Postcolonial writing must be more than mere écriture

Irving Goh (The National University of Singapore)

Note 3 in the author's " Promising "Post-colonialism": Deleuze-Guattari's "Minor Literature" and the Poetry of Arthur Yap"

Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy: "Writing is of the community or it is not writing. And reciprocally: the community is of writing" (p. 152). Not contrary to Nancy's argument, I am arguing that "post-colonial" spaces need more than a mere "writing" inscribing itself in the vein, in the language, of the occident. A writing that is in the language of occidentalism i.e. not the inherent language of the "post-colonial" locality, which may be also that language of a past "colonialism" cannot possibly give justice to the immanent interval that I am talking about.

References

Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Experience of Freedom. Trans. Bridget McDonald. Foreword by Peter Fenves. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Last modified: 31 May 2001