Comparing Postcolonial Literatures: Dislocations

Twenty international contributors from a range of disciplines related to language and literature counteract the tradition of isolated studies of postcolonial literatures in the various imperial European languagesSpanish, French, and English. Linguistic isolationism, say the editors, tends to encourage the reading of postcolonial literatures in relation to the language and culture of the colonial power, thus undervaluing multiple processes of influence and subtly reasserting binary models of colonizer and colonized. A comparative approach, it is hoped, will circumvent such linguistic isolationism. Topics include women's bodies in relation to the Indian partition, hybridity in a poem by black Cuban poet, Excilia Saldaña, and cross-cultural dialogues in the work of the Caribbean writer, Wilson Harris. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR