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| The Empire Writes Back | |
|---|---|
| Name | The Empire Writes Back |
| Authors | Bill Ashcroft; Gareth Griffiths; Helen Tiffin |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Postcolonialism |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Pub date | 1989 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 320 |
The Empire Writes Back
The Empire Writes Back is a 1989 book by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin that helped define postcolonialism as a coherent field of study. Situated amid scholarly conversations involving figures such as Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and institutions like the University of Sydney, the work synthesised critiques from former colonies including India, Nigeria, Jamaica, Australia, and Canada. It positioned literary practice and theory in dialogue with movements such as Indian independence movement, African decolonization, Caribbean literature and the politics of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin drafted The Empire Writes Back in the late 1980s against debates at universities including University of Oxford, Cambridge University, University of London, and University of Melbourne. The book drew on precedents from theorists like Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and from literary studies shaped by journals such as Critical Inquiry, Modern Fiction Studies, and Wasafiri. Published by Routledge in 1989, it entered conversations alongside works like Orientalism and The Location of Culture, responding to formations evident in Indian literature, Nigerian literature, Caribbean literature, Australian Aboriginal literature, and Maori literature.
The authors articulated concepts including writing back, mimicry, hybridity, resistance and nationalism by referencing theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, and Stuart Hall. They examined strategies used in texts by Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe, Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, R. K. Narayan, Kunal Basu, and Arundhati Roy, deploying terms that echoed debates in development studies, cultural studies, comparative literature, and literary theory. Discussions engaged with historical events such as the Partition of India, Mau Mau Uprising, Algerian War of Independence, and institutional sites like the British Museum, BBC, and Oxford English Dictionary as vectors of language power.
The book surveys canonical and emergent writers including Joseph Conrad, Maryse Condé, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, Zadie Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Katherine Mansfield, Isabel Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Mika Waltari, E. M. Forster, and Simone Schwarz-Bart. It situates novels, poems, and drama within legal and political frameworks including Indian Penal Code, Mabo decision, Treaty of Waitangi, Kenya independence, and literary awards like the Nobel Prize in Literature, Booker Prize, and Commonwealth Writers Prize that shaped global recognition.
The Empire Writes Back informed curricula at departments such as Department of English, University of Sydney, Department of English, University of London, Department of English, University of Cape Town, and influenced centers like the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. It contributed to cross-disciplinary dialogue with scholars such as Paul Gilroy, Benita Parry, Robert Young, Leela Gandhi, and Pankaj Mishra, and echoed in edited volumes from publishers like Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Palgrave Macmillan. The book shaped conferences at venues including the Modern Language Association, International Comparative Literature Association, and the African Studies Association.
Critics debated the book’s treatment of empire, hybridity, and agency, aligning with critiques from Edward Said on representation, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on subalternity, and Homi K. Bhabha on ambivalence. Scholars such as Aijaz Ahmad, Hari Kunzru, Ashis Nandy, Ranajit Guha, and Dipesh Chakrabarty questioned universalising tendencies and the privileging of anglophone texts, while voices including Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Achille Mbembe, Gulzar Alam, and Ania Loomba pressed for broader linguistic and regional specificity. Debates extended to pedagogical practice in institutions like University of Toronto, Yale University, and Harvard University.
The Empire Writes Back remains cited in studies of diaspora, migration, multiculturalism, transnationalism, vernacular literatures, and media such as BBC World Service, Al Jazeera, and CNN International. Its terminology entered public discourse alongside policy discussions in bodies such as the UNESCO and influenced cultural festivals like the Hay Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, and Berlin International Literature Festival. The book’s concepts continue to inform contemporary writers and theorists from Nigeria, India, Caribbean, Australia, and South Africa in debates about language, identity, and power.
Category:Postcolonial literature Category:Books published in 1989