This sty, then, is where we find ourselves, whether as pig-lord or as mere pig, or perhaps merely as a louse feeding on the pig, as we attempt to define this word “postcolonial” in a way that might give it, and even, perhaps, us, some kind of useful meaning. This sty is where we must begin. And it is not such a bad sty, relative to those that have gone before. It has electric light, and mobile phones, and video games; encyclopedias, antibiotics, stem cell therapy and global human rights organizations (think of Julian Assange as a defenselessly promiscuous dormouse smuggling messages from one sty to the next through the farmhouse skirting-boards, while Bradley Manning screams from the mousetrap in the corner of the kitchen). This sty is, in some respects, as far as we know (and our historical knowledge is certainly incomplete, the gaps far vaster than we are led to believe) the best we – the human race - have ever had.
Of course, we have to work long hours (longer than ever before, with fewer holidays; stone age people had ten times more free time than we do, and spent vastly more time talking to their families) and we have to live in a world defined by discourses delimited more intelligently and one-sidedly and misleadingly than ever by the farmers’ propagandists, whose skills and techniques are developing at a remarkable rate, even as their ethical standards and end goals remain identical to those of a thousand years ago, that is, entirely lacking on both counts.
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