Journal of American Studies of Turkey
10 (1999) : 91-92.Book Review
Postcolonialism and Autobiography: Michelle Cliff, David Dabydeen, Opal Palmer Adisa, edited by Alfred Hornung and Ernstpeter Ruhe. Studies in Comparative Literature 19. 1998, 263 pages. U.S. $ 50 plus postage and handling. Available from: Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
This book contains the revised manuscripts of the Anglophone workshops at the symposium on “Postcolonialism and Autobiography” which took place in Würzburg, on 19-22 June 1996. (The papers of the Francophone workshops appeared in a separate volume entitled Postcolonialisme et Autobiographie: Albert Memmi, Assia Djebar, Daniel Maximin. Note 1) The English volume analyzes from a postcolonial point of view the autobiographical writings of Michelle Cliff, David Dabydeen, Opal Palmer Adisa, George Lamming, Wilson Harris, and Jamaica Kincaid. According to the critics who study their work, all of them display a consciousness of their different, “original” cultural identity while living in England or the United States.
Interweaving the concerns of the autobiographical genre with those of postcolonialism, the volume points to the “dialectical” relationship between self and the world, inside and outside. The categories of fiction and fact, individual and society, mind and world are repeatedly questioned as artificial divisions in the articles discussing theoretical issues and their boundaries crossed and recrossed by the main characters in the excerpts taken from postcolonialist autobiographical writings. At each intersection psychological, philosophical and political concerns fill the gap left by so-called historical events and deeds.
The book begins with two introductory essays. The first is written by the editors and summarizes the issues brought up by the critics and the fiction writers included in the book on the changed form of autobiography in postmodern times. The editors assert that
The second essay is by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Spivak points to the distinction between traditional and postcolonialist understanding of autobiography. She maintains that postcolonialist autobiography is a kind of testimony. For Spivak the difference between the two forms of autobiography, traditional and postcolonialist, lies in the intention of their players. The intention of the traditional autobiographer is to objectify itself without loss of subjecthood. The postcolonialist, the testifier, however, is under responsibility to tell the truth and as such s/he “assumes the role of the editorial or critical subject ‘de-centered,’ in rather an empirical way” (8). Spivak insists that this kind of responsibility is indeed not given to the subaltern; therefore, “the subaltern often cannot accede to testimony.” In postcoloniality, testimonies, like old anthropological accounts and psychoanalytic case studies, tell us the truths of those who cannot speak for themselves. Hence, their stories are always undersigned by writers representing them. Spivak finds that “this deliberate and powerful play of the individual and representativity is the impossible signature of the ghostly witness in all autobiography”(9). Consequently, such a situation leads to, among other problems, a certain symbolic and distanced hybridism of identity. Postcolonialism . . . since the 1980s gained dominance in the field of literary studies and has been concerned with the “various cultural effects of colonization.” . . . Questions of agency, subjecthood, cultural memory and ethics seem to be of central concern to the colonized and decolonized condition. . . . Autobiography in its widest definition seems to provide a convenient genre to embrace the crossroad cultures from East and West and to launch an emancipatory political and cultural program.” (1-3) The three parts that follow the introductory essays carry the names of the writers whose works are discussed extensively: Michelle Cliff, David Dabydeen, Opal Palmer Adisa. Each part begins by giving at least one excerpt from the “postcolonialist autobiographical writings” of these authors and are followed by essays that discuss the various problems of identity that arise in the texts. The essays in the last part also study the autobiographical fiction of other postcolonialist writers, namely George Lamming, Wilson Harris and Jamaica Kincaid.
Because the book is basically a volume of conference proceedings, the essays do not complement one another. They are neither thematically nor structurally connected or consistent. On the other hand, postcolonial experience and concepts affiliated with it such as homeland, exile, the experience of migration and hybridity are explored extensively throughout the book. The incorporation of excerpts from the writers’ works allow the readers to hold an interactive dialogue with the critics. Readers interested in postcolonial studies, historiography and auto/biography would enjoy reading this book.
Notes
1 The volume will be reviewed in the next issue. Editor's note.