A Precarious Balance: On the Centre and Margin in Postcolonial Literature

Abstract

Through a brief overview of the construction of the centre/margin dichotomy in colonial discourses, and a more thorough analysis of postcolonial reactions to it, this paper examines the dynamic relationship between the centre and margin as a major determining factor in the development of postcolonial literature. The paper attempts to show how this crucial dichotomy is decentralized in literary works that embrace marginality as a source of creativity, as well as to explore the controversial use of western literary traditions and means of expression in the articulation of postcolonial realities and identities. Going through different phases, starting from strongly anti-colonial sentiments in early postcolonial works, through efforts to narrate experiences of decolonization, nation-building and life in postcolonial nations, ending in more dispersed narratives focused on the specificities of transnational existence and identity in the thoroughly globalized contemporary world, postcolonial literature has managed to dismantle the idea of homogeneous, impermeable and fixed centres and margins. Although the centre/margin dichotomy still bears relevance to postcolonial literature, several contemporary postcolonial works redefine notions of centre and margin or shift their attention away from them to explore the peculiarities of experience in culturally, ethnically and racially heterogeneous, and primarily urban, spaces of the neocolonial world. Looking into the dynamics of the centre/margin relationship, dependent on the changing power relations in the spheres of politics, economy and culture, the paper highlights the dichotomy’s key manifestations as illustrative of how postcolonial literature subverts the centrality of the West and the marginality of the rest. However, despite the now proverbial postcolonial desire to critique the constructed authority and superiority of the centre and to articulate the marginalized and the ex-centric, the more cosmopolitan niche in contemporary postcolonial writing potentially establishes America as the new centre of gravity. From the vantage point of privileged and underprivileged global migrations, such writing suggests that identity is less dependent on negotiating the old and new, the traditional and modern, or the East and West, than on a precarious balance of numerous political, economic and cultural factors in the increasingly transnational world. Whatever the secret of America’s appeal, its establishment as the new centre repeats the old colonial strategy of creating demonic enemies to reinforce the idea that the Christian West represents civilization while the non-Christian world is synonymous with barbarism. Even though the mongrelized space of America truly exerts a force the protagonists of postcolonial literature can hardly escape, Arjun Appadurai reminds us that Amerika is but a knot in the transnational construction of imaginary landscapes. The tendency of such landscapes towards endless alterations indicates that no knot has the exclusive right to centrality, and by shifting its focus from one centre to another, contemporary postcolonial literature points to the pitfalls of all attempts at delineating centres and margins in kaleidoscopic contemporary realities.