01   TTH6   CAC   11084    ASADUDDIN    MU-208

The course will examine the scope of the term “postcolonial” as both a historical and a conceptual category and will discuss themes and issues in an historical context.  Drawing upon the critical insights of such postcolonial theorists as Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and Aijaz Ahmad it will begin by asking what the term means to writers of countries formerly colonized by the British, writers who are writing from the ‘margins’ back to the ‘centre’ and who prefer to ‘re-read’ and ‘re-write’ some older texts which, according to them, are replete with latent racism and other complexes. Themes of identity, language, borders, migrancy, hybridity, race , religion  and gender will inform discussions about topics such as colonization and decolonisation, colonial ‘gaze’ and postcolonial ‘gaze’, appropriation (writing in the colonizer’s language making it one’s own in different ways), relationship between/ among literature written in English and indigenous languages, postmodernity, relationship between culture and imperialism etc. The objective of the course will be to equip students to analyse critically both theoretical and literary texts, apply theoretical and critical insights to their readings of texts from diverse cultures and identify some of the major political and cultural issues in postcolonial literature and theory. The writers will include, among others, Joseph Conrad, V.S. Naipaul, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh.