Postcolonialism and its discontents

This paper provides a critical assessment of the field of postcolonialism or postcolonialist studies, which has grown rapidly since the publication of Said's Orientalism. It is argued that the area of investigation's distinctive features, and originality lie in the concern with the mutual constitution of the identities of colonizer and colonized, and in its analyses of chronic instabilities inhabiting and destabilizing the colonial project from within. Some exemplary studies are explored to establish why the field deserves praise and support. The paper then discusses a wide range of criticisms that have been levelled at the field's distinctive take on colonial encounters. Many of these are found wanting, although the paper also strips postcolonialism of many pretensions that threaten to undermine its credibility as a serious intellectual project. Along the way the paper also discusses the vexed questions of postcolonialism's relation to postmodernism and the potential political implications of a specifically postcolonialist stance.