Watch out for literary critics. They can get feisty.
"Who is post-colonial?"
That's a direct quote, straight from one of the points of controversy—the 1989 book The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. The three authors of the book—Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin—dared to suggest that postcolonialism should expand its scope from a study of the oppositional relationship between the black colonized and the white colonizer to a study of "all those in settler colonies."
What did they mean by "settler colonies"? Basically, they were arguing that postcolonialists should include all people who had once been colonized, even "white" people such as the Irish and the Australians, who they felt were part of the original ex-British colony gang. Basically, it lets even white academics earn pity points for living in the right formerly settled spot.
Before this book, postcolonialism was pretty much how Fanon and Said had defined it: a theory by and for racial minorities to use against their foreign white oppressors. So when these new (white) kids on the block swooped in and changed the terms of the game, things got a little rocky in poco land.
But let's be honest: "rocky in poco land" isn't exactly like the LA Riots. These days, everyone pretty much accepts that places as different as Taiwan and Ireland have as much claim to the postcolonial label and its ideas as India or the West Indies. After all, we're talking about people who are generally against exclusion.
So count this debate as—practically speaking—a dead issue (although you still need to know about it).
White people suck
Okay, if you find this one offensive, we get you. It's definitely not a saying you'd find in a Hallmark card. Plus, it isn't even really a debate, since no poco theorist would really just come out and say "'white people suck."' That would be—you know—racist. And simplistic (an even worse thing to say about a theorist).
What you will hear poco academics say is how old-school racism (the kind that's usually run by light-skinned people against dark-skinned people) has historically been part of the whole colonizing enterprise. Which, of course, more or less means that—yep—white people suck.
But here's an important point: "white people suck" doesn't really mean all white people suck. In fact, it has less to do with actual white people and a lot more to do with the position of privilege light-skinned people have historically been able to maintain based on the exploitation of dark-skinned labor.
If all that black/white stuff is seeming a little grey, you might take a gander at critical race theory, which was (and still is) a major source of inspiration for poco theory.
Are you a revolutionary or not?
This debate really centers on that one guy Homi Bhabha and his theory of "hybridity"—a new postcolonial identity made from the "tools" of the colonialist but fused with the politics of the colonized.
"Wait, say what?" Yeah, we know. Bhabha's ideas aren't the easiest to pin down, mostly because he writes in some seriously difficult prose. In fact, he's even been a prize winner for "bad writing" in the annual Bad Writing Competition. Now that's an accomplishment to (incomprehensibly) write home about!
So stop, rewind, think of it this way: "hybridity" is kind of like Frankenstein. It's composed of parts taken from the colonizer (like the colonizer's language, such as—ahem—English) but used against the colonizer.
Okay… so what's wrong with that? Well… nothing really, unless you think that true resistance ought to come from your own traditions and end in some kind of revolution or confrontation. That's what some of Bhabha's critics argue, at least.
Their gripes sound something like this: "What good is an identity in the fight against political and social injustice? Especially one made from the stuff of the enemy? Where's your political activism? Where are your cultural roots? Why aren't you fighting?"
A lot of these gripes have to do with the larger anxiety of the academic theorist: How does a scholar remain politically connected and active when a scholar's work is so abstract and…theoretical?
Alas, we don't have the answers to this one since we don't take sides here. You know, we're just the messenger.