Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / The notion that the post-colonial text stands in direct opposition to the canonical
European text, and thus acts as a kind of counter-discourse, is generally accepted within
post-colonial theory. In fact, this concept is so fashionable that Salman Rushdie’s
assertion that ‘the Empire writes back to the Centre’ has been adopted as a maxim within
the field of post-colonial studies, simultaneously a mission statement and a summative
description of the entire field. In its role as a ‘response’ to a dominant European literary
tradition, the post-colonial text is often regarded as resorting to a strategy of subversion
through inversion, in essence, telling the ‘other side of the story’. The post-colonial text,
then, seeks to address the ways in which the western literary tradition has marginalised,
misrepresented and silenced its others by providing a platform for these dissenting
voices.
While such a view rightly points to the post-colonial text’s concern with alterity and
oppression, it also points to the agonistic nature of the genre. That is, within post-colonial
theory, the literature of Empire does not emerge as autonomous and self-determining, but
is restricted to the role of counter-discourse, forever placed in direct opposition (or in
response) to a unified dominant social order. Post-colonial theory’s continued
classification of the literature of Empire as a reaction to a normative, dominant discourse
against which all others must be weighed and found wanting serves to strengthen the
binary order which polarises centre and periphery.
This study is concerned with ‘rewritten’ post-colonial texts, such as J.M. Coetzee’s Foe,
Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Marina Warner’s Indigo, or, Mapping the Waters and
Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest, and suggests that these revised texts exceed such narrow
definition. Although often characterised by a concern with ‘political’ issues, the revised
text surpasses the romantic notion of ‘speaking back’ by pointing to a more complex entanglement between post-colonial and canonical, self and other. These texts signal the
collapse of binary order and the emergence of a new literary landscape in which there can
be no dialogue between the clearly demarcated sites of Empire and Centre, but rather a
global conversation that exceeds geographical location.
It would seem as if the dependent texts in question resist offering mere pluralistic
subversions of the logic of their pretexts. The desire to challenge the assumptions of a
Eurocentric literary tradition is overshadowed by a distinct sense of disquiet or unease
with the matrix text. This sense of unease is read as a response to an exaggerated
iterability within the original text, which in turn stems from the matrix text’s inability to
negotiate its own aporia.
The aim of this study, then, is not to uncover the ways in which the post-colonial rewrite
challenges the assumptions of its literary pretext, but rather to establish how certain
elements of instability and subversion already present within the colonial pretext allows
for such a return.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:sun/oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/2725 |
| Date | 03 1900 |
| Creators | Steenkamp, Elzette |
| Contributors | Roux, Daniel, University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English. |
| Publisher | Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | University of Stellenbosch |
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