Abstract
Memory and rememoration were crucial for the (re)construction of postcolonial identities in the heyday of historical and cultural retrieval in earlier postcolonial literature. With the gradual change of focus towards considerations of identity construction in neocolonial societies, the importance of rememoration faded while memory continues to haunt characters in contemporary postcolonial fiction, as Caryl Phillips’s writing illustrates. His protagonists retrace memories of past lives, seeking refuge from loss, exile and marginalization, risking permanent entrapment in the labyrinths of past traumas. Although withdrawal into memory prevents some of them from adapting to their surroundings, memory in Phillips’s work as a whole serves as a meeting point for pogrom survivors. It is a polyphonic, heterotopian, heterogeneous imaginary community to which the uprooted figures of his novels belong. The aim of this article is to examine the function of memory in Phillips’s vision, arguing that the established space of memory is designed to mend the rift between value-infested polarities.
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