Salman Rushdie's essay 'Commonwealth literature does not exist', written in 1983, articulates a stage in the literary emergence and development of the (once - but no longer?) colonized, leading from the critical denigration and self-doubt of the term 'colonial literature'; through 'Commonwealth literature'; to the concept of 'post-colonial literature', which still acknowledges the colonial past as a defining presence; to the current precarious discovery of 'new literatures in English', in which the shift to the plural celebrates diversity. There have been no references to Commonwealth literatures, nor even to post-colonial literatures. In both cases the centrality of colonialism overrides any actual or grammatical plurality. Having emerged from the wood and seen the trees we may eventually return to the universality which seems to be Rushdie's goal: 'the far broader term "English literature" - which I'd always taken to mean simply the literature of the English language' (1990: 63).

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