This paper examines two postcolonial writings by the Nobel Prize winner Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, The Mimic Men （1969） and In a Free State （1984）. In particular, it studies how Naipaul reflects on the histori...This paper examines two postcolonial writings by the Nobel Prize winner Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, The Mimic Men （1969） and In a Free State （1984）. In particular, it studies how Naipaul reflects on the historical experiences of national nonsense--the seemingly contradictory existence of transnationality in nationality--and how he manages in his writings to keep an ethical distance from both the colonial empires and the nation-states that came up to replace the colonial empires in the postcolonial world.展开更多
文摘This paper examines two postcolonial writings by the Nobel Prize winner Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, The Mimic Men （1969） and In a Free State （1984）. In particular, it studies how Naipaul reflects on the historical experiences of national nonsense--the seemingly contradictory existence of transnationality in nationality--and how he manages in his writings to keep an ethical distance from both the colonial empires and the nation-states that came up to replace the colonial empires in the postcolonial world.
