Postcolonial Britain--Literature, Theory, and Contexts
James English profile
M 3-6
This is a general introduction to the literary production, the theoretical debates, and the historical events wihich have consitituted "postcolonial Britain" as both a field of academic knowledge and a field of extra-academic political activity within England and the UK. We will trace the emergence of the postcolonial paradigm and its ascendancy over other ways of conceiving and addressing issues of nation, culture, race, and identity in postwar Britain. We will consider some of the key terms and concepts of the paradigm, including "race," "exile," "mimicry," "hybridity," "two-tone," "black British," "community," and "colonial," itself. We will look at postcolonial cultural production in connection with some of the key historical moments along the postcolonial trajectory, from the anti-immigration politics of the sixties through the "mugging" panics of the early seventies, the "race riots" and attendant new policing strategies of the mid and late seventies, the anti-racism and rock-against-racism campaigns of the early eighties, and the Satanic Verses affair in the late eighties and early nineties. We will conclude by considering the limitations and failures of the postcolonial paradigm, and by examining some emergent vantages on identity which appear to be displacing the colonial perspective among younger black writers and activists in Britain. Readings are likely to include fiction by Doris Lessing, George Lamming, Anita Desai, Farrukh Dhondy, Timothy Mo, and Salman Rushdie, as well as autobiographical and theoretical writings by George Lamming, Enoch Powell, Dilip Hiro, Stuart Hall, Pratibha Parmar, Homi Bhabha, Paul Gilroy, Kobena Mercer, Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Sara Suleri, Margaret Wetherell, and others. We may also look at some films, possibly Kureishi's My Beautiful Laundrette, and if, obtainable, John Brown's policing film, Shades of Gray, together with the Black Audio Film Collective's documentary Handsworth Songs. Assignments will include six one-page essays and a longer, 12-15 page research paper.
updated 2006-10-12
