| Chapter : | Introduction: Australian Literature as Postcolonial Literature |
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to suggest that search committees seeking to recruit a postcolonial studies scholar often prefer to hire scholars who not only specialize in the literature of Africa, the Caribbean, or South Asia but also hail from those regions. A department chair confided in me that the search committee for a postcolonial studies position that was advertised as open to scholars specializing in the literature of any postcolonial nation had actually decided before the search began that the successful candidate must not only study African, Caribbean, or South Asian literature but must also be a native of one of those regions. Unsurprisingly, the successful candidate was an American-educated scholar from India.
The bias within postcolonial literary studies in favor of African, Caribbean, or South Asian literature is so pervasive that some postcolonial theorists, such as Robert J. C. Young, have gone so far as to attempt to define postcolonialism in a manner that excludes settler colonies altogether. Young claims that the “third world is the postcolonial world” (16), identifies the postcolonial world as being comprised of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (including the Caribbean) (4, 17), and claims that “tricontinental” is “a more appropriate term than ‘postcolonial’ ” (17). Young defines “postcolonial” in a manner that excludes settler colonies, despite the fact that he begins his book by posing questions such as the following:
Such questions surely resonate with many Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders, who often feel marginalized and ignored, yet Young fails to acknowledge that the citizens of the postcolonial settler colonies share such sentiments with non-Westerners.
Young's refusal to acknowledge the postcoloniality of settler colonies is nothing new; almost two decades ago, Alan Lawson pointed out that “so-called Third World critics and theorists” have been reluctant to grant