Towards a postcolonial aesthetic : art, politics, and the work of literature

Abstract

Situating itself in the gap between the examination of postcolonial literature as political representation, and the consideration of such writing as art, this thesis seeks to understand how qualities of form and affect, integral to the reader’s experience of pleasure, provoke in the reader a political and ethical response. Proceeding from the premise that colonialism, in part, functioned as an exercise in the manipulation of the sensibilities of the subject, and that ushering in a truly post-colonial community necessitates an undoing of the effects of colonialism upon the senses, the thesis holds that an inquiry into the affective impact of postcolonial literature is not only crucial to apprehending how such writing performs its political function, but that it additionally constitutes in itself a proper response to the politics imbued in the text. The thesis considers the divergence between the way postcolonial novels have been read, namely, as political tracts in literary form, and the way they should be read, that is, as literary works that invite a political response, to ask: what is lost when the aesthetic qualities of the novel are neglected in favour of a thematic or anthropological reading focused on politics? In turn, how might the aesthetic qualities of the novel clarify our understanding of its politics?