Determinism
Introductory paragraph to an assignment in a class about "Transnational Literature" whith a professor who is also keen in discussing "Ethnic Literatures" as opposed to non-ethnic, "normal" literature. When addressing the question whether a writer does or not present colonial traits, we must at all times remember to be open to either of the possible answers. Deterministic materialism very often assumes that all writers born in a first world country will necessarily be doomed to write in the name of the empire, even if they claim the opposite. If this was so, we would already have the answer to the quality of an author's work before reading it. Any literary discussion on the contents of his writing would be pointless, since the outcome is already predefined. In the best of cases, we would only look for details that confirm what we already know - but we would not be open to whatever the text might actually bring forth itself. This attitude is frequent ...