Hypertext as a Paradigm for Postcoloniality

• Like postcolonial subjects, hypertext lexias take part in a networked structure, resist simple linearity, and show that a complex entity can exist within multiple contexts without losing its identity.

• Jaishree K. Odin: Postcolonial literature and theory provide an effective critique of "unitary models of subjectivity reveals that all such models are based on binary thinking that creates categories like self and other, male and female, first world and third world where the first term is always the privileged term."

• The value of hypertext as a paradigm exists in its essential multivocality, decentering, and redefinition of edges, borders, identities. As such, it provides a paradigm, a way of thinking about postcolonial issues.

• Examples from fiction and autobiography of major decolonization writers

• Antoinette's problems with double or triple identity in Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (Carribbean)
• Wole Soyinka's joyous presentation of his complex multiple heritages in Ake, Isara: A Voyage around Essay, his plays, and poetry (Nigeria).
• Kerewin's complex ethnic, sexual, and artistic identity in Keri Hume's The Bone People (New Zealand).
• Rushdie's meditations in Shame on roots, rootlessness, migration, and being between (India, Pakistan, England, USA).

• Sage Wilson: "Postcolonial thought refuses to wipe the slate clean" (The Postcolonial Web). Past traditions, oral culture, English colonial education, syncretic religions, personal identities are all contaminated, mixed, hybrid, and one has to find ways of depicting — and living with — such complexity. Hypertext as paradigm helps with these complex issues.

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