A thousand tiny theories: The colonized subject, postcolonial literature, and decolonial epistemologies

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has, from its origins, made a claim to superior interpretative knowledge of literature than literary studies itself, often using its knowledge of literature to affirm and reaffirm its own colonial logics. In this paper, I examine how this colonial epistemological position is reaffirmed in literary interpretations of postcolonial and decolonial writing, even as psychosocial studies works to decolonize the psy disciplines. Through discussion of Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions trilogy, I argue instead that postcolonial writing offers its own autotheory of the colonized mind which opens a pathway to decolonizing the authority of the psy disciplines.