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The opening essay by the editors provides a lucid exposition of
theoretical positions and historical frames within which the
questions of race and ethnicity are related to the postcolonial
critique, right from the times of Frederick Jackson Turner who
helped develop what they call the "postethnicity
school," which subscribes to the "progressivist"
view of US history and culture and places a special faith in the
idea of a shared American identity. Its influence has been
effectively checked by the rise of the "borders
school," whose proponents argue that though the main
impetus for the "postethnicity school" was to resist
colonialism within the USA, it has helped to both create and
support colonialisms of its own. The "borders school"
thus stresses difference by focusing on the modalities and the
narrative strategies by which different ethnic and racial groups
do this to assert their history in order to fracture the master
narrative of shared American identity.
It is because of
this critical difference that postcolonial theory moves in to
create appropriate space for new interdisciplinary sites, for
emphasising the crossing and recrossing of all kinds of borders—imaginative,
linguistic, cultural—elaborated by the editors in three main
intersections: in transnationalism and diasporic narratives,
feminism, and whiteness studies. Though they concede that the
postcolonial theory and the "borders school" have a
role in shaping US studies, they rightly emphasise the need for
a clear understanding of internal and external borders as well
as assimilationist and diasporic narratives.
The 18
contributions from young and established scholars illustrate the
keenness of the editors to ensure that it represents all
possible views on the complex subject. Some essays deal with one
or several of the theoretical perspectives with elaborate
inter-texts and illustrative examples from the diverse creative
literatures of the USA. Arnold Krupt examines the work of N.
Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko to show how it comes very
close to being postcolonial through "anti-imperial
translation." Rafael Perez-Torres dwells on the diverse
evocations of the "empty signifier," Aztlan, as an
Aztec homeland of social, cultural, and political images, of
homeland and borderland, of dreams and fantasies, of writings
and re-writings as sources of Aztec unity and their empowerment.
Maureen Konkle discusses the work of William Apess to illustrate
the insidious connection between epistemology and colonial
oppression.
A few other essays—although
more closely focused on authors, periods, phases, or trends—represent
all the same a range of variations on the use and effect of
postcolonial theory. Carla Peterson argues that the black
fiction of 1850s, though cast in the trappings of a popular
mould, also produced novels of resistance. Lawrence Buell shows
how there is a strong imprint of the fascinating markers of
postcolonial anxiety and resistance in Emerson’s declaration
of intellectual independence, Whitman’s subversion of
traditional decorums, and Cooper’s fictionalisation of
cultural colonialism.
Amy Kaplan
demonstrates how the historical romances of the 1890s
"refigure the relation between masculinity and
nationality." Anne Fleischmann discusses the complexities
in Charles Chesnutt to prove that it goes beyond providing
simplistic ethnographic profiles of biracial communities.
Kenenth Mostrem shows that many more before theoreticians like
Homi Bhaba and Gayatri Spivak gave us the concept of
postcolonial critique, Du Bois had embedded its main features in
The Souls of Black Folk. Sau-ling Wong traces the
influence of postcolonial theory on Asian-American experience,
but cautions that we need to be careful and pragmatic in the use
of theoretical tools that are now available to us.
Another set of
essays deals with specific literatures that have appeared mostly
in the second half of the 20th century—of native Indians, Arab
Americans, Filipino Americans, South Asian Americans. These set
up interesting debate and dialogue in relation to the
theoretical constructs of Sau-ling Wong and others, and also
include useful discussions on some writers of these ethnic
backgrounds. The last essay provides a learned perspective on
"hybridity" by discussing three texts from different
cultures and times—Maryse Conde’s I, Tituba, Black Witch
of Salem, Bharati Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World
and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter—by using the
insights of Homi Bhaba and many others.
To conclude,
Postcolonial Theory and the United States is a meticulously
planned and carefully compiled volume of essays that offers a
new direction for studying various US literary traditions and
authors in multiple contexts and, above all, addressing, in the
most meaningful way, the issues of race, ethnicity, and gender
in muticultural America. In its theoretical sophistication and
comprehensive coverage of the diversity of American writing of
today and yesteryear, it represents a handy reference tool and a
reliable guide for students and teachers of American literature.
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THOUGH
post-colonial theory came into its own only during the past two
decades, it has already made remarkable gains in its reach and
influence. It started with providing a reading strategy for the
literatures of the erstwhile colonies, which, in spite of
differences in their provenance, bore common distinctive markers
because of the shared experience of colonialism.
