Metaphoricity in comparison. Issue 4 (6th June 2016) - Huddart, David
Abstract : Exploring metaphors and methods of critical reading, this article considers recent challenges to postcolonialism's critical practices. Juxtaposing models of close, distant, superficial, and slow reading, and drawing on the work of Said, Bhabha, Chow, Spivak, Damrosch, and Moretti, the article argues for the ongoing importance of postcolonial reading. In making this argument, the article puts postcolonialism alongside comparative literature, these practices responding to models of technological, worldly, and globalised connectedness that apparently supersede them. The critical objects made available by metaphors of reading suggest that the postcolonial tradition resists any rhetoric of transparency and immediacy, and insists on the slowness of reading. This slowness, an attention to the node as much as the network, remains vital to critical practice.