SOURCE: Visser, Nicholas. “Postcoloniality of a Special Type: Theory and Its Appropriations in South Africa.” Yearbook of English Studies: The Politics of Postcolonial Criticism 27 (1997): 79-94.

In the following essay, Visser expounds on the development of postcolonial theories in South Africa in response to the abolition of apartheid, comparing current trends in postcolonial theory to a previously articulated theory called “Colonialism of a Special Type” (CST) and cautions against adopting a theory of definition that would in effect repeat the shortcomings of CST, thus limiting a true revitalization of South African literary and cultural practices.

Readers familiar with South African ideological debates of the 1970s and 1980s will have recognized the allusion in the title of this essay. Since I have no wish to baffle the uninitiated, what the title echoes is a theory called ‘Colonialism of a Special Type’ or, as it came to be known, CST. I...