The Criticism of Postcolonial Critique

Abstract

Since the turn of the millennium, postcolonial criticism has evidenced growing concern for an emerging “post-postcolonial” turn or moment and the (in)adequacy of postcolonial models of critique for addressing new configurations of power in a globalizing era. From Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2001), and Peter Hallward’s Absolutely Postcolonial: Writing between the Singular and the Specific (2002), to the Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature (2012), critics have sought to take stock of postcolonial critique, tracing genealogies of its inception and, often, coming to negative conclusions about both its efficacy as critique and its very foundations. I would like to examine more closely here some of these critical perspectives on the nature and effectiveness of postcolonial studies, in particular its assumed political engagement. If disparate strands of postcolonial thought find common ground in taking such an engagement as foundational, the very importance accorded to the political brings it, at the same time, under intense scrutiny and debate. How might the relationships between postcolonial criticism, politics, and critique be conceived in a global, “post-postcolonial” era? Is the post-postcolonial postcritique?