Home > assh > kunapipi > Vol. 14 (1992) > Iss. 3
Abstract
In Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, Jacques Poulin's Volkswagen Blues, and Gail Scott's Heroine protagonists, frequently doubling as narrators, set out on quests to discover places, people, histories, and personas which might provide a sense of belonging, strength, and psychic peace. None of them find what they initially anticipated and resolutions are more difficult than imagined. Given the current Eurocentric biased theoretical climate and some post/ colonial resistances to it, the novels' plots and their 'uncentred, pluralistic, and multifarious'3 content might be considered as either post-modernist or post/ colonial at the expense of some kind of critical compromise. For instance, some post-modernist critics' privilege, formalism, and/ or ambivalence might blind them to the post/ colonial historical roots or influences of these literary texts' practices; while some postcolonialist critics may object to the juxtaposition of novels set in Sri Lanka, Quebec, and the United States as diluting the coherence of what constitutes the post/ colonial politically and in literature.
Recommended Citation
Leahy, David, Running in the Family, Volkswagen Blues and Heroine: Three Post/Colonial Post-Modernist Quests?, Kunapipi, 14(3), 1992.
Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol14/iss3/12
