Different, youthful, subjectivities 30
Angela McRobbie
4 Signs of silence, lines of listening 47
Iain Chambers
Part II Post-colonial time
5 Histories, empires and the post-colonial moment 65
Catherine Hall
6 African cities, historical memory and street buzz 78
Allessandro Triulzi
7 Irishness – feminist and post-colonial 92
Wanda Balzano
8 Ethnic conflict in post-colonial India 99
Amedeo Maiello
9 Black cultures in difference 115
Marie Hélène Laforest
v
CONTENTS
Part III Frontier journeys: the space of interrogation
10 Between two shores 123
Lidia Curti
11 Defining forces: ‘race’, gender and memories of empire 142
Vron Ware
12 Identity and alterity in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe 157
Laura Di Michele
13 The space of culture, the power of space 169
Lawrence Grossberg
14 Writers from elsewhere 189
Stefano Manferlotti
Part IV Whose world, whose home?
15 Unpacking my library . . . again 199
Homi K. Bhabha
16 Mass exoticisms 212
Clara Gallini
17 Some troubled homecomings 221
Demetrio Yocum
18 A tribe called Europe 228
Marina De Chiara
19 My son the fanatic 234
Hanif Kureishi
20 When was ‘the post-colonial’? Thinking at the limit 242
Stuart Hall
Index 261
vi
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Wanda Balzano, a graduate of the Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples, and Dublin
University, is currently completing her Ph.D. in Irish literature at University College,
Dublin. She has published on Samuel Beckett, Angela Carter, P. D. James and the Irish
post-colonial dimension.
Homi K. Bhabha is Professor at the University of Chicago in both the English and the Art
History departments. His previous books are Nation and Narration (1990) which he
edited and The Location of Culture (1994). He is currently working on issues of culture,
community and cosmopolitanism.
Iain Chambers is Professor of History of English culture at the Istituto Universitario
Orientale, Naples. His most recent book is Migrancy, Culture, Identity (1994).
Lidia Curti is Professor of English at the Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples. She is
the author of a book on Shakespeare in avant-garde theatre and of Female Fabulations
(forthcoming, Macmillan).
Marina De Chiara is researching her Ph.D. in Literatures in English at the University of
Rome and the Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples. She has published articles on W.
H. Auden and Jeannette Winterson.
Laura Di Michele is Professor of English at the Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples.
Her publications include L’educazione del sentimento: la crisi del romanzo inglese fra
gotico e sentimentale, 1750–1800 (1977), La scena dei potenti: teatro politica spettacolo
nell’età di Shakespeare (1988) and various essays on the eighteenth century. She is
currently working on a book on the poetry of James Thomson.
Clara Gallini is Professor of Ethnology at the University of Rome, La Sapienza. She is
the author of several books on Italian popular culture – Feste lunghe di Sardegna, La
ballerina variopinta, La sonnambula meravigliosa – as well as essays on exoticism
and racism in the media.
vii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Paul Gilroy teaches at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London and in the Program for
African and African-American Studies at Yale University. Author of The Black Atlantic
(1993) and Small Acts (1993), he is presently writing a book on multiculturalism and
fascism.
Lawrence Grossberg is Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is editor of the journal Cultural Studies
and co-editor of the volume Cultural Studies (1992) with Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler.
His latest book is We Gotta Get out of this Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern
Culture (1992).
Catherine Hall is a feminist historian. She is a Professor in the Department of Sociology
at the University of Essex and is on the collective of Feminist Review. She has written
extensively on the nineteenth century, including White, Male and Middle Class:
Explorations in Feminism and History (1992).
Stuart Hall was for a decade Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Birmingham,
where he edited and co-authored such volumes as Resistance through Ritual, Policing
the Crisis and Culture, Media, Language. Presently Professor of Sociology at the Open
University, among his recent publications is The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism
and the Crisis of the Left and the co-edited volume New Times.
Hanif Kureishi is a writer and film-maker. After a residency at the Royal Court Theatre he
wrote the script for My Beautiful Laundrette (1986) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
(1988). He is the director of the film London Kills Me (1991), and author of the novel The
Buddha of Suburbia, subsequently transformed into a successful television series, and
The Black Album.
Marie Hélène Laforest teaches post-colonial literature at the Istituto Universitario
Orientale, Naples.
Amedeo Maiello is a researcher in Modern Indian History at the Istituto Universitario
Orientale, Naples. His main field of research is Islam in South Asia, and he has published
several articles on the argument.
Stefano Manferlotti is Professor of English at the University of Naples. His publications
include George Orwell (1979), Anti-utopia. Huxley, Orwell, Burgess (1984), Aldous
Huxley (1987) and Dopo l’impero. Letteratura ed etnia in Gran Bretagna (1995).
Angela McRobbie is Reader in Sociology at Loughborough University of Technology
and is the author of Postmodernism and Popular Culture (1994) and of Fashion and the
Image Industries (forthcoming, Routledge).
Trinh T. Minh-ha is a writer, film-maker and composer. Her more recent works include the
books Framer-Framed (1992), When the Moon Waxes Red (1991), Woman, Native, Other
(1989); a collection of poetry, En minuscules (1987); and the films Shoot for the Contents
viii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
(1991), Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989), Naked Spaces (1985) and Reassemblage
(1982). She has taught at the Dakar Conservatory of Music in Senegal, and at the
Universities of Cornell, San Francisco State, Smith and Harvard. She is presently Professor
of Women’s Studies and Film at the University of California, Berkeley.
Annamaria Morelli is completing her Ph.D. on the baroque at the University of Rome
and the Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples. She has published several articles on
Shakespeare, and on the languages of contemporary television and cinema.
Alessandro Triulzi is Professor of African History at the Istituto Universitario Orientale,
Naples. He is author of Salt, Gold and Legitimacy (1981).
Vron Ware is author of Beyond the Pale. White Women, Racism and History (1992) and
currently teaches in the School of Humanities at the University of Greenwich in London.
Demetrio Yocum is an English Language assistant at the Istituto Universitario Orientale,
Naples. He has published on post-colonial literatures and is currently completing a
critical essay on Caribbean and African appropriations of The Tempest.
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We want to thank the Istituto Universitario Orientale of Naples for providing the physical
and financial structures that allowed us to organise the conference that led to the present
book. We also want to thank the British Council of Naples, Rahim Shirmahd for bringing
his video from Germany, Trinh T. Minh-ha for showing her beautiful film Surname Viet
Given Name Nam, and John Koumantarakis for the translations. Finally, our biggest
thanks go to the students of the Orientale who participated in the two days of discussion
and debate, and whose own videos, questions and presence enthusiastically witnessed
the event.
For the eventual preparation of the manuscript we want to express our deep gratitude
to Jim Clifford and everyone at the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of
California at Santa Cruz for welcoming us into an environment that made editing this
book such a relaxing task.
x