SOURCE: “Rethinking the Problem of Postcolonialism,” in New Literary History, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1997, pp. 7-19.

In the following essay, Xie presents a review of theories surrounding postcolonialism, making a distinction between postcolonial literatures and Third World writing.

Like all other “post”-marked terms, “postcolonialism” has caused no end of debate among its protagonists and antagonists. While the authors of The Empire Writes Back champion a loose use of the term “postcolonial” in expanding it to the literatures of Canada, Australia, and the United States, Simon During defines “postcolonialism” as “the need, in nations or groups which have been victims of imperialism, to achieve an identity uncontaminated by universalist or Eurocentric concepts and images.”¹ However, critics like Linda Hutcheon, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha are unmistakably skeptical of the possibility of an “uncontaminated” or “indigenous” postcolonial theory. Hutcheon argues that “the entire post-colonial project usually posits precisely the impossibility of...