Dreaming Through Disenchantment: Reappraising Canadian and Postcolonial Literary Studies

Abstract

IN CYNTHIA SUGARS'S Home-Work: Postcolonialism, Pedagogy, and Canadian Literature, postcolonialism enables one mode of navigating contradictions of national literatures such as Canadian literature. And yet, as Neil Lazarus' Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies reveals, many of same tensions which animate struggle for Canadian literature, and many of contradictions which continue to haunt field, are also attendant upon field of postcolonial literary studies. Both Sugars and Lazarus collections are reappraisals of their respective fields at moments when these fields, against many odds and antagonisms, have finally achieved a level of institutional stability. In that sense, both collections provide timely opportunities to think through fields whose influences on English literary studies have not been limited by their relative youth. Given struggles for academic legitimacy from which fields such as Canadian literature and postcolonial literary studies have emerged with relative triumph, there is a surprising tone of disenchantment and weariness which undercuts both Sugars and Lazarus collections. I want to read this disenchantment not as product of inevitable growing pains, nor do I understand it within now too familiar lament over dangers of institutionalization; rather, I suggest that this disenchantment emerges from a sense of loss, loss of what we might think of as postcolonial futures. In 1986, citing Guyanese poet Martin Carter, Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote in Decolonizing Mind that theme of his book, a book which has become one of foundational texts of postcolonial studies, emerges from all those men and women in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Zaire, Ivory Coast, El Salvador, Chile, Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Grenada, Fanon's 'Wretched of Earth,' who have declared loud and clear that they do not sleep to dream, 'but dream to change world' (3). It seems almost naive now to make such claims for work in postcolonial studies and Canadian literature. However, I suggest that both Sugars and Lazarus collections signal urgency of reclaiming postcolonial futures and language of dreaming. In this reclamation, I am not advocating a return to some perceived moment of origins, innocence, or intellectual purity. Rather, I hope to illustrate ways in which these reappraisals of postcolonial and Canadian literary studies are grounded in narratives of longing. Further, following work of David Scott, I suggest that we need to understand the ways in which expectation of--or longing for--particular futures helps to shape kind of problem past is constructed as for present (31). Thus, disenchantment I detect in both texts reveals that object of these longings comprise a narrative which looks forward through desires of looking back. In advocating reclamation of postcolonial futures, I am also asking for a reclamation of postcolonial pasts, of dreams, desires, and possibilities which mark postcolonial and Canadian literary studies. This disenchantment lies partly with ways in which institutionalization of these once relatively marginal fields of study has not necessarily resulted in contributions for genuine social change. There is also a sense, particularly in case of Lazarus volume, that these achievements have been won at cost of foundational commitments to radical politics such as Marxism and anticolonial nationalism. Resisting smug triumphalism and empty celebrations, both texts emphasize inadequacy of institutionalization and raise serious questions for trajectories of these fields. In both texts, there is a sense of a disjuncture between where Canadian literature and postcolonial studies began and where it is now. While this disjuncture might also be read under sign of progress, it nevertheless demands a narrative of origins. Sugars's Introduction to Home-Work provides one such narrative. …