ABSTRACT
Since a foundational conference at the University of Leeds in 1964, postcolonial studies has established itself as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that frequently blurs boundaries between the humanities and social sciences to analyze the legacies of colonization. Postcolonial criticism applies a range of theories to cultural artifacts and social processes in former colonies or produced by diasporic world citizens from this postcolonial world. The object of these studies is as protean as the disciplines in which they are carried out, but after these five decades there remains disagreement over the definition of postcolonial literature proper to this analysis. Does it include all texts produced either in former colonies or by those living abroad who stake a claim to represent the nation in question? Does it entail only those texts dealing with particular topics or addressed from a particular point of view (such as resistance), and does it valorize a particular genre for one reason or another as more suitably postcolonial (more realistic, for example)? This chapter hopes to consider a few of these questions, though it cannot hope to resolve them.
