Journal of Postcolonial Writing

ISSN: 1744-9855 (Print) 1744-9863 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjpw20

Involuntary associations: postcolonial studies and

world Englishes

Christinna Hobbs

To cite this article: Christinna Hobbs (2015) Involuntary associations: postcolonial

studies and world Englishes, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 51:3, 365-367, DOI:
10.1080/17449855.2015.1027036

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2015.1027036

Published online: 01 Apr 2015.

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 Journal of Postcolonial Writing 365

A lot of the essays actually seem aimed at the modernists: a category which is
never properly dened, apart from the questionable assumption that modernists have
broken with the past. Inuential poet-critics (and indeed literary gate-keepers of
sorts), like Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, whose poems and translations have shown that
modernism is actually an oblique selection and reinvention of the past, are the implicit
targets. But if poets such as Mehrotra and Eunice de Souza indeed disowned their
forebears (such as Sorojini Naidu and Toru Dutt) in the 1960s and 1970s, they have
today revised their initial dismissive position.
The most interesting essays in the volume demonstrate the multiple identities of the
poets under consideration. If Neela Bhattacharya Saxena also criticizes imitators of
European high modernity (81) she rightfully places Sarojini Naidu both within an
Indian context and within the wider world of womens writing, and sees the
poet-stateswoman as a deant gure. Anisur Rahman calls for a fresh reappraisal of
Kamala Dass poetry to disengage her from stereotypical readings in which writing of
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love is confession; writing confession is autobiography; and a woman writing autobiog-

raphy is writing feminism (184). In her insightful article on Ramanujans poetry,
Anjali Nerelkar draws attention to the myriad selves and experiences of an oeuvre that
straddles continents, languages (Kannada, Tamil, English) and genres (poetry, transla-
tion, linguistics, folklore), and also wrestles with split loyalties: the Brahmin, English
and Sanskrit Father domain versus the vernacular, Mother domain of little tradi-
tions. In his dense essay on Kolatkar, Vinay Dharwadker aims at bringing the poets
Marathi poetry into play with the English and at mapping Kolatkars historical imagi-
nation in his different collections. Although some of his interpretations are question-
able (Sarpa Satra as a retelling of the American invasion of Iraq, for instance), and he
seems to make a point of taking issue with other perceptive critics (Amit Chaudhuri,
Bruce King, Mehrotra), many of Dharwadkers assumptions are also highly
invigorating. These last two essays demonstrate that the best Indian poets in English
defy easy labels and write poems from the crowded melee (Nerelkar, 133) of
languages, afliations and belongings.

Laetitia Zecchini
Centre National de la Recherche Scientique (CNRS)
Email: laetitia.zecchini@cnrs.fr
2014, Laetitia Zecchini
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2014.946256

Involuntary associations: postcolonial studies and world Englishes, by David

Huddart, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2014, 141 pp., 70.00 (hardback),
ISBN 978 0 7864 7552 0

Theory in the global age: interdisciplinary essays, edited by Om Prakash Dwivedi

and Martin Kich, Jefferson, NC, and London, MacFarland, 2013, 197 pp., 29.99
(paperback), ISBN 978 0 7864 7552 0

In his contribution to Liverpool University Presss Postcolonialism Across the Disci-

plines series, David Huddart examines the idea of World Englishes and its relevance
to postcolonial studies. The introduction and rst chapter provide a comprehensive
 366 Reviews

overview of the discourse of World Englishes, which, he explains, seeks to re-imagine

our understanding of the English language (2), challenging the idea of language
ownership (7) and responding to the changing and varied use of English globally.
Focusing on the associations of the English language with imperialism, Huddart
assesses the current state of postcolonial studies and suggests that the study of World
Englishes offers the possibility for renewal (2), though he emphasizes that this
renewal will not come through a new formulation of postcolonialism (24). By
bringing postcolonial studies into discussions most commonly associated with the
study of globalization (2), he redirects the attention of postcolonial studies away from
literary studies, towards the study of World Englishes.
Huddarts method of placing World Englishes into dialogue with postcolonial stud-
ies (2) ensures that the relationship between the two elds is developed throughout
the book. His discussion is interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, with examples from sev-
eral geographical contexts, including Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and the
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USA, which he explores in relation to key topics such as global citizenship, cultural
translation and world literatures. Using deconstruction to stress mobility and differ-
ence, Huddart sees World Englishes as a potential metaphorical global citizenship
(73). He thereby cautiously acknowledges the potential of World Englishes to overcome
the challenges of globalization, ending with the suggestion that World Englishes studies
is one possibility for breaking postcolonial studies from the oppositional framework
(133) which restricts its scope, making it more suitable to tackling the shifting
contexts of an increasingly globalized world (141).
The essay collection edited by Om Prakash Dwivedi and Martin Kich unpacks the
complexities of globalization and reframes them within various postcolonial and other
theoretical contexts. In the introduction, the editors outline the books ethical thrust.
With a reminder of the intention of postcolonial studies to address and overcome the
issues of the once colonized nations (9), the editors go on to describe how a con-
ceptual alignment with capitalist-based globalization (10) has led to complicity with
the very structures which were the original focus of postcolonial critique. The editors
see the essays collected here as critical interventions in the moment of danger (19),
working to extend and reconceptualize the postcolonial eld and acknowledging newer
forms of colonialism operating in an increasingly globalized world (14).
In order to gauge new directions within the eld, Bill Ashcroft traces the formative
ideas within postcolonial theory. In Going Global: The Future of Post-Colonial Stud-
ies, Ashcroft seems to recognize a positive potential in the complex relationship
between postcolonial studies and globalization, concluding with the assertion that post-
colonial studies will remain relevant as long as it rejects the pressure to become the
Grand Theory of Global Cultural Diversity and remains focused on the historical and
material reality of colonialism and its effects (47). Huddarts essay, Resistance to
Responsibility: Interrupting the Postcolonial Paradigm, takes a different stance in
assessing the ethical orientation of postcolonial theory. Defending Derrida, Huddart
suggests that deconstruction may provide a means for postcolonial studies to move
beyond expectations of sameness and difference (85), replacing concern with
representation with emphasis on responsibility (74).
The collection is varied in its engagement with different schools of thought, and is
intentionally interdisciplinary, including essays on lm, literature and history.
Particularly illuminating is Leslie Sklairs Postcolonialisms, Globalization and Iconic
Architecture, an essay that moves away from the study of postcolonial literature in its
analysis of manifestations of postcolonialism and globalization. Importantly, Sklair also
 Journal of Postcolonial Writing 367

makes a clear distinction between the positive and negative impacts of globalization.
He identies a generic globalization that offers almost unlimited emancipatory
potential for life on earth, while capitalist globalisation subverts this potential for the
selsh interests of the transnational capitalist class (157).
The positive and negative possibilities of globalization explored in several of the
essays in Dwivedi and Kichs Postcolonial Theory are also a theme of Huddarts In-
voluntary Associations. Where Huddarts study of World Englishes suggests that the
hegemony of the English language, like globalization, simultaneously offers positive
and negative possibilities (20), Rajen Harshs foreword to Postcolonial Theory identi-
es in globalization the potential to bring about packages of advantages and disadvan-
tages (4). Both books present a concern for the direction of postcolonial studies, with
Huddart describing the oppositional framework (133) into which postcolonial studies
is locked, whereas Dwivedi and Kich perceive the failure of postcolonial politics to
counter the oppressive and exploitative power of globalization (12). When read
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together, these two studies emphasize the crucial relevance of globalization to the
development of the eld: although they suggest different approaches to renewal or
resolution, the need to reframe postcolonial studies within theories and frameworks of
globalization is central to both.

Christinna Hobbs
Liverpool John Moores University, UK
Email: c.hobbs@ljmu.ac.uk
2015, Christinna Hobbs
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2015.1027036

Entangled subjects: Indigenous/Australian cross-cultures of talk, text, and

modernity, by Michle Grossman, Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi Press, 2013,
xxxvii + 350 pp., 63.00 (hardback), ISBN 978 9 0420 3644 4

This superb book will become essential and pleasurable reading for any scholar
interested in Indigenous Australian writing in general, despite its particular focus on
life-writing. Grossmans prolonged thinking about issues of self-representation,
collaborative texts, orality and literacy, and the engagement of interested white people
with texts produced by Aboriginal people, participates in so many debates concerning
the practice and theorization of Aboriginal Australian textuality that even informed
readers will be stimulated.
In language whose density betokens not only the complexity of the matter under
discussion, but also the generalized sensitization in Australian scholarly discourses to
ways in which white people might talk about Indigenous Australians, Grossman moves
through questions of representation and self-representation to a major leitmotif of
orality and literacy. Although there is a specic, and excellent, chapter devoted to
Anthropology, Orality, Literacy, and Modernity, the topic recurs throughout the book,
in a determined attempt to reorient the ways in which orality and literacy are
conceived, as derived from both anthropology and literary studies. Grossman success-
fully unpacks implications in the work of scholars such as Jack Goody, Walter Ong
and Ruth Finnegan which impede a more nuanced and respectful understanding of the
discursive ows in which orality and literacy have become intertwined to the extent