Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

colonial process . 3
The use of the term, postcoloaialism , as a ·singular, ahistorica1 abstraction"
has been questioned by Anne McClintoc k:in "Pitfalls of the Term 'Post -Colonialism;"
I am not convin ced that one of the most important emergin g areas of
intellectual and political enquiry is best served by inscribing history as a
single issue. Just as the singular category "woman " has been
discredited as a bogus universal for feminism , incapable of
distinguishing between the varied histories and imbalances in power
among women , so the singular category "pest-colonial " may license too
readily a panoptic tendency to view the globe within generic
abstractions voided of political nuance (86).
If postcolonial is empl oyed. to define a single, universal categ ory , "the postcolonial, "
the term. has failed. to take into consi derati on Ibe multip licity of locations and cultures
that have beenaffected by the imperial process. Evenwithin the category of
postcolonial Intellectuals, thereare the resident and diasporic inrellectUa1s; and within
the diasporic, then: are those who migrated , those forced into exile , and those with or
withou t First World citizenship. If their resistance to Europeando mination is reflected
in their literature. can their counter-discursive practices be considered postcolonial , in
spite of their differences? For example, the metaphors of "house. " "bomelessness,"
and ·hybridity,· which symbolize the effects of colonization, are evident in the
Trinidadian Sam Selvoo's Mosa Asanding, Asian-born Anita Desai ' s Fire 011 eM
Mountain, and white South African J. M. Coetzee's Waiting f or the Barbarians. 4
McC lintock: is also concerned that the term posteolonialism marks history as a
"series of stages along an epocba1 road from 'the pre-colonial,' to 'the colonial , ' to