Said’s Contrapuntal Reading and the Event of Postcolonial Literature

Abstract

This article aims at exploring recent theories on the postcolonial literary text as ‘event’ and their echoes of Edward Said’s formulation of the ‘contrapuntal reading’. Taking life writing and Salman Rushdie’s Joseph Anton (2012) in particular as case study, the article will show how discourses surrounding the publishing and reception of postcolonial writers must be considered as part of the reading experience, as clearly emerges when the works deal with public discourses such as the ‘Rushdie affair’. Following this lead, the paper offers an interpretation of the literary work as a performative act in the complex nexus of discourses constituting the postcolonial writer as a figure of the global collective imaginary.

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