The meanings of postcolonial critique

Abstract

This essay examines the recent debates on critique and postcritique and how they might inform postcolonial studies. In particular, the essay argues for the critical purchase of colonial attachments. It demonstrates that the very impropriety of those attachments makes them effective tools for critique. Turning to Sam Selvon’s last novel Moses Migrating, the essay shows that the protagonist’s unwavering devotion to Britain, far from being uncritical, in fact troubles or even displaces two paradigms of self-positioning in the postcolonial world: citizenship and lineage. The novel thus models a postcolonial critique that derives its force less from a holistic opposition to colonial mentality than from a willingness to attend to, dwell on, and stay with colonial attachments.