ABSTRACT
In conclusion, I will discuss responsibility in postcolonial criticism, in relation to categories of the singular and the universal. All the way through this book I’ve suggested that, like other forms of criticism, postcolonial criticism appears to have become more literary through becoming more autobiographical: a literary form of criticism about literature, and of course about other things, because postcolonialism has to be interdisciplinary (or at least it usually is assumed that it must be). We might then argue that this makes postcolonial criticism more responsible through self-situation and contextualization, undermining the urge to universalize and so cancel difference. Autobiographical theory is one means by which we can maintain and respect differences, and so is a central part of a postcolonial philosophy of difference. As soon as I refer to such a philosophy, it is possible to see that I am actually referring back to the French philosophers from whose work methods of maintaining or creating difference have been drawn. Now, while there have been many challenges to these philosophers’ influence on postcolonial theory, and many other forms of theory, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and others do enjoy a kind of theoretical dominance, and this is something that this book has generally defended. If nothing else, this book has pointed to all the ways that this apparent influence is complex and divided, something inevitable given the differences between the various thinkers. All of them, however, have relevance to the idea of autobiographical theory. If I have depended most upon Derrida it is because, among other things, his work’s relevance to autobiographical theory is often rather explicit, with the autobiographical often a most insistent element in his own writing.
