ABSTRACT
To take a metaphor out of the world of criminal investigation, this chapter is an attempt to sketch a composite portrait of post-colonialism, which used to be one of the most ‘wanted’ concepts in academic discourse. That the portrait has necessarily to be composite is because few people seem to have seen the subject so clearly as to identify it accurately or reliably. Notwithstanding several exclusions and inclusions, the post-colonial bandwagon is still rather overloaded and unwieldy, badly in need of jettisoning unwanted cargo. Despite the bold claim of carrying three-quarters of the globe on its back, post-colonialism, when it actually comes to who gets a seat on the wagon, refers to a much smaller load of passengers and quota of freight. Because its lingua franca is English, countries colonized by other imperial powers such as France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy and Belgium are mostly left behind. Also marginal, for even more flimsy reasons, are black, Chicano, Native American and other ‘smaller’ literatures. What of ‘colonies’ of Japan, the former Soviet Union, or present-day China? Their literature usually gets left out too. The bulk of what does make it past the post is Anglophone literatures from former colonies of Britain. Post-colonialism, hence, becomes academically viable only through a series of exclusions. The term itself is like a portmanteau made to order for the Western academy: the metropolitan mind, with its manic urge to encapsulate, condense and contain other cultures, has the satisfaction of believing that it carries ‘three-quarters’ of the world in such a portable holdall. The deeper problem is that we ourselves have half-accepted post-colonialism, if not as a vehicle for our self-understanding, at least as the West’s understanding of ourselves. Though it has been foisted upon us by the international academic system, post-colonialism, whether we like it or not, is now a part of our syllabus; we must learn to make the best of it. Yet the very fact that we have accepted it must not blind us to the mechanisms of such acceptance. It is only by studying the latter that we can uncover the secret of imperial burden that the term bears, that burden of neo-colonialism which it tries to disown but cannot lose.
