The evolution of Commonwealth, post- and decolonial scholarship: Tracing the impact of field transformation on JCL and vice versa

Abstract

To mark the significant change from the Journal of Commonwealth Literature to JCL: Literature, Critique, and Empire Today, this short article will engage with the shift in title in three ways. As former editors of the journal, we have long been contemplating these and related issues in the context of JCL’s scope and remit. First, we critically examine the limitations of the term “Commonwealth” in both literary and political terms, in order to highlight some salient debates within and beyond postcolonial studies. Second, we reflect on the journal’s role in shaping the area of study over time, in response to literary-critical and political concerns, as well as the transformations the journal has made over the past decade in order to open itself to new questions and approaches. Finally, we analyse the likely impact of the journal’s altered title for both registering and recalibrating understandings of key questions in our field. By tracing the evolution of the discipline, we assess the resonance of key changes when it comes to the journal’s scope, methodology, and areas of enquiry. Above all, this article provides a suggestive exploration of the new direction the journal is taking and its implications for the specialization of postcolonial studies.

This article explores the title change from the Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JCL) to Literature, Critique, and Empire Today using a tripartite structure. We are the journal’s most recent ex-editors, and so the article is the culmination of about 15 years of thinking on these and related matters. In the essay’s first part, we interrogate the limitations of the term “Commonwealth” across the axes of global geopolitics as well as literature, in order to draw out some common threads within and beyond postcolonial studies. The second section thinks through the journal’s role in shaping postcolonial studies over time. Changes have been wrought in response to literary-critical and political concerns, as well as amid the self-transformation the journal has undergone over the past decade so as to open itself up to more diverse perspectives. Finally, we analyse the likely impact of the journal’s altered title for both registering and challenging understandings in its field. We hope that the article constitutes a thought-provoking exploration of the journal’s present and future avenues, and the knock-on effects this will have for postcolonial, world, and decolonial literary studies more broadly.