Introduction to Part One
Problematizing the Post-Colonial
From the very beginning it is vital to explore the complications
involved when using the term ‘post-colonial’ in relation to Irish
writing. First, there has been some critical debate surrounding the term
‘post-colonial’. In her essay ‘Notes On the Postcolonial’ (1992) Ella
Shohat accuses post-colonial theory of postmodern theoretical and
political ambiguity, a ‘dizzying multiplicity of positionalities’, ‘a-
historical and universalizing displacements’ and ‘depoliticizing
implications’.^1 In ‘“ When Was ‘The Post-Colonial”? Thinking At The
Limit’ (1996), Stuart Hall notices how Shohat views the post-colonial
as dissolving a politics of resistance because it ‘posits no clear
domination and calls for no clear opposition’.^2 However, it is precisely
such a lack of ‘clear domination’ that allows the post-colonial critic,
Homi Bhabha, to outline a critical approach that puts into play hybrid
and heterogeneous identities as forms of resistance against the racial
essentialisms upon which imperialism relies.
Shohat complains further of the universalizing tendencies of
post-colonial theory as it writes of ‘the colonial subject’. She remarks
that in the heterogeneity of ‘the Third World’ ‘despite the broad
patterns of geo-political hegemony’, ‘power relations’ are ‘dispersed
and contradictory’.^3 In response to this contention Ruth Frankenburg
and Lata Mani (1993) observe that it need not follow that all societies
are post-colonial in the same way. Moreover, the post-colonial does
not operate on its own but as a construct internally differentialized by
1 Ella Shohat, ëNotes On the Postcolonialí, Social Text, 31/2, 1992, p.101.
2 Stuart Hall, ëWhen was ìthe post-colonialî? Thinking at the Limití, The Post-
Colonial Question, eds., Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti (London: Routledge,
1996), p.242.
3 Shohat, p.101.