Postcolonial Studies: A Spiritual Turn

Abstract

This article invokes a paradox. Postcolonialism wishes to value the human experience in society; yet its formulations are so abstract as to distance subjective experience from its theories. If the disjunction between people’s lives and academic discourse is evident in the secular world, it is acute once a religious or spiritual dimension enters the postcolonial ambit. The article seeks to turn the secular (social) demand towards a dimension of the
‘sacred’. It seeks a sympathy between spiritual expression and literary-poetic expression.