Problems in Literary Study: Postcolonial Heterotopias

Subject associations
ENG 573 / COM 573
Term
Spring 2016
Instructors
Simon Eliud Gikandi
Registrar description
This course invites rethinking established theories of postcolonial literature outside the national allegory, modern subjectivity, & the politics of identity. Focusing on "minor" works of major postcolonial writers, the course seeks to understand the postcolonial imaginary beyond the utopia of community, the dystopia of postmodern angst, & the romance of individual life. The course tries to develop a mode of reading postcolonial & related literatures from below, outside the monumental & the canonical, seeking the figurative language that emerges in a range of heterotopias, including islands, deserts, borders, & other fugitive spaces.