THE PROTEAN CULTURAL SYNTHESIS OF POSTCOLONIAL IDENTITY

In the age of mass migration and global travel, the claim of many to a global citizenship becomes a common reality. The multiculturalism of the postmodern European nation remains a beautiful slogan, which cannot always redress the loose ends of traumatic (post)colonial hi stories of cultural identity, still reminiscent of the traditional geographic divisions into haves and have-nots, developed, developing or underdeveloped. Political correctness alone cannot erase the memory of centuries of colonial antagonism and hurt, with their attending displacements of cultural identity, traditions and native civilisations. The agonistic intricacies of former colonial relations, which warped the construction of racial, national and cultural identity on both sides, continue to condition the redefinitions of national identity and culture in ex-imperial metropolises and their former territories and their reflection in postcolonial literature.