Postcolonial Melancholia

The article attempts to identify some of the boundaries and limits of postcolonial studies, with a specific focus on its relationship to the literary. Leading critics have argued that the contemporary field of postcolonial studies has become melancholic, as a consequence of its institutionalization in recent years, and the article suggests reading these signs of melancholia as an expression of the failed attempt to identify with the dimension of the literary in the postcolonial text.