Negotiating the Local and the Global: SomeUneasyConjecturesonPostcolonial Studies and Pedagogy

Since the Nineties, postcolonial literature has become an increasingly popular specialism in academic institutions in the UK. The growing critical respect afforded to the cultural production of previously marginalised Anglophone nations is, of course, to be celebrated. However, the increasing institutionalisation within English departments of postcolonial studies ironically risks reinforcing the centrality of 'white', metropolitan English culture, and presenting the Anglophone world as peripheral and monolithic. If postcolonialism is nothing more than a means to revising canons and reading texts in departments of English, it might be viewed merely in terms of changes in the structure and constituencies of universities; but the claims of postcolonialism reach much further than curricular matters. Thus the question of changing constituencies within universities points to larger forces at work.