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If the continued influence of an approach as recondite as deconstruction upon cultural studies worldwide is anything to go by, then the growing attention paid to post-colonialism in South Africa should come as no surprise. After all, however sure one may be of better times ahead there is still the lure of South Africa's awful past which is no less intriguing now that it is apparently over. Besides, those practices of othering that post-colonialism loves to hate show no sign of going away in South Africa, or anywhere else for that matter, and there is no reason to think that those who should perhaps be better employed in the nitty gritty of reconstruction are going to prove immune to the fascination of what's difficult.
The possibility of some real, local relevance obviously plays an important part in post-colonialism's growing following in South Africa. But there is little doubt that discovering just where that relevance lies presents adherents with considerable difficulties—even if these problems are of a now familiarly French kind. The reasons for these difficulties are, I think, worth rehearsing at the outset, especially where the relationship between post-colonialism and psychoanalysis is the issue.
While affirming its status as political, and the commitment to a more or less identifiable programme this status traditionally brings, post-colonialism associates itself with that which is most theoretically dense and eclectic in its post-modern partners. One of the more obvious consequences of this connection to post-modernism is the notoriously difficult style adopted by many post-colonial authors. Much post-colonial writing is, as a result, almost impossible to paraphrase, so that both critics and commentators often find themselves hard pressed to