Transformation of Political Identity From Commonwealth Through Postcolonial Literature

Description

This book is a study of the current debates about identitarian thought in relation to contexts of postcolonial resistance and reconstruction. How is identity theorized, constructed and claimed in the context of postcolonial political and cultural struggles against imperial hegemony? How is our understanding of identity inflected by the strengthening alliance between postcolonial theory, on the one hand, and the postmodern pull towards de-hegemonization on the other? This study assesses different postcolonial relocations in cultural and political discourse and highlights the political uncertainties and theoretical fractures that the persistent appeal to Western frameworks of knowledge engenders. This book aligns three white settler nations, namely, Canada, Australia and South Africa, from a socio-political and cultural point of view. It proposes a study of their twin positions as distinctive avatars of postcolonial experience and as illustrative models of a general postcolonial condition. Furthermore, it raises issues of identity and identity politics on the level of literary discourse as well as in terms of national context. The novels of Canadian Michael Ondaatje, Australian David Malouf, and South African Nadine Gordimer present rich thematic parallels; they engage with particular white settler national issues as well as more general postcolonial questions.