ABSTRACT
To think about postcolonial studies is to think in terms of crisis, death, and futurity. Comparative literature, one such discipline, needs to keep the postcolonial alive in discussions of world literature that sometimes act as though comparative postcolonial literary studies never existed. Think of the postcolonial rubbing up against other terms–the transnational, the global, the planetary, the Third World, the nation, the state, the city, the body. Promiscuity allows the postcolonial to rear its not so accommodating head in discussions that ignore or dismiss the myriad ways in which it has shaped academic disciplines. The term postcolonial could allow the people to critique engagements with world and global literature that privilege translation and distant reading. Postcolonial studies are inherently comparative. The institutionalization of postcolonial studies in places like the United States, the UK, and Australia often ends up erasing postcoloniality’s comparative dimensions.
