The Postcolonial Drama: Have you Read Said, Berman and Bhabha?

Abstract

The paper pursues the extent to which new perspectives in postcolonial studies have imposed complex meanings and judgments that uncritically disengage those important questions of oppression and exploitation from this haunting experience of human history. Using a combination of the “dominating” postcolonial works i.e., Homi Bhabha, and Russell Berman set against Frantz Fanon, it is argued that postcolonial theories are increasingly acquiescing to the dictates of conservative academic officialdom by restructuring and assuming abstract and ahistorical perspectives in articulating the themes and symbols of colonialism. The paper concludes that contemporary postcolonial understanding should not be separated from its history of violence and rejection as evident in the postcolonial studies of former “colonized” in order to properly understand the postcolonial situation especially in this age of the fortification of the West.

Humanities Review Journal Vol. 7 2007: pp. 1-14