Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The exile knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are always provisional. Borders and barriers, which enclose us within the safety of familiar territory, can also become prisons, and are often defended beyond reason or necessity. Exiles cross borders, break barriers of thought and experience . (Edward Said, 2000 : 185) One of the many interesting cultural phenomena over the last twenty-five years has been a sudden surge in texts re-examining Britain's colonial past and its continuing legacy. While reflective of an increasing interest in history generally, it is also indicative of a growing need in British society to address issues of cultural difference and hybridity. Whereas in the late 1950s and 1960s, when the process of decolonization was gathering momentum, writing from and about the Caribbean and Africa – especially South Africa – attracted most attention in Britain, in the early 1980s, focus decisively shifted on to Britain's historical relationship with the Indian subcontinent. Novels such as Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day (1980) and In Custody (1984), Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981) and Shame (1983), films like Gandhi (1982), A Passage to India (1984), and television series such as The Jewel in the Crown (ITV 1984), quickened and sustained this appetite for versions of the Indian-British colonial encounter. However, this flurry of ... log in or subscribe to read full text