too, this theoretical contestation informs the academic content
of postcolonial analysis, manifesting itself in an ongoing debate
between the competing claims of nationalism and internation-
alism, strategic essentialism and hybridity, solidarity and
dispersal, the politics of structure/totality and the politics of
the fragment.

Critics on both sides of this divide are persuasive in their
claims, and compelling in their critique of theoretical oppo-
nents. Neither the assertions of Marxism nor those of
poststructuralism, however, can exhaustively account for the
meanings and consequences of the colonial encounter. While
the poststructuralist critique of Western epistemology and
theorisation of cultural alterity/difference is indispensable to
postcolonial theory, materialist philosophies, such as Marxism,
seem to supply the most compelling basis for postcolonial
politics. Thus, the postcolonial critic has to work toward a
synthesis of, or negotiation between, both modes of thought.
In a sense, it is on account of its commitment to this project
of theoretical and political integration that postcolonialism
deserves academic attention.

Finally, there is the question of postcolonialism's constitu-
ency--the cultural audience for whom its theoretical
disquisitions are most meaningful. In my reading of this field,
there is little doubt that in its current mood postcolonial theory
principally addresses the needs of the Western academy. It
attempts to reform the intellectual and epistemological exclu-
sions of this academy, and enables non-Western critics located
in the West to present their cultural inheritance as knowledge.
This is, of course, a worthwhile project and, to an extent, its
efforts have been rewarded. The Anglo-American humanities
academy has gradually stretched its disciplinary boundaries to
include hitherto submerged and occluded voices from the
non-Western world. But, of course, what postcolonialism fails
to recognise is that what counts as 'marginal' in relation to
the West has often been central and foundational in the
non-West. Thus, while it may be revolutionary to teach Gandhi
as political theory in the Anglo-American academy, he is, and
has always been, canonical in India. Despite its good inten-

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