Ato Quayson

"Feminism, Postcolonialism and the Contradictory Orders of Modernity"



by Ato Quayson



Quay discusses the importance of "discursive representation," which is most often collapsed into political representation with regard to Third World women (586). Quayson discusses Chandra Talpade Mohanty's thoughts on feminism and postcolonialism, most significantly the idea that the "discursively created, oppressed Third World woman is nothing but a homogenized creation of Western feminist discourses whose intent is to set up an object that can be the presumed Other of the Western female culturally, materially and discursively. I can see how difficult these issues can be to unpack. I am an editor on the Undergraduate Women's Studies journal at McGill and just recently there was a debate over one of our submissions that led to a long exploration of (self) representation and the many interpretations of these representations. I was actually shocked to discover how many preconceptions I still had (very unconsciously) about cross cultural experiences.

One thing I take issue with in this article is the opening quote by C.L.R. James. I don't disagree with his point, but I do feel it should not be as essentialising as Quayson presents it. James writes, "But the woman is called career woman because her 'career' in modern society demands she place herself in a subordinate position or even renounce normal life" (190). I think that this point is very interesting. The discussion about how something modern (a career) is something that is abnormal for women. Even though women (in the "First World Countries" -- I don't like this terminology but it's hard to avoid) are encouraged to have careers, they are also being painted as somehow "abnormal." I'm thinking of extreme situations where women must take jobs in order to survive. At what point does gender not play a major role anymore? Is there a point of economic and social strife that allows gender difference to be overlooked in some way?

I also have a difficult time understand where feminist issues can be applied to all women and where only to certain women. These are very difficult questions, but I'm often left wondering if there can be a two-way discourse in postcolonial and "western" feminism -- There are certain aspects of postcolonial thought that are necessarily paradoxical and it comes out quite a bit when discussing women's rights, which often shows the faults of many philosophical systems.

Christianity keeps coming up in these readings and in the fiction, and yet we have not discussed it much. I'm still very interested in the effects of Christian conversion on the postcolonial thought, because it is taking in a Western thought system.

Monica Popescu

"Of Masters, Scholars, and the Global Prize Economy"


by Monica Popescu




So for in this course, the thing that surprised me the most is the global applicability of South African issues. I thought that I knew about South Africa, but I now realise that it was very rudimentary  knowledge. The issue of authorship and national literature is something that interests me a lot because of the similar Canadian problems I've been thinking about for a long time. The "old colonial yardstick" for measuring the quality of literature through "internationally recognized prizes, always held up to the standards and logic of global recognition and a putative universal quality," is a very topical issue here in Canada (which is somewhat funny if we're talking about a desire to move away from a global comparison).

It seems to be a "colony problem," or rather an "ex-colony problem." There is an anxiety about national literature. In countries that are rich in histories of oppression and domination, the idea of a "national" literature is very contested. There seems to be, not so much an anxiety of influence, but an anxiety of a lack of influence. Coovadia's critique of the "Coetzee religion" illustrates this point quite well. Who should have the say when it comes to defining the problems of a country? It is the old argument of "what makes a ______ literature?"

 While I agree with Coovadia on many points, this debate makes me wonder at what point is an author allowed to transcend the role of a national writer? In Canada, this debate arises every 3 seconds. What makes a Canadian novel? What makes a Canadian writer? We try to claim as many writers as our own, no matter how small their connection to Canada is. But why do we need to measure Canadian literature against a long-established tradition, especially when this country is so different historically and culturally than most European countries or even the US. South Africa seems to have a lot of the same questions: what is "the role South African authors play in the global cultural imaginary"? I hope by the end of the course, I can begin to make some connections or conclusions, no matter how tentative or limited they are.

All of these issues make me wonder about Zoe Wicomb, who also left South Africa. How was her departure received and how has it impacted her reputation?