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The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures cover

Literature

Literature

The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures

Bill Ashcroft; Gareth Griffiths; Helen Tiffin

A foundational theoretical account of post-colonial writing in English. It examines how literatures from places such as India, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia and Canada respond to colonial power through language and textual strategy, compares the critical models used to read them, and argues that these texts challenge Eurocentric ideas of literature, language and the canon.

Prerequisites: An introductory course in literary studies, and some reading of post-colonial or ethnic American literature.

Difficulty Level
Advanced
Academic Level
Undergraduate
postcolonial literaturepostcolonial theoryliterary theorylanguage and empireworld literatureTextbook

01 / Reading Guide

Reading Guide

Citation

Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2002). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Chapter Summary

The second edition runs to about 296 pages in Routledge's New Accents series. It consists of an introduction, chapters on critical models, language, texts, indigenous theory and the relation to literary theory, a short conclusion, a reader's guide, notes, a bibliography and an index. The first edition appeared in 1989; Routledge describes the second as adding a chapter and an updated bibliography.

Introduction: What are post-colonial literatures?

The introduction asks what the term covers and how post-colonial writing relates to English studies. Its sections cover the development of these literatures, hegemony, language, place and displacement, and post-coloniality and theory, so it sets out the vocabulary the later chapters use.

Chapter 1: Cutting the ground: critical models of post-colonial literatures

The chapter reviews the ways critics have organised the field: national and regional models, comparisons between two or more regions, the "Black writing" model, wider comparative models, and models of hybridity and syncreticity. It clears the ground for the authors' own approach.

Chapter 2: Re-placing language: textual strategies in post-colonial writing

Here the book turns to language. It distinguishes abrogation, the refusal of a standard "correct" English, from appropriation, the reshaping of the inherited language for new purposes. Sections cover the Creole continuum as a linguistic theory, the metonymic function of language variance, and strategies of appropriation in practice.

Chapter 3: Re-placing the text: the liberation of post-colonial writing

The chapter turns to individual texts. After a section on the imperial control of the means of communication, it reads Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds (colonialism and silence), V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men (colonialism and authenticity), Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage (radical otherness and hybridity), Janet Frame's The Edge of the Alphabet (appropriating marginality) and R. K. Narayan's The Vendor of Sweets (appropriating the frame of power).

Chapter 4: Theory at the crossroads: indigenous theory and post-colonial reading

The authors survey theories developed within the societies concerned: Indian literary theories, African literary theories, the theories of the settler colonies and Caribbean theories.

Chapter 5: Re-placing theory: post-colonial writing and literary theory

The chapter relates post-colonial writing to postmodernism and asks how literature, meaning and value look from this standpoint. It treats post-colonialism as a reading strategy and ends with a part titled "Re-thinking the Post-colonial".

Conclusion: More english than English, and Reader's Guide

The short conclusion carries that title. The reader's guide, notes and bibliography at the end point to further reading.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapter 1

  • Hegemony: the way imperial culture secures consent for its norms, introduced in the opening sections.
  • Hybridity and syncreticity: the blending of cultural forms, offered as one model for reading post-colonial literatures.

Chapters 2–3

  • Abrogation and appropriation: refusing the standard language and taking it over for one's own use.
  • Creole continuum: a range of language varieties used as the basis for a post-colonial linguistic theory.
  • Metonymic function of language variance: how differences in language signal cultural difference within a text.

Chapters 4–5

  • Indigenous theory: critical frameworks that arise within Indian, African, settler and Caribbean contexts.
  • Post-colonialism as a reading strategy: the idea that post-colonial approaches apply to how texts are read, not only to where they were written.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

  • A clear architecture. The chapters move from models of the field, to language, to readings of individual novels, to indigenous theory, to the relation with literary theory. Each stage uses the vocabulary of the previous one.
  • Theory tested on texts. Chapter 3 reads five novels by authors from South Africa, Trinidad, Canada, New Zealand and India, so the key terms are shown at work and not only defined.
  • Breadth of regions. The book draws on India, Africa, the Caribbean and the settler societies in one argument, and its title names both theory and practice.
  • Study aids. Routledge stresses that the book is accessible to readers new to the field, and the reader's guide and bibliography point onward.

Limitations

  • Date of the core argument. The argument was formed in 1989. The second edition adds new material and an updated bibliography, but newer surveys will still be needed for work published since.
  • English-language focus. The book concerns writing in English and the strategies applied to it, so literatures in other colonial languages receive little attention.
  • Compression. A single volume of this length treats several regions and many theories at once, so regional histories and individual authors receive limited space.
  • Built around five novels. Chapter 3 is organised around five particular novels, so it is most useful to readers who have read some of them.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the course on post-colonial and ethnic literature, this is the main theoretical text on literature in English. John McLeod's Beginning Postcolonialism is a gentler introduction for students meeting the field for the first time, and Elleke Boehmer's Colonial and Postcolonial Literature gives a critical and historical account that includes ideas such as writing back and hybridity through close readings. Either is a good preparation.

Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism takes a different route, reading the metropolitan novel alongside the histories of empire it often leaves out, so it complements the focus of Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin on writing produced in formerly colonised places. Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera and Monique Truong's The Book of Salt are primary texts that can be used to test the terms.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in English, comparative literature and cultural studies who have read some post-colonial or ethnic literature and now want a theoretical vocabulary. Read the introduction and Chapter 2 first, because abrogation and appropriation are the terms most often borrowed by later criticism.

A practical order is the introduction, Chapter 2, then Chapter 1 for the models, and then whichever novels from Chapter 3 you have read. Chapters 4 and 5 are best taken once the vocabulary is familiar, and the closing part on re-thinking the post-colonial, together with the conclusion, shows how the authors saw the field in 2002. Apply each key term to a text from the course, such as Anzaldúa or Truong, and pair the book with a newer survey for recent developments.