I faced the prospect of reviewing this book with considerable wariness, not.
least because of its aspiration to proffer, as its subtitle indicates, "a.
theory of postcolonialism [sic] ." This wariness turned out to be justified,.
but only in part: This book's strength does not reside in specifying a (new).
theory; it does, however, reside in its close textual readings of the various.
texts (and writers) that exemplify the often fine uses to which Lopez puts.
some of the guiding critical assumptions/theoretical formulations of extant.
postcolonial scholarship. This is why I wish Lopez had, in his introduction,.
dispensed with his own critique of some recent critiques of postcolonial.
theory and focused only on those parts of his introduction where he specifies.
the theoretical framework and concepts (like Homi Bhabha's account of.
"ambivalence," "hybidity," and "interstitial" or "third" space) that enable.
his own close readings. Furthermore, he should have let the "theory" emerge.
through his textual exegeses.
One prominent theoretical idea in extant postcolonial scholarship that Lopez.
deploys is that of margins or limits not only in their negative valence as.
"marginal" or "limited" (or "limited by"), but also, and more importantly, in.
the enabling sense of a threshold or frontier from which (new) possibilities.
can emerge. (For a comparable account of "margins" see Kalpana.
Seshadri-Crooks, "On the Margins of Postcolonial Studies," Ariel: A Review of.
International English Literature, 26 [1995]: 47-71). Using this framework,.
Lopez, in chapter 1, offers what I consider a most productive reading of.
Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a text both implicated in, and critical of,.
colonialism by virtue of Conrad's "interstitial" position as Polish emigre and.
English subject. Thus, Conrad's text reveals "less a self-evident truth than.
the opening of a space or index where such truths may yet be thought" (52).
Edward Said has suggested as much about Heart of Darkness ("Intellectuals in.