EMBATTLED GROUNDS: RESISTANCE, REPRESENTATION, AND THE LITERARY LANDSCAPING OF POSTCOLONIAL SPACE

The political claims that are most urgent in decolonized space are tacitly recognized as coded within the legacy of imperialism: nationhood, constitutionality, citizenship, democracy, socialism, even culturalism. In tlle historical frame of exploration, colonization, decolonization-what is being effediveIJ reclaimed is a series of regulative political concepts, the supposedly authoritative narrative of the production of which was written elsewhere, in the social fonnations of Western Europe. They are thus being reclaimed, indeed claimed, as concept-metaphors for which no hirtoNa/& adequate referent may be advanced from postcolonial space. That does not make the claims less urgent. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Qlltside j" the Teathing MlUhine 48