This thesis explores the field of Postcolonial Gothic, initially through an examination of theories of the Gothic and the postcolonial and their points of intersection. Homi Bhabha’s notion of the ‘unhomely’ as the paradigm for postcolonial experience, particularly with regard to migrancy and Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject are identified as particularly productive for a Postcolonial Gothic framework, which is then applied to a survey of the way the Gothic is figured on the individual and the Local, regional or national levels in the context of Caribbean, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand postcolonial writing and demonstrates how the Gothic as a mode of writing furnishes postcolonial authors with a narrative strategy to express the traumas of colonialism and their postcolonial legacies. In coming to terms with the past, historical temporality and authority are rendered problematic by postcolonial writers because the physical and psychic violence of colonialism and its effects on the individual and on society are compounded by the repression of past trauma. The effects of such trauma threaten to resurface despite resistance. These experiences underpin the images of postcolonial revenants as hybrid, distorted and monstrous figures, which arise out of cultural contact between colonised and coloniser. The ghost, the phantom, the revenant, gain new meanings in the service of the postcolonial, where the duppy, and the soucouyant, from the Caribbean; the Bunyip from Australia and the shape- shifting figure of Coyote from Canada are hybrid manifestations created from European, indigenous and cross-cultural remains and they speak of culturally specific histories, traumas and locations. The thesis is arranged into four chapters: Caribbean gothic, Canadian Gothic, Australian Gothic and New Zealand Gothic. Each chapter provides an overview of the Gothic in the national or regional context, placing the emphasis on the postcolonial and then focuses on the way the Gothic is utilised by both dominant and marginal cultures: by white settlers and indigenous peoples in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, by the descendents of people forcibly mobilised through slavery in the Caribbean, and by other more recent migrants to, or between these locations. The writers discussed have different tales to tell about the effects of colonialism on the individual and on their society, but they have chosen the Gothic as means of expression for some of the most violent and unspeakable acts of colonialism and their legacy in the postcolonial

A colonial discourse has perpetuated the literary notion of islands as paradisal. The aims of this study are to explore how these entrenched notions of paradise, which islands have traditionally represented metonymically, are contested in the works of four postcolonial authors: Jamaica Kincaid, Romesh Gunesekera, Jean Arasanayagam and Lawrence Scott, from the island nations of Sri Lanka and the Caribbean. I have chosen three diasporic authors while the fourth, Arasanayagam, is an indigenous writer who still lives in Sri Lanka. Arasanayagam’s experience of living in a refugee camp in 1983 caused her to feel displaced in a way similar to those who have left their homelands. The purpose of including these particular authors in my study is to explore how their very diverse cultural experiences -- migrant or native, privileged or non-privileged, hybrid ancestry or culturally hybrid -- exemplify Homi K. Bhabha’s “hybridisation as a force of creative interaction” (Bhabha 1997: 2). I will use their work as examples of his theory of liminal space as a site of negotiation between cultures (Bhabha 2004). The mixed cultural heritage of these authors represents a doubleness which can be linked to the ‘double relation’ that Bhabha refers to in explaining hybrid translation as a process of cultural cross-reference. The study traces how the notions of island paradise have been represented in European literature, the oral and literary indigenous traditions of the Caribbean and Sri Lanka, a colonial literary influence in these islands, and the literary experience after independence in these nations. Persistent themes of colonial narratives foreground the aesthetic and ignore the work force in a representation of island space as idealised, insular and vulnerable to conquest; an ideal space for management and control. English landscape has been replicated in islands through literature and in reality the ‘Great House’ being an ideological symbol of power. Dorothy Lane has suggested that “the island can also be usefully employed by postcolonial writers to interrogate many of the assumptions of insularity” (Lane 1995: 4) and that “island discourse often incorporates several analogous figures of management and enclosure — such as the house and garden” (Lane 5). Using this as a point of departure for my study I have chosen texts which focus on gardens, island space and houses to explore how these writers from island cultures have responded to colonial narratives. These texts have previously been under-researched in the context of island motifs. This thesis explores how the selected postcolonial writers use these motifs to re-vision colonial/contested sites and in so doing offer an alternative space for negotiating the ambivalence of hybridity

This thesis examines the antisystemic writing of Wajdi Mouawad and Rawi Hage, two of the most compelling authors to emerge out of the Lebanese-Canadian diaspora. In their Canadian setting, the writers’ politics of unbelonging serves a countercultural purpose by rearticulating the race, class, and gender disparities eschewed in multicultural discourse. As writers of a growing Lebanese diaspora, they recall the collective injuries sustained during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) and which remain underexamined by Lebanese society and government. In this way, Mouawad and Hage assume a subversive position in both the Lebanese and the Canadian contexts by reinscribing histories and experiences that risk erasure. In my analysis of Mouawad’s play Scorched and Mouawad’s novels De Niro’s Game and Cockroach, the differential allocation of precarity and grievability proves the common thread that runs through all three texts. Mouawad and Hage’s representation of their character’s disproportionate exposure to harm and suffering coincides with the broader claims of antisystemic politics. My intervention brackets these texts’ thematic concerns with the critical theories that best explain some of Mouawad and Hage’s more radical depictions of immigrants under duress.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to ascertain to what extent English teachers at the upper secondary level in Sweden use postcolonial literature in their teaching and in that case if it is used in order to teach intercultural competence. The reason for this was the claim that there is a strong connection between postcolonial literature and intercultural competence as well as between postcolonial literature and the curriculum for the upper secondary school, and specifically the English courses. The primary material used was gathered through interviews involving teachers working at an upper secondary school in the southern part of Kronobergs Län. Three out of five interviewees did use postcolonial literature and the main reason was that it provides a platform for students to learn about different cultures and societies in areas in the world where English is used. It also turned out that certain authors were used more frequently than others, namely J.M. Coetzee, Chinua Achebe and Doris Lessing. The theoretical basis for this essay has been the notion of intercultural competence, especially linked with language teaching. Developing intercultural competence provides students with the possibility of gaining increased understanding of different cultures, something that seems to be immensely important in a Swedish school system where the classrooms are becoming more and more multicultural. It is argued here that postcolonial literature lends itself particularly well when it comes to the combination of language- and culture didactics and teachers’ responses in the interviews have given reason to believe that this is in fact so.

Created at the end of the nineteenth century, Sherlock Holmes has remained a regular feature of popular culture for now more than a century. However, versions of the detective that have appeared in recent years are strikingly different from the character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, while some characteristics remain similar. This dissertation examines the persistence of Holmes as a function of copyright management that matched shifting literary expectations, following this with an exploration of three categories of discourse in which contemporary Holmes texts participate: feminism, postcolonialism, and neurodiversity. It first locates Holmes's difference from prior detectives in his humanist characteristics and then demonstrates that a restrictive character management strategy shared by Conan Doyle and his sons, the subsequent rights-holders, constructed a base version of the character. When the copyright passed out of their hands, the new owners' more permissive attitudes toward using Holmes matched popular interest in deconstructing characters and ideas, allowing for a variety of new approaches to the detective. The second half of the dissertation explores some of these new approaches, beginning with critiques of Holmes's masculinist, misogynist science that are exposed and repaired through new texts. Following that, a pair of postcolonial texts demonstrates contrasting styles of handling the detective's imperial associations, and a final discussion of Holmes as a neurologically different individual brings him to both neurodiversity and disability studies. Authors' deployment of the detective can contain complex narratives, and while these texts are fascinating the dissertation will conclude with a note of concern regarding their continuing popularity.

This dissertation examines a range of popular contemporary texts in a post-Saidian context. It begins with an analysis of Orientalism, as that text influences almost any discussion of representations of Easmest relations. Now, almost twenty years after Orientalism was first published in 1978 it is still a crucial text, and it still needs to be understood and argued with. The other texts looked at in this dissertation include novels, drama, films, opera, a musical, and the print and electronic mass media. They are texts that either represent or comment on EastIWest relations. The main texts I examine fall roughly into two categories: ones that are clearly orientalist and ones that are postorientalist. Those that are orientalist repeat the same myths of Orient Said describes in Orientalism. Those that are postorientalist challenge those myths by repeating and elaborating them, reversing and displacing the orientalist gaze. The methodological approach is an eclectic blend of cultural studies and literary criticism. Such an approach enables analysis of a variety of texts, fiom classical nineteenth century books and myths through to contemporary postmodern representations, that deal with identity politics. My thesis is that contemporary postcolonial representations that deal with East and West and that use and displace the very terms such categories rest upon, can be called "postoriental".

Human rights have become a dominant framework through which to narrate and read political violence in contemporary literature concerning Africa, the Caribbean, and the Indian subcontinent. This dissertation argues that human rights discourse depoliticizes crises that result from histories of colonialism, inequitable development policies, and the growth of transnational capital. The testimonial narrative structure of human rights treats political violence as trauma and portrays the narrator as testifier and reader as witness. It assumes that in the exchange between these figures a cathartic process takes place and that by proxy the original political violence may be resolved. The language of human rights is thus deployed to illuminate the suffering of others without interrupting processes of global capitalism or narratives of US exceptionalism. This dissertation examines the intersection of human rights discourse and postcoloniality. It analyzes the decolonial strategies through which postcolonial texts challenge human rights discourse and shift focus from trauma and catharsis to the national and international policies, business practices, and cultural narratives that sustain inequitable power structures. This dissertation begins by critiquing the concept of literary humanitarianism, which suggests that the reader may fulfill a humanitarian act by reading a story of suffering. After showing in the introduction how this literary trend is connected to changes in the nation-state system, the first two chapters analyze the narrative mechanics of the testimonial narrative structure. As these opening essays examine depictions of apartheid in South Africa, genocide in Rwanda, and slow violence in India, they problematize the expansion of the 'universal' humanist narrative voice and critique the construction of a humanitarian reader. Chapter three then compares methodological approaches to storytelling to analyze the relationship between literature, the archive, and lived reality in post-apartheid South Africa. Moving into a discussion of the economic and cultural imperialism that characterize the postcolonial condition, the final two chapters reveal how representations of old and new diasporas across Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Americas resist the language of human rights. Together, these chapters argue that the political potential of literature is not in staging humanitarian resolutions but in interrogating the frameworks that sustain inequality.

The applicability of trauma studies within an examination of postcolonial literature has been a contested topic for scholars in both fields. Additionally, scholarship regarding Amitav Ghosh’s postcolonial science fiction novel The Calcutta Chromosome encourages various readings of the novel but does not currently offer a cohesive examination of all its thematic disciplines and stylistic elements. Through an examination of this postcolonial novel, I will provide a more holistic reading of the novel through an application of trauma studies that explores its representation of the internal postcolonial conflict regarding Western and non-Western historiographies. My analysis will focus on the lexical, character, and narrative levels of the novel through its dominant medical, technological, postcolonial, and political themes for inclusions of Caruth’s aporia related to the manifestation of trauma in literature.

La littérature africaine d'expression française et anglaise se présente aujourd'hui sous le signe de la remise en question et de la déconstruction des modèles occidentaux. Née dans un contexte trouble marqué par la violence et un· véritable génocide des cultures africaines, cette littérature est aujourd'hui marquée par les motifs de la folie et la violence. Les neuf romans sur lesquels cette étude est menée, s'inscrivent dans cette catégorie du roman africain contemporain.Elle met en lumière les diverses manifestations de la folie et de la violence : structures narratives éclatées et fragmentées, langues d'écriture (français et anglais) subverties par les langues africaines,thématique nourrie par la violence et la folie ... Les auteurs de ces textes ont pris l'option de mettre en scène des personnages présentant des symptômes de la maladie mentale, la violence extrême, -génocides, guerres civiles-, régimes dictatoriaux tenus par des élites inconscientes qui exercent sur les populations une violence structurelle. Bref, ces textes nous plongent dans un univers véritablement chaotique, tant dans leur contenu que dans leur esthétique.Ce travail tente de démontrer que la violence en postcolonie est causée d'une part, par la quête du pouvoir qui passe souvent par l'élaboration des stéréotypes à travers lesquels un individu ou un groupe se voit accablé d'attributs négatifs, et d'autre part, par la résistance opposée par les marginalisés contre toute forme de domination.Par ailleurs, la situation chaotique que vivent les Africains aujourd'hui- crises comportementales, crises identitaires, dépersonnalisation- est tributaire non seulement de son passé jalonné par la violence physique, morale et culturelle, mais aussi des élites politiques qui demeurent encore mentalement colonisées, et miment les attitudes des anciens maîtres.Enfin, la folie et la violence qui se manifestent par une véritable révolution esthétique et un recentrage du discours littéraire, s'inscrivent dans la logique de la démarche postcoloniale qui préconise une forme de révolte, de déconstruction des modèles hérités du centre normatif européen.En un mot, l'esthétique de la folie et de la violence se présente comme un moyen pour la littérature africaine de revendiquer sa différence, son autonomie et sa place au sein des grandes littératures du monde. / African literature of french and english expression appears today under deconstruction of european models. Originated from a context made of violence and real genocide of African cultures which has produced an identity chaos, this literature is marked nowadays by the motives of madness and violence. The nine novels on which this study is based correspond to this category ofafrican novel. It shows the various manifestations of madness and violence: segmented narrative structures, written language (French and English) damaged by African languages, themes sustainedby violence and madness. The authors of these texts have chosen to use characters that presentsymptoms of mental illness, extreme violence, genocides, civil wars, dictatorial regimes held by unconscious elites who exercise structural violence on people. Briefly, these texts bring us deeply in a real chaotic universe in their content as well as on their forms.This work demonstrates:- First, that violence in postcolonial era is provoqued on one band by the quest of power which always occurs by the elaboration of stereotypes through which an individual or a group is attributed negative qualities, and on the other band, by the resistance presented by the marginalized against allforms of domination.- Secondly, that chaotic situation undergone by Africans nowadays -behavioral crisis, identity crisis, depersonalization- is originated not only from its pass full of physical, moral and cultural violence, but also from the political elites who are still mentally colonized and imitate the attitudes of the colonizers. - Thirdly, that madness and violence which manifest themselves by a real aesthetic revolution and reorientation of literary discourse suits themselves in the logic of postcolonial method which instructs a form of subversion, and deconstruction of inherited models from normative European center. In one word, the aesthetic of madness and violence is concerned with the matter of claiming the difference, the autonomy and the place of African literature in the middle of the great literatures of the world.

This thesis “Inherently Hybrid: Contestations and Renegotiations of Prescribed Identities in Contemporary Sri Lankan English Writing” examines work by Nihal de Silva, David Blacker and Vivimarie VanderPoorten to analyse their negotiation of identity, belonging and citizenship within contemporary Sri Lankan English Writing. This negotiation of identity is then placed in relation to the Eelam Wars as well as hybridity and cosmopolitanism, which have become a part of Sri Lankan identity because of the nation’s postcolonial past. Genre and form are employed as ways into exploring the tensions within Sri Lankan English writing, especially because they prescribe on the texts selected a specific way of approaching and presenting the ethnic conflict that is a widespread theme in much of contemporary Sri Lankan writing. The first chapter looks at De Silva’s adventure romance The Road From Elephant Pass. It examines how the novel engenders a renegotiation of identities through the effects of the ethnic conflict upon the attitudes, behaviours and ideologies of the island’s populations, symbolically represented through the narrator, who is a Sinhalese Buddhist officer in the Sri Lankan Army and his eventual lover, who is a rebel fighting for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. I analyse the arguments presented in the text around identity, belonging and patriotism and focus on the representations of ethnic and racial identity that ultimately expose the constructedness of these various positions, revealing the unacknowledged but real hybridity of the Sri Lankan peoples. I look at markers of cultural capital and tease out how class identities rely on cosmopolitanism, characterised by a knowledge of English, and how that further reveals the performativity of identity. The second chapter examines Blacker’s political thriller A Cause Untrue. Here I explore how the use of detail and description provides an appearance of imparting a complete and realistic perspective on the war. I demonstrate how the novel, through the calculated use of what I will characterise as a ‘reality effect’, takes on the manifestation of being an authority on the war. Blacker’s use of recognisable historical events allows him to create an alternative narrative of history, one that has all the hallmarks of being a true retelling even as it is apparent that his text utilises the ‘reality effect’ to imagine Sri Lanka creatively. This demonstrates how the selection of the thriller genre provides Blacker with a specific way of representing the nation and its diasporas’ in relation to the Eelam Wars. The third chapter focuses on VanderPoorten’s collection of poetry nothing prepares you. Here I investigate how the concepts of hybridity and cosmopolitanism are located within the language used to construct her poetry. I explore how this hybridity and cosmopolitanism of language works together with the form and content of her poems to provide a disquieting of fixed notions of identity, citizenship and belonging. The conclusion to the study revisits the issues that my three chapters deal with, bringing together an overall account of hybridity, cosmopolitanism and identity. I look at the constructedness and performance of identity with the aim of providing a nuanced reading of the renegotiations of identity and citizenship that are taking place because of the ethnic conflict. By summing up the different manifestations of the various gendered, ethnic and class identities represented and presented in the texts that I explore, I illustrate the wider implications of the points of connection between identity and power on the one hand and nationalism, dogma and political rhetoric on the other. Identities within the Sri Lankan nation blur the distinctions between alien and citizen, between one who belongs and subscribes to set expectations, norms and practices and one who challenges these markers of identity.