>How do you read?
R.S. Sugirtharajah in Post-Colonial Reconfigurations suggests “post-colonialism” as a reading posture – more a mental attitude than a method and “a process of cultural and discursive emancipation from all dominant structures, whether they be political, linguistic or ideological”.
Resting from my reading posture I met – by chance – someone who is producing a paper to challenge art colleges to think through their procedures which admit predominantly white (upper) middle class students.
So that’s what I call “writing with a post-colonial posture”. According to R.S. Sugirtharajah “the task of post-colonialism is to ensure that the yearnings of the poor take precedence over the interests of the affluent … and that the participation of the marginalised takes priority over the perpetuation of a system which systematically excludes them.”
Writing post-colonially from the context of Church – it means looking at Church and how the dominant structures and thinking have marginalised so many and reflecting on why it is that we are so slow in following Jesus’s “post-colonial” ministry turning his back on the dominant structures to face those cast out. When he said “You have heard it said (bad news), but I say to you (good news, alleluia!)” he was good news to the poor and the colonised.
Grits and Grains 