ABSTRACT

Post-colonial theories of literature emerge from a view of language grounded in an assertion of the importance of practice over the code, the importance of the ‘variant’ over the ‘standard’. There is also a sense in which post-colonial writing itself, as well as the systematic indigenous theories, offers a broader, non-Eurocentric perspective on some traditional questions of theory. What kinds of writing ‘fit’ or could be considered to fit into the category ‘literature’; how do texts ‘mean’; by what criteria could or should these texts be evaluated; how do they dismantle the process of ascribing ‘merit’ through critical practice; and how applicable are the universalist assertions of European theory to the growing body of post-European literatures. This perspective does not necessarily exclude conclusions which may be reached within Eurocentric theory, but its very existence questions the circumscribed range of that theory’s project.