Modernist Literature and Postcolonial Studies by Rajeev S. Patke (review)

Abstract

Rajeev S. Patke. Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2013. Pp. xxvii, 164. US$30.88. Rajeev S. Patke's Literature and Postcolonial Studies undertakes the important task of bridging the divide that has, until recently, existed between modernism and postcolonial studies. Patke argues that the two methodologies and periods are fundamentally intertwined and internally related. To speak only of modernism or exclusively of postcolonial studies is to ignore the ways in which, for example, the colonies played a central role in shaping the aesthetics and politics of modernism. Patke's argument is ambitious and wide reaching. He acknowledges the difficulty of his task and states that [t]here is no such thing as a definitive account of modernist practices; there is only the need to rethink the issues raised by modernist writers and artists as they apply to our own times and places ... in a world that has been concurrently and unevenly 'colonial' and 'modern' for the last several hundred years (xxvii). Patke's text offers an opportunity for such rethinking of concepts central to both modernism and colonialism. In the first chapter, entitled Introductory Survey, he examines the rich and layers of the terms modern, modernism, and modernity. His analysis underscores both the cultural and historical specificity of the terms as well as their continuity. By showing the ways in which the history of modernization and becoming modern necessarily include the history of imperialism, Patke demonstrates their continual and complex influence on how we live today, whatever that might be in terms of place, community, or (15). If implications of modernism continue to shape our global realities, so too does the postcolonial, which Patke defines as the lingering effects of colonial structures (15). He emphasizes that both modernism and postcolonialism are defined by pluralities and multiplicities so that one must speak of modernisms and colonialisms. The basis of Literature and Postcolonial Studies is the idea that one must consider modernism and postcolonial studies as ever-evolving processes. The text mirrors this conceptualization formally through chapters that model reciprocal movement. Chapter two, Three Debates, highlights that the central contradictions and points of contention within modernism had colonial implications and thus should be read more globally. The first debate, Modernist Literature and the Left, argues that Marxist approaches to modernism are fruitful insofar as they extend beyond the nation in order to understand the global dynamics of the market and the importance of social class as linking different forms of exploitation. This comparative and transnational lens thus offers new ways of thinking about how modernism shaped and was shaped by circumstances outside of Europe. This first section delineates the famous debates between Georg Lukacs and Bertolt Brecht, and between Lukacs and Theodor Adorno about the role of aesthetics versus politics and realism versus formalism, respectively, that were central to defining the role of art in modernism. Patke also reexamines the polemics underlying the debate between Fredric Jameson and Aijaz Amad on the concept of national literature and the ways in which the debate has been recuperated among postcolonial scholars. …