Postcolonial theory and autobiography of benjamin

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF HISTORICAL THEORY 378 23 Postcolonial theory and history Benjamin Zachariah INTRODUCTION One of the central difficulties in writing about ‘postcolonial history’ is that no one is sure what it is, or when it is. ‘Postcolonialism’ is a label worn uneasily by practitioners of ‘postcolonial theory’, of ‘postcolonial history’, ‘postcolonial criticism’ or (more non-committally) of ‘postcolonial studies’. The ‘ism’ maintains (in some uses) pejorative connotations, as does the ‘theory’, especially for some critics whose commitment to the discipline of ‘history’ is construed as a practical rather than an abstract one, with ‘theory’ being construed as necessarily abstract. (As this is a handbook of historical theory, not too much space will be given to the anti-theorists’ false dichotomy.) The ‘history’ part is in some readings also problematic, given that history as a discipline is itself seen as complicit in ‘Western