Postcolonialism: (Un)Necessary Preamble

Abstract

For all its claims, theoretical and critical alike, to resist and dismantle the empire, postcolonialism is just as imperial in logic as it is in ambition. By cognitively remapping the empire and going back through an elephantine textual corpus that tracks down the ironies of alterity, postcolonialism has, through the wide range of its concerns, practices and emphases, on the one hand, and the far-reaching scope of its critical engagement with such issues as colonialism, race, gender and modes of representation in their relation to the dominant structures of knowledge in the West, on the other hand, pointed to the empire as having a gritty objectivity, a political reality and a traumatic experience that affected, and still does, the lives, histories and geographies of millions of people. It has also revealed that those supposed to have undertaken such an (ig)noble enterprise have, in a guild-like spirit, created an empire of their own, no doubt quite dissimilar to the flesh and bone one, but still one that makes up its constituency on a line of allegiance and doctrinaire compliance.¹