Struggling with English

I am taking this "English" course - Postcolonial Theory this semester. The reason I put quotation marks on English is that the content and design of the course do not match my one and only understanding (or imagination) of English as an academic field. I am used to understanding English as a discipline motivated to learn, clarify, discover, explore the spatial and temporal paths and trajectories through which English as a language evolved into its present forms, and how the cultures mediated by the language have been interacting with one another.

It is, however, immediately obvious in the class of Postcolonial Theory that we are not and have not been doing that stated goal which I had in mind. We spent a lot of time talking about what the terms "colonialism" and "post-colonialism" mean, how the various definitions are inadequate or problematic. I could agree that words describing human experience and social phenomenon are not and  would not be as exact as scientific terminologies as their meaning becomes destabilized and contaminated by various additions through common usage by speakers with differing opinion and understanding. And there is always the problem of the scholar being part of the system being observed, i.e. society or the World. Hence although a scholar might be able to coin and present a new term (such as post-colonial) with its intended meaning, the meaning of the new word, having been used and re-used by others, shifts. (wtf) Hence the need of clarification of the possible meanings of a word and subsequent sieving of those meanings that would be applied in a discusion when a word is introduced to a scholarly audience (i.e. our class).

Ok Whatever.