Empire and Poetic Voice: Cognitive and Cultural Studies of Literary Tradition and Colonialism

Patrick Colm Hogan

Feb 2012 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

In Empire and Poetic Voice Patrick Colm Hogan draws on a broad and detailed knowledge of Indian, African, and European literary cultures to explore the way colonized writers respond to the subtle and contradictory pressures of both metropolitan and indigenous traditions. He examines the work of two influential theorists of identity, Judith Butler and Homi Bhabha, and presents a revised evaluation of the important Nigerian critics, Chinweizu, Jemie, and Madubuike. In the process, he presents a novel theory of literary identity based equally on recent work in cognitive science and culture studies. This theory argues that literary and cultural traditions, like languages, are entirely personal and only appear to be a matter of groups due to our assertions of categorical identity, which are ultimately both false and dangerous.

About the author

Patrick Colm Hogan is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. He is the author and editor of many books, including (with Lalita Pandit) Literary India: Comparative Studies in Aesthetics, Colonialism, and Culture and Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean, both published by SUNY Press.