EN3262 Postmodernism and Postcoloniality

READING LIST

1. Jean Rhys (1966) Wide Sargasso Sea, ed. Hilary Jenkins (Penguin, 2001) ISBN: 0140818030

2. Wole Soyinka (1970) "Madmen and Specialists", in Collected Plays, Volume 2 (Oxford University Press, 1974) ISBN: 9 780192811649

3. Salman Rushdie (1983) Shame ( New York: Vintage, 1995) ISBN: 0099578611

4. J. M. Coetzee (1986) Foe (Penguin, 2001) ISBN: 014029953X

5. Ben Okri (1991) The Famished Road (London: Vintage, 2003) ISBN: 0099929309

6. Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1997) House of Glass (tr. Max Lane, Penguin) ISBN: 0140256792

7. Arthur Yap (2000) the space of city trees (Skoob Books) ISBN: 187143839X

SECONDARY READING

[The list directs attention to some of the more prominent discussions of a general kind relating to the postcolonial and the postmodern. Students are expected to search out material on individual authors independently.]

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin (eds) The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London & New York: Routledge, 1995)

Elleke Boehmer Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (Oxford & New York: OUP, 1995)

Diana Brydon (ed), Postcolonialism: Critical concepts in literary and cultural studies (London & New York: Routledge, 2000), 5 vols.

Thomas Docherty (ed) Postmodernism: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)

D. T. Goldberg & A. Quayson (eds.), Relocating Postcolonialism (Blackwell, 2001)

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)

Jean François Lyotard The Postmodern Condition (1979, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984)

Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London: Verso, 1997)

Ismail Talib, The Language of Postcolonial Literatures: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002)

Robert C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Blackwell, 2002)

Secondary Reading: Articles

Ahmed, Aijaz. `Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness & the "National Allegory"', Social Text 17 (Fall 1987).

Bhabha, Homi. `"Race", Time & the Revision of Modernity', The Oxford Literary Review, 13 (1991): 193-219.

During, Simon. `Postmodernism or Postcolonialism?', Landfall, 39: 3 (Sept. 1985): 366-80.

During Simon, “Postcolonialism and globalisation: a dialectical relation after all?” Postcolonial Studies 1: 1 (1998): 31-47.

Jameson, Fredric. `Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Corporations', Social Text 15 (Fall 1986): 65-88.

Jameson, Fredric. `Third World Literary & Cultural Criticism', South Atlantic Quarterly, 87: 1 (1988).

Kwame, A. A., `Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?', Critical Inquiry 17 (Win. 1991): 336-57.

Moore-Gilbert, Bart, “Postcolonialism: between nationalism and globalisation? A response to Simon During”, Postcolonial Studies 1:1 (1998): 49-65.

Mukherjee, Arun P., `Whose Post-Colonialism and Whose Postmodernism?', World Literature Written in English, 30: 2 (1990): 1-9.

Sangari, Kum Kum. `The Politics of the Possible', Cultural Critique, 7 (Fall 1987): 157-86

Tiffin, Helen. `Post-colonialism, Post-modernism & the Rehabilitation of Post-colonial History', Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 23: 1 (1988): 169-81.

Course Assessment

Final exam (non-open book), 2 hours: 60%

One class presentation: 5%

Class participation: 5%

One mid-term class test (60 mins): 15%

One essay of approx. 2,000 words: 15%

The essay will analyze issues and themes relevant to the course in a comparative discussion of any one text from the syllabus and an appropriately chosen text outside the syllabus (or as a second option, two texts from within the syllabus).

Schedule

Students signing up for the module will be divided into 3 groups, and each group will meet in a 50-mins seminar every week for a total of 10 seminars per group.

CA

Each student will write 1 long term paper, and make 1 oral presentation for the 40% CA. Marks will be allocated for active class participation in discussion during seminars.

The term paper/essay will be due by week 12 of the semester

(making reference to either [a] one text outside the syllabus and one from within, or [b] two from within)

Presentations

Seminar 1 will be devoted to general discussion of issues and themes. For seminar 2-5, there will be 2 or 3 student presentations per seminar (each presentation of approximately 20-30 minutes). Each presentation will either address a single text or compare any 2 texts from the syllabus in relation to the set of issues, themes and topics identified as the focus for the course. These may be formulated as general questions with very specific and local applications to the cultures and individuals fictionalized by the texts in the syllabus. Each presentation will examine its two selected texts from the point of view of any combination of the following type of questions:

Framing questions (for assignments)

1 What is the applicability of terms like postmodern and postcolonial? What are their limits?

2 How do the terms relate to issues of literary writing, genres, style, technique?

3 What are the implications for culture of descriptions which include the post-colonial or the post-modern as features of writing?

3 How does the “post-” as a phenomenon relate to what preceded it?

4 What is the relation between race, colonialism, and post-coloniality?

5 How does the economic, political, cultural as well as linguistic impact of colonialism affect and shape the post-colonial?

6 What is the relation between modernity and modernism in the West and its influence and consequences for the rest of the world?

7 How does displacement and diaspora affect identity at the individual and communal levels?

8 How do the postcolonial and the postmodern interact in specific situations?

9 How do issues affecting gender figure in the post-colonial/post-modern

10 Are post-colonial/post-modern global phenomena?

11 In what sense are the values and preoccupations of contemporary societies shaped or influenced by the post-colonial or the post-modern?

12 What are the ways out of the “post-” phenomenon, for individuals and for cultures?

Schedule (revised 27 March 2006)
Week	Lecture	Thursday	Lecture Topic	Tutorial No.	Tutorial Date (Tuesdays)	Tutorial Presentations
1	1	12 Jan	Introduction
2	2	19 Jan	Rhys
3	3	26 Jan	Rhys-Soyinka	1	24 Jan	1. General
4	4	2 Feb	Soyinka-Rushdie	-	(31 Jan Ch. New Yr. Holiday)	---
5	5	9 Feb	Rushdie-Coetzee	2	7 Feb	2. Rhys
6	6	16 Feb	Coetzee-Okri	3	14 Feb	3. Soyinka
Sun 19 Feb-Thu 23 Feb		Mid-semester break
7		2 March	CLASS TEST	4	28 Feb	4. Rushdie
8	7	9 March	Coetzee	5	7 March	5. Coetzee
9	8	16 March	Okri	6	14 March	6. Okri
10	9	23 March	Pramoedya	7	21 March	8. Pramoedya
11	10	30 March	Yap	8	28 March	8. Yap
12	11	6 April	Yap	9	4 April	9. Comparisons
12	Term Paper due by 4 April
13	12	13 April	Revision	10	11 April	Revision
14	ONE WEEK BREAK
15-17	21 April-6 May: Exams			EN3262 EXAM: SATURDAY, 22 APR 2006 (MORNING)