ABSTRACT
In his introductory essay to New National and Post-Colonial Literatures Bruce King writes: ‘Theory itself colonizes literature; like other exploitative aliens it need to be resisted while learning from it’ (p. 20). Accordingly, the general thematic content of many of the essays in this work have clear agendas which involve a sceptical approach to what King ominously identifies as ‘Critical Theory’ (p. 8). Citing an issue of the PMLA on ‘Colonialism and the Postcolonial Condition’ in 1995, introduced by Linda Hutcheon, whose own critical positions are unambiguously postmodernist, King claims that this work ‘Brilliantly summarizes recent directions in postcolonial theory, but ignores creative literature’ (p. 21). He takes this publication as somehow representative of a large body of contemporary critical work on post-colonialism where the concept of the post-colonial ‘becomes a metaphor for any cultural study of any subject in any language’ (p. 20). He goes on to quote Gregory Woods’ useful but rather cynical attack on post-colonial studies as a general condemnation of ‘straight white male national norms’ (p. 21).
