Modernity, (Post)modernism and New Horizons of Postcolonial Studies. The Role and Direction of Caribbean Writing and Criticism in the Twenty-first Century

Izabella Penier

doi:10.2478/v10223-012-0052-2

Authors

Izabella Penier University of Lodz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/v10223-012-0052-2

Keywords:

postcolonialism, Caribbean literary criticism, Caribbean female writers

Abstract

My article will take issue with some of the scholarship on current and prospective configurations of the Caribbean and, in more general terms, postcolonial literary criticism. It will give an account of the turn-of-the century debates about literary value and critical practice and analyze how contemporary fiction by Caribbean female writers responds to the socioeconomic reality that came into being with the rise of globalization and neo-liberalism. I will use David Scott’s thought provoking study-Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (1999)-to outline the history of the Caribbean literary discourse and to try to rethink the strategic goals of postcolonial criticism.

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Author Biography

Izabella Penier, University of Lodz

Izabella Penier is a PhD in American literature. Currently her research is focused on the prospects and potential rewards of breaking down theoretical and disciplinary barriers that have tended to separate African American and postcolonial scholarship. It particularly focuses on the transformations that Black studies has recently undergone due to critical interventions from global frameworks of analysis such as postcolonialism, cultural studies, Black Atlantic and diaspora studies. Her research not only examines the commonalities and differences between these discourses, but it also looks at the American Black feminist scholarship through the lenses of postcolonial gender-and nation studies. It makes use of the body of work of postcolonial feminist scholars to examine the interrelationship of gender and black cultural nationalism. Her work is based on the literary output of Afro-American, Afro- Caribbean and Black British writers. She has published textbooks (on British and American history, literary theory), a monograph (Ideological and Discursive Aspects of Magical Realism in Literary Quest for Afro- American Identity), articles and book reviews.

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