Strangers in the postcolonial world

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes American writing from and about the former British and French colonies in order to critique postcolonial theory and also to establish a new genre of expatriate literature. Focusing on the works of J. P. Donleavy, Edith Wharton, Paul Bowles, and Paul Theroux, I argue that reading these Americans disrupts the binary concepts encouraged by postcolonial theory. This project rethinks important dichotomies such as colonizer/colonized, center/margin, metropolis/margin, civilized/primitive, and white/non-white by examining the ambiguous American character in the postcolonial context. I argue that by categorizing the themes of American literature in the colonies, and analyzing the similarities and differences with European colonial writing we will thus see these works emerge as a fascinating sub-genre of postcolonial literature. Furthermore, by examining these themes and this perspective it is possible to see a more complete picture of the complexities and gradations of identity in the postcolonial world.