The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism

Abstract

This chapter reviews the term "postcolonial", and the various intellectual/cultural positions associated with it, within the context of contemporary transformations in global relationships, and the reconsiderations these transformations call for of problems of domination and hegemony, as well as of received critical practices. It argues that there is a parallel between the ascendancy in cultural criticism of the idea of postcoloniality and an emergent consciousness of Global Capitalism in the 1980s. The chapter also argues that the appeals of the critical themes in "post-colonial criticism" have much to do with their resonance with the conceptual needs presented by transformations in global relationships due to changes within the capitalist world economy. Postcolonial as a description of intellectuals of Third World origin needs to be distinguished from postcolonial as a description of this world situation. Postcolonial intellectuals are clearly the producers of a postcolonial discourse.