Postcolonial Contraventions: Cultural Readings of Race, Imperialism and Transnationalism by Laura Chrisman (review)

Abstract

YES, 35, 2005 343 Postcolonial Contraventions: Cultural Readings ofRace,Imperialism andTransnationalism. By LAURA CHRISMAN. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. 2003. viii + 200 pp. ?I4.99. ISBN:0-7190-5828-7. LauraChrismanco-edited one of the three majoranthologiesof postcolonialtheory that appeared in I993-94; like the other two, hers was influentialin the formation of the field of study. In Postcolonial Contraventions she brings together versions of her essays and reviews previouslypublished over the last nine years, arguing that the practice of critique sustains productive debate and constant re-assessment of a developing academic area. She welcomes what she perceives as a recent shift towards increasinglymaterialistand historicistanalysisin postcolonial theory. Her essaysare groupedinto three sections,Imperialism,Transnationalismand race, and Postcolonial theoretical politics, but the thematic trajectoriesare not integrated. Readers are most likely to use the book as a stimulusfor engaging with the issues and theorists that are addressed in individual chapters. The fact that there is no concluding chapter implicitlyacknowledgesthat this is the case. The most coherent section is the first, which engages with such theorists as Cesaire, McClintock, and Said through close readings of specific literary texts. Chrisman's brilliant analysis of the relationship between the metropolis and the colony in HeartofDarkness is used to explore the significanceof Cesaire'sformulation , the 'boomerang effect' of imperialism. A similarly subtle analysis of King Solomon's Minesdefines Haggard's ideology as 'historicallycontingent, variable and even contradictory' (p. 46). The dialogic response is lucid, and encourages the reader to engage with the source as well as the critique in a dialogue of her own. The stimulating essay on empire's culture in Jameson, Said and Spivak argues productively,using the example of Mansfield Park,for 'a model of culturalrepresentation that permits of [...] internal ideological contradiction and contestation' (p. 67). Other parts of the book are likely to be less accessible to the student readers targetedin the blurb. One chapteris a review firstpublishedin I997 of a reviewby Robert Young published in 1996 of Spivak's Outsidein the Teaching Machine;its argumentis cogent but, here and elsewhere,there is a hint that the writer'scensure of othersfor departingfrom 'rigorouslyacademic modes of operation'(p. I41) might profitablybe applied to her own work, as when she expressesreluctanceto criticize the work of Benita Parry, 'my fave rave' (p. I71). In the final chapter the critique implicit in the coy reference to 'the discourseword', and Chrisman'scomment, 'I certainly applaud the departure of the discourse word' (p. I7I) is presented as a given, with no analysisof the discrepancybetween this and the title of Chrisman's I993 anthology. The sequence of chapters in the third part gestures towards an intellectualautobiography;the shift in tone from one chapter to another is disconcerting . In a rathermagisterialpiece the reader,addressedas 'you', is positioned as a nascent South Africanculturalcritic;in anotherthe implicationsof Achebe's Home andExileare teased out incisively,enabling the readerto place subsequentdevelopments , such as Niall Ferguson'srevisionisthistory of empire, within the prophetic framework. The book's emphasison alertreadinginvitescritique.One chapterfocuseson the role of blurb-writersin facilitating'the ideological production of national cultures' (p. 120). The book's own blurb refers to Chrisman's 'important new paradigms for 344 Reviews understanding [...] Englishness' yet nowhere in the text is a distinction made between Englishnessand Britishness,indeed the index treatsthem as interchangeable ('see also Englishness'appears under 'Britishness'and vice versa). The blurb opens misleadingly with a line that attributes Williams and Chrisman's I993 anthology solely to Chrisman. One might also question the inclusion of a chapter on culturalstudiesin South Africa in which the 'new' country appearsas distinctly yesterday's news. The chapter was published in 1996 and focuses on a 'recent' articlethat appearedin I992. And so the book'spolemical styleinvitesan interrogative response. UNIVERSITYOF STIRLING ANGELA SMITH Thresholds of Western Culture: Identity, Postcoloniality, Transnationalism. Ed. byJOHN BRR FOSTER JR and WAYNEJ. FROMAN. New York and London: Continuum. 2002. 275 PP. ?65 (pbk?25). ISBN 0-8264-5999-4 (pbk0-8264-6001-I). Between Philosophy andPoetry:Writing, Rhythm, History.Ed. by MASSIMO VERDICCHIO and ROBERT BURCH.New York and London: Continuum Books 2002. 223 pp. ?65 (pbk?19.99). ISBN 0-8264-6005-4, (pbk0-8264-6006-2). ExtremeBeauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Death. Ed. by JAMEs SWEARINGEN...