Introduction

Postcolonial ‘‘classics’’ involves rereading and rewriting classical texts. Some of these rewritings are also great literature. Both senses of the word ‘‘classics’’ come together in the work of three recent Nobel prize winners, Seamus Heaney, Wole Soyinka, and Derek Walcott, all of whom have refigured Greek and Roman material in the contexts of their own classical traditions and in postcolonial contexts. They have used classical referents as a way of exploring their own cultural identities and those of their societies, as have other major figures such as Aime Cesaire, Tony Harrison, Michael Longley, Femi (Osttfisan, and Ola Rotimi.

The term ‘‘postcolonial’’ is used here to cover mental and cultural attitudes and practices rather than to describe the chronology of changes in political power and institutions. Writing, art, and thought can become ‘‘postcolonial’’ in advance of political independence. Equally, colonial attitudes can persist after notional independence (Ngugi 1986). This is true both of colonizing and colonized societies. Divisions between colonizers and colonized can also be fluid and include those who move between the two and those who occupy space between (Said 1988; Bhabha 1994).

Because of the association between classics and political and cultural elites (Stray 1998) and the appropriation of Greek and Roman culture by western colonizers, the processes of political and cultural struggle have been problematic for classical

Figure 21.1 Oidipus, performed in a disused quarry in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, 2000. The production was in the original Greek and used Greek theatrical conventions (chorus, masks). Courtesy Greg McCart. “Similarities between ancient Greek culture and contemporary Aboriginal culture in Australia, especially with respect to a religious affinity to the earth and to the immediate presence of gods or spirits, prompted the adoption of choral choreography grounded in Aboriginal dance and the use of Aboriginal music and dance in the production’’ (Greg McCart, <Http://playingwithtragedy. usq. edu. au/content/index. php> as cited January 2006). To the left of Oidipus (not shown) is an aboriginal didgeridoo player. This part of the illustration has been deleted to comply with Australian legislation on the representation of Aboriginal people. We wish to acknowledge by means of this caption the musical contribution to the live performance.

Learning, which has become in different contexts both an emblem of liberation and a symbol of imperialism and of neocolonialism.

Each postcolonial context is different, as are the histories of the transmission and use of particular works and the subjective experiences of the writers.

This web of theory and practice impacts on the central concerns of this chapter in four main ways: the language and idiom in which classical material is reworked; the role of classical referents in challenging and reshaping assumptions about genealogy, suffering, and victim status; the mapping of cultural exchange and the construction of identities; and the deappropriation of colonial classicizing and the reappropriation of texts and themes in the creation of new artistic forms and cultural narratives.

Inevitably, pressures of space restrict what can be discussed, so I have decided to concentrate on practice rather than theory, to focus on literature in Anglophone contexts, and to choose examples that allow discussion of the relationship between private and public voices. Further studies on art and architecture, on political philosophy, and on Francophone culture will be important in the future (and see already Davis 1997a).

Because this is a relatively new area of practice and research, narratives and analyses are still in the process of construction (Hardwick 2006a). I have therefore tried to include examples of the main approaches that will need to be brought together in a full study of the topic. The three main sections of the chapter each approach my subject from a different starting point and focus, respectively, on people, places, and paradigms. So the first part of the chapter examines through discussion of particular texts the relationship between an individual writer and the traditions of which he is a part, focusing, of course, on the classical. The second section offers an overview of the genesis of new classical traditions in African drama and their migration to the west. The third section brings together African, Caribbean, and European intersections between cultural memory, history, and the role of classical referents in the construction of postcolonial senses of identity. I suggest, tentatively, that practice is outrunning theory and that we are now experiencing the emergence of new traditions in the transmission and reception of the classics, in all senses of the word.