The Commonwealth Legacy: Towards a Decentred Reading of World Literature

Abstract

IRONICALLY ENOUGH, AN ESSAY ON THE COMMONWEALTH LEGACY in proceedings of a Triennial Conference of Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies these days is an oddity likely to generate stifled yawns or, at best, raised eyebrows: although ACLALS continues to bear term 'Commonwealth' in its name, there seems to be an overwhelming consensus that idea of 'Commonwealth literature' constitutes a largely dysfunctional, perhaps even embarrassing, semantic leftover. 'Commonwealth literature' thus seems to derive from what is now habitually regarded as prehistory of our field, a somewhat antediluvian phase of academic activity characterized by political naivety and theoretical unsophistication which was eventually terminated by celebrated transition from 'Commonwealth' to 'postcolonial' in mid-1980s.1This essay confronts this consensus with a rather more critical look at this transition, and it also suggests that what I have - in a deliberately provocative manner - termed the Commonwealth Legacy constitutes a set of unfinished business that is far from antediluvian, but continues very much to be with us even in our current state of theoretical sophistication. The second part of this essay takes a critical look at recent attempts to reformulate idea of 'world literature' in field of comparative literature and, in final section, sets out why field of comparative study of English-language literatures offers a chance to move beyond some of shortcomings to be found in comparative literature's account of 'world literature'.What, then, constitutes 'Commonwealth legacy' and what is its significance for contemporary literary studies? In a nutshell, this legacy consists in a latent field and an unsolved problem.To begin with field: 'Commonwealth legacy' is arguably grounded neither in a theoretical model nor in an explicitly elaborated methodology (both of which 'Commonwealth literature studies' notoriously failed to develop) but, rather, in a transnational academic practice and an implicit dialogic comparative methodology that together constituted a new field of enquiry. The contours of this field may have become increasingly blurred in last two decades, but in pragmatic terms it is still very much with us and continues to circumscribe practice of teaching and research of scholars who are institutionally based in English literary and cultural studies. The transnational academic practice just referred to was established by adventurous English departments (or, at least, individual members of such departments) that began to explore dynamics of English-language literatures emerging in various parts of world. These departments were initially often staffed by British expatriates, but soon involved scholars from a vast variety of national and cultural backgrounds and a large number of universities in Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well as Europe and USA.The implicit comparative methodology that emerged together with this academic practice was based on what from today's vantage point might be called an inherent transcultural approach of relating English-language literature to a wide variety of cultural and social backgrounds. For this implicit methodology, idea of a comparative practice based on literature in one language was vital: it moved beyond conventional notions of literary comparison based on an identification of language and culture and began to address complex location of English-language literatures embedded in more than one 'national' or 'regional' culture. Thus, practice of 'Commonwealth literature studies' often rested on a genuine interest in newly emerging life-worlds that had come into existence in aftermath of colonialism and in role of English-language literatures in exploring these life-worlds. Another major characteristic of this implicit methodology was a principle of dialogicity based on actively sought-for and intense exchanges with writers; what thus emerged from both academic practice and implicit methodology was a discursive field encompassing writers, critics, and literary scholars who often shared an acute sense of critical participation in momentous literary, cultural, and social changes in an increasingly globalized world. …