Bruce King

Sea Change: Black British Writing, and: The Booker Prize and the Legacy of Empire (review)

A few questions linger. What else needs to be said about how taking up arms as soldiers whether in foreign or European armies becomes a compensatory form of virile play-acting for the repressed homosexual male? I am troubled by a treatment of this behavior as liberating or exemplary of dissidence in any shape or form. On what terms can writers involved in such predatory forms of self-exploration be considered cultural pioneers? With these issues hovering, I fi nd the routine of an abstract gesture in conclusion toward a future ethics of emancipation that decorates much postcolonial theory and criticism to be more tenuous than usual. —Phyllis Taoua University of Arizona