ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that how the material has been imagined meta-discursively and how these imaginations have facilitated work on identity narratives and, ultimately, brand narratives of postcolonialism. What role has the charge of 'complicity in capitalism' played in ideological battles over the legitimacy of postcolonial critique, battles frequently waged between Marxist and poststructuralist critics? The chapter considers the question with reference to five overall themes: identity, imagination, integrity, complicity, and post-complicity. The longstanding materialist challenge has not only been troublesome, it has also provided a source for identity narratives variously situating postcolonial studies as 'complicit with' capitalism, 'wrestling with' the economic, or as 'different from' Marxism. Neil Lazarus's systematisation characterises the response of postcolonial critics to Fredric Jameson's essay, and Marxism by extension, as an essentialising procedure. The instrumentalisation of both Jameson's and Aijaz Ahmad's works can be considered indicative of a widespread desire in postcolonial studies of the late 1980s and 1990s to situate Marxism outside of postcolonialism.
