Rivages, No 5 (2020)

Deconstruction: The Strategy of Postcolonial Criticism

Hanane El AISSI

Résumé


This article seeks not only to shed light on Derrida’s deconstruction, which has been
widely welcomed by literary and philosophical critics, but also to study its problematic relationship with postcolonial studies and its popularity amongst postcolonial critics. Focusing on the “Undecidability” of the text as a major theoretical principle and critical strategy in deconstruction, this article argues for the utility of deconstruction in postcolonial criticism. Postcolonial critics such as Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak have adopted deconstruction as an approach to voice their proclamation and indictment against the aftermaths of colonialism. Colonial discourse is put under the exercise of dismantling and made uncovered by means of deconstructive reading to give vent to a series of decoding that make “colonial text” unmask its displeasing incubus and opposing forces that lay latent in its folds.