{"title":"An Unsettling Affair: Territorial Anxieties and the Mutant Message","authors":"J. Eustace","doi":"10.1177/0021989405054306","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Some fifteen years after the publication of The Empire Writes Back (1989) announced the arrival of postcolonial studies, the legitimacy of a postcolonial critical practice seems beyond question. The healthy state of our relatively young practice can be quantified by the increasing number of scholarly journals and monographs directly and indirectly engaged with postcolonial subjects, and by the corresponding number of similarly engaged courses offered each year at tertiary institutions around the world. Often working in concert with other overtly politicized disciplines, we have helped to change the critical purview of commercial publishing houses, academic presses and universities, mostly for the better I like to think. For our part, we have extended the boundaries of academic and public discourse by engaging with and frequently advocating for those marginalized by colonial history. And we have done so, in general, while attending to the weaknesses inherent in any academic practice that also involves advocacy: trenchant debates over agency, over who can speak for whom and who can speak at all, have legitimized our practice more than undermined it, signalling a healthy level of self-reflexivity and a tendency to discern our discursive positions in relation to our various subjects. The great irony of our measurable success, one not lost on any selfreflexive postcolonial scholar, is that we are now a valuable part of the institutions we began by resisting from within. While we have helped to change the critical purview of commercial and academic presses, they have changed at least in part because there is profit in postcolonial studies; universities have filled seats and quotas with those drawn by our particular brand of institutionalized radicalism; and we have made alliances and careers for ourselves in those institutions. They now have An Unsettling Affair","PeriodicalId":44714,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2005-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0021989405054306","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989405054306","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, AFRICAN, AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Some fifteen years after the publication of The Empire Writes Back (1989) announced the arrival of postcolonial studies, the legitimacy of a postcolonial critical practice seems beyond question. The healthy state of our relatively young practice can be quantified by the increasing number of scholarly journals and monographs directly and indirectly engaged with postcolonial subjects, and by the corresponding number of similarly engaged courses offered each year at tertiary institutions around the world. Often working in concert with other overtly politicized disciplines, we have helped to change the critical purview of commercial publishing houses, academic presses and universities, mostly for the better I like to think. For our part, we have extended the boundaries of academic and public discourse by engaging with and frequently advocating for those marginalized by colonial history. And we have done so, in general, while attending to the weaknesses inherent in any academic practice that also involves advocacy: trenchant debates over agency, over who can speak for whom and who can speak at all, have legitimized our practice more than undermined it, signalling a healthy level of self-reflexivity and a tendency to discern our discursive positions in relation to our various subjects. The great irony of our measurable success, one not lost on any selfreflexive postcolonial scholar, is that we are now a valuable part of the institutions we began by resisting from within. While we have helped to change the critical purview of commercial and academic presses, they have changed at least in part because there is profit in postcolonial studies; universities have filled seats and quotas with those drawn by our particular brand of institutionalized radicalism; and we have made alliances and careers for ourselves in those institutions. They now have An Unsettling Affair
期刊介绍:
"The Journal of Commonwealth Literature has long established itself as an invaluable resource and guide for scholars in the overlapping fields of commonwealth Literature, Postcolonial Literature and New Literatures in English. The journal is an institution, a household word and, most of all, a living, working companion." Edward Baugh The Journal of Commonwealth Literature is internationally recognized as the leading critical and bibliographic forum in the field of Commonwealth and postcolonial literatures. It provides an essential, peer-reveiwed, reference tool for scholars, researchers, and information scientists. Three of the four issues each year bring together the latest critical comment on all aspects of ‘Commonwealth’ and postcolonial literature and related areas, such as postcolonial theory, translation studies, and colonial discourse. The fourth issue provides a comprehensive bibliography of publications in the field