"The Empire writes back with a vengeance", wrote Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie in an article in The Times published in 1982, referring to the new literatures in English coming out of the former colonies and remaking the English language by infusing it "with new rhythms, new histories, new angles on the world".
This course will devote itself to the study of colonial discourses and their various constructions of identity, regimes of representation and networks of power as well as to an exploration of their subversion by the postcolonial literatures Rushdie talks about, which emerged out of the experience of colonization and challenged the assumptions of the imperial center. After an initial investigation of the complex intersection of colonial and postcolonial discourses in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902), we will move on to an analysis of different forms of 'writing back', i.e. of contesting colonial domination and its legacies, in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1959) and J. M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K (1983). The analysis will be complemented by a discussion of key theoretical concepts developed by various postcolonial critics.
Literature: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Penguin Classics); Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Anchor); J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K (Vintage). Participants should obtain the books in the editions indicated and read as much as possible of the texts before the beginning of the term. Other relevant texts will be provided.
