Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction x
Part I
1 The Melancholia of Postcolonial Studies 3
Literary form and postcolonial studies 3
The modernist ethos 8
The postcolonial perspective 12
Melancholic self-reflections 16
Postcolonial studies and literature 18
The melancholia of postcolonial studies 22
2 Returning to the Literary 26
Can the literary speak? 26
Literature at the threshold 31
Literary otherness 33
The politics of form 35
The monopolisation of the literary 38
Realism as straw man 41
Critical fictions 46
3 Utopian-Interpretive Trajectories 52
Utopian trajectories 52
The secret of the form 55
Lukács's theory of the novel I: The Theory of the Novel 58
Lukács's theory of the novel II: realism 66
History, postcoloniality and literary form 71
Part II
4 Form and Temporality in Ousmane Sembène's Xala 75
The problematic of imitativeness 75
Intermediary dreams 77
Incomplete fusions 80
History as still life 84
The return of the repressed 90
Negative realism 94
5 Arcades of Foreignness J. M. Coetzee's Foe 96
Writing back to the centre and the question of canonicity 96
Literalness and irony 99
Narrative silences and mysteries 100
Authorial struggles 102
Cannibalism and otherness 104
Thresholds of translation 106
Arcades of foreignness 109
Worldliness, criticism and literature 110
The beginning is a ruin 116
6 Realism in Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance 121
Lukácsian overtures 121
Accidents and history 123
Superfluity, interpretation, causes 126
Antibodies and blood 129
Games and laws 131
Stitching, narrating, describing 134
Conclusion: Realism, Form and Balance 138
Notes 143
Works Cited 173
Index 184
