Racination and ratiocination
Post-colonial crime
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12418316 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ruth Morse (Université Paris Cité, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 79-89 |
| Publication date | 2005-01-20 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1062-7987 • E-ISSN: 1474-0575 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1062798705000086 |
| OpenAlex | W2079747920 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
Crime fiction is currently one of the most globalized, most popular, and biggest-selling of commercial genres, but there has been almost no attempt to study it in relation to other kinds of post-colonial literature. There is no bibliography of crime writers as ‘post-colonial’, and no attempt to generalize about a body of fiction. This paper is a brief extract from work in progress, based on the books of over fifty Anglophone or Francophone authors who might be categorized as ‘post-colonial’ by birth or residence. I test post-colonial theory against crime fiction, to argue that strong generic conventions call into question some of that theory's received ideas. I consider two linked problems: first, so-called ‘colonial mimicry’ and its obverse, ‘ventriloquism’, because it seems to me a wrong turning in 20th-century criticism; and, second, the demand for new literatures which would create ‘national identities’. I argue that ‘mimicry’ makes no sense in the context of a strong popular genre, and that accusations of ‘colonial mimicry’ reinscribe the asymmetries of judgement they appear to attack. The possibility of imagined geopolitical units as identity-forming, especially in genres which are informed by social criticism, calls into question the demand for literature as a source of national identity
Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Criticism · Identity (music · Judgement · Literature · Mimicry · Political science · Relation (database · Sociology · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · History · Law
| Citations per year | 0.15 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2022 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |