This paper proposes to examine the establishment of intellectual as well as academic comfort zones. By comfort zones I mean critical concepts and approaches which are made to stand out more than others, are invoked more often than others, and to which postcolonial theory tends to be reduced, particularly in its vulgarised form. Issues related to cultural identity, hybridity and alienation, often tend to be translated in ways which deny that the experience of postcolonialism is a heterogeneous process, and which encourage the emergence of cultural conservatism. In this paper, I will argue that comfortable critical practice not only blunts the capacity to account for social and cultural phenomenon, but also side steps the necessity to make clear ideological choices.
Last modified: 7 May 2001