Peter Hawkins  (University of Bristol, UK)
"Until when shall we remain postcolonial?" Globalisation, nationalism and cultural self-determination.

The whole planet is becoming postcolonial, in the sense that the model of Western liberal democracy is becoming the norm by which all political and social regimes are judged, at least within the academies of the present and former imperial powers. 20th century alternatives such as Soviet-style communism or authoritarian fascism have been discredited, and smaller traditional social structures - kingdoms, chieftaincies, principalities - are being overwhelmed and absorbed. Yet with these socio-political norms are associated national conceptions of art, of literature, of all kinds of cultural constructions of meaning.

The question above was formulated by Liliane Ramarasoa, a well-known Malagasy critic and defender of the national literature of Madagascar, at a conference in Mauritius in 2002. It comes from a nationalist perspective and constitutes a protest against the dissolving of the nationalist ethos and with it the claim to cultural self-determination. Is that a reasonable expectation? Cultural self-determination is now played out on an international stage, because of the homogeneity of social and political norms, the world-wide communications industry and the global problems the planet is going to have to confront, such as climate change.

So a writer these days - or any creative artist - is no longer identifiable within a national culture, even if that is one of their formative influences. An example would be Lindsey Collen, a radical white South African novelist, living in exile, settled in Mauritius, writing in both English and Creole, published in London by Bloomsbury Press and twice the recipient of the Commonwealth Prize for African Literature. In a way, Collen is a typical example of a postcolonial writer. She has the immense privilege of being Anglophone, yet even so she writes in Creole.

What, if any, is the place accorded to emergent linguistic cultures in the context of a predominantly Anglophone World Literature? These include African vernacular literatures, Creole writing, etc. Are they condemned to a doomed and marginalized nationalist aspiration? What are the mechanisms by which a national literary corpus might achieve consecration within a broad globalized context?

Mauritian literary production seems stuck in a micro-nationalist time-warp. Writers there are still situating themselves in terms of allegiance to outdated notions of national and linguistic identity. The strength of this might be that Mauritius could be seen as a microcosm of the world linguistic and cultural market-place within one small island. How can Mauritian writers play that card in the broader global context?

In the meantime, the first Francophone writers emerging from small states such as the Comoros islands, such as Mohamed Toihiri and Nassur Attoumani, are still relying on a nationalist standpoint in relation to the neo-colonial machinations of the French establishment, whether in brokering the reconciliation of three of the islands in a chronically dependent Union des Comores or promoting the absorption of Mayotte as a French département. Toihiri and Attoumani are neo-postcolonial writers in their defence of the cultural integrity of their island states, and their situation suggests that postcolonialism will remain a valid approach for some time to come.