Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Postcolonialism - Revathi Krishnaswamy (essay date January 1995)

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Revathi Krishnaswamy (essay date January 1995)

SOURCE: “Mythologies of Migrancy: Postcolonialism, Postmodernism and the Politics of (Dis)Location,” in Ariel, Vol. 26, No. 1, January, 1995, pp. 125-46.

[In the following essay, Krishnaswamy traces the ideological lineage of postcolonial theory, noting that postcolonial celebratory novels that focused on nationalism have given way to works of delegitimation.]

A new type of “Third World”¹ intellectual, cross-pollinated by postmodernism and postcolonialism, has arrived: a migrant who, having dispensed with territorial affiliations, travels unencumbered through the cultures of the world bearing only the burden of a unique yet representative sensibility that refracts the fragmented and contingent condition of both postmodernity and postcoloniality. Journeying from the “peripheries” to the metropolitan “centre,” this itinerant intellectual becomes an international...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Criticism: Overviews And General Studies
   1. Deepika Bahri (essay date January 1995)
   2. Shaobo Xie (essay date 1997)
4. Criticism: African Postcolonial Literature
   1. Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah (essay date September/December 1995)
   2. Clive Barnett (essay date June 1999)
5. Criticism: Asian/Pacific Postcolonial Literature
   1. Stephen H. Sumida (essay date 1997)
6. Criticism: Postcolonial Literary Theory
   1. Revathi Krishnaswamy (essay date January 1995)
   2. Arnold Krupat (essay date 1996)
   3. Arif Dirlik (essay date Spring 1999)
7. Criticism: Postcolonial Women's Writing
   1. Louise Viljoen (essay date Winter 1996)
   2. Gina Wisker (essay date 2000)
8. Further Reading
9. Copyright

1. Literary Theory