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Posts and Pasts: A Theory of Postcolonialism (review)

into a discussion ofburial rituals as well as a careful account ofthe Orientalist paléographie work ofthe 1870s. Each chapter within the three sections hinges on a surprising and productive juxtaposition that combines comparisons between texts that share a historical connection with those whose connection is forged in the reader's mind. After the chapter centering on the Assyrian epic comes one that emerges from a reading ofAztec court poetry. A third chapter is inspired by Congolese novelist Mbwil a M. Ngal's reconsideration ofViconian historiography in the 1970s. After the chapters on circulation, Damrosch then undertakes the matter of translation. Using as his starting point an ancient Egyptian lyric, he moves from assessing "the complex dynamics of transmission" to laying out with care the "irreducible problems that translation always faces" (147). With two further prime examples, the visions ofthe thirteenth century German mystic Mechthild von Magdeburg and the "littérature mineure" ofDeleuze's Kafka, Damrosch presents the complex network oflinguistic and cultural exchanges which both challenge and enrich the process of translation and the text itself. The final third of the book involves dissemination, the ways in which works have and might travel. The case of P.G. Wodehouse's international marketing success epitomizes Damrosch's theory that a key element in becoming world literature is the extent to which an author has "subtly delocalized" (212) his text thereby making translation itselfonly a further step in an already undertaken circulation. With Wodehouse, Rigoberta Menchu, and Milorad Pavic as his foci, he suggests that some texts are worldly from their very inscription. Throughout this "masterwork," ifone dare use such a term, Damrosch engages with critics as varied as Northrope Frye and Edward Said and refuses, with the exception of the strong presence ofGerman language texts as a spine, to study any sort ofregional or historical chauvinism. The study is entirely collégial, whether to the editors of the Norton anthologies ofworld literature or to critics of particular authors. This is no small achievement in the often competitive and market-driven world ofmaking and distributing anthologies. Beyond its clarity and grace ofstyle, its breadth and depth ofknowledge, Damrosch's book is not only humanistic in the best and widest sense, it is also humane, profoundly concerned with how we read, think, and teach about literature. One would expect exactly such an approach form the author of We Scholars in a text that enables and refines the work of readers as different as endowed chairs of literature and sophomore undergraduates.