For more than three decades, the study of postcolonial literature has continued to flourish as an important aspect of English literary studies. The number of dedicated positions that have been advertised in recent years, the number of graduate students exploring the field, the popularity of journals, and the international conferences all reflect the growing awareness of and interest in postcolonial studies.

While the enthusiasm has remained consistent over this period of time, there have also been moments of concern as scholars offered different paradigms to encapsulate this heterogeneous body of material. Regional and national models for instance, and a wide range of approaches - historical, mythographical, anthropological etc. have been advanced in order to contextualize this field of inquiry and foreground it in a manner that expresses in multiplicity. In pedagogical terms, the tendency has been to draw from a variety of disciplines, such as history, anthropology and ethnography in order to explain the differences among postcolonial literatures. In short, the response to postcolonial literature has been eclectic, and often quite ambivalent.

The present paper argues that there is a need to look closely at the way in which postcolonial literatures are "placed" within the curriculum in English studies, in order to advance options that may be more valuable for students and scholars. The "trunk and branch" metaphor has been the overriding principle in incorporating postcolonial studies within a traditional syllabi. Thus the emphasis has been on gaining a measure of expertise in genre, and in the canon in order to be able to comprehend this new body of writing.

The advantages of this approach are in fact quite evident. However, the constant recourse to cognate disciplines by scholars is a reminder that there may well be a need to locate postcolonial literature in a cross-disciplinary framework. Is it necessary or advisable to move away from a predominantly formalist approach to one that is more discursive? Is cultural awareness – even fieldwork of a particular kind – likely to be useful as a prerequisite for postcolonial literary studies?

If it is generally agreed that literature written in English needs to be seen in relation to vernacular languages, a logical step would be that a "local" language be stipulated as an essential component of research in that area. It is possible to argue that one needs to have some grasp of a vernacular language rather than or in addition to French, German or Spanish in order to undertake serious research?

The thesis, then, is that we need to see linkages very differently from what we have seen in the past. Such an approach needs to be conscious of the dangers of essentialism, or in fact blurring the real advantage of intertextual connections that hybrid authors themselves tend to celebrate. The centrality of the literary text cannot be erased although the frame could be one that includes but goes beyond a Eurocentric one. For postcolonial literary studies to move further it is important for scholars to explore alternative ways of configuring the field.