'History, really beginning' : compulsions of post-colonial pedagogy

The challenge to English literature in our cultural context needs to be seen as part of a larger process of critical evaluation and the creation of resources. To effectively confront the existing paradigm of English studies two questions which have significant implications for both literary theory and pedagogic practice are 'what is to be taught' in English departments and 'how to teach it'. This essay suggests that the ambivalent enterprise of teaching English in India could perhaps be re-evaluated, deflected and re-inflected through the reading of post-colonial texts whose incorporation into the existing paradigm should be resisted by refusing to employ customary ways of reading.