Preface for a Post-Postcolonial Criticism

Abstract

This essay takes as its point of departure the double valence of its subject, "globalizing literary studies." In common critical parlance, to speak of the "globalization" of literary study is to speak of criticism that displays an awareness of literature's contingent, historically specific relations to geography; such criticism aims to account for the global relations embodied in the production, dissemination, and consumption of literature. Gayatri Spivak calls this type of critical approach "worlding"; Edward Said calls it "contrapuntal reading"; whatever the name, the project involves articulating the roles of history, politics, and empire in the creation, publication, and study of literature. In what follows, I will explore a less obvious but equally significant aspect of this project: the tendency, in efforts to expand our understanding of literature, to make that expansion contingent on a corresponding expansion of analytical focus. "Globalizing literature" frequently goes hand in hand with globalizing commentary about literature; indeed, much of the project of postcolonial literary history depends on a set of globalizing statements about literature's theoretical relation to imperialism.