Whither the Postcolonial

2018

The article addresses the reasons for the asymmetrical relations that have emerged between the postcolonial and the postsocialist researchers and sensibilities. The author argues that this asymmetry should be seen as a deferred but potentially possible coalition whose realization is prevented by the contrapuntal temporal-spatial co-positionality of the two discourses. The article tackles the more pronounced interest of the postsocialist scholars and activists in the postcolonial paradigm and the relative lack of a reciprocal interest on the part of their postcolonial peers who refuse to see any affinities between these two human conditions. Among the reasons discussed in the article the most important are the successful Soviet internationalist rhetoric hiding the colonialist logic, the propagandistic representation of the soviet empire as a decolonizing state, the nostalgia of the global south for the unrealized socialist ideals, the crucial differences in the interpretations of rac...

Social Analysis, 2002

In the 1980s, the academy witnessed the advent of postcolonial discourse. Numerous academic conferences, books and journals on postcolonialism appeared one after another. In the academic periphery, many viewed postcolonial discourse as a site of resistance against Western cultural hegemony. With the rise of the discourse of globalization in the 1990s, postcolonial discourse, no longer riding on the whitecaps of the latest critical wave, seemed to have lost much of its currency and critical energy. On the face of it, many central issues of postcolonial discourse, such as colonizer/colonized, East/West and center/margin turned out to be no longer applicable to the global era, when national borders blurred. Yet in the new global/local paradigm, the above binaries continued to cast a shadowy specter. Many academic journals focusing on postcolonialism, such as Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies (online) were born in the late 1990s. In a sense, there appears to be an intricate relationship between the discourses of postcolonialism and globalism. Simon During pointed to their "dialectical" relationship (During 1998) and Arif Dirlik tried to relate the two by asking the question "When exactly … does the 'postcolonial' begin?" (Dirlik 1997: 52). One might then ask, is postcolonial discourse becoming less relevant in an age of globalization? The influence of postcolonial discourse on other forms of discourses is too profound to be easily dismissed. "As the domain of the postcolonial has expanded," Dirlik (2000: 1) notes, "postcolonial criticism has infiltrated discourse that have origins quite independently of postcolonialism, and in turn has been infiltrated by those discourses, so that it is quite impossible

Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International …, 2008

PMLA, 2001

Social Text, 2004

This issue gathers recent work in postcolonial criticism and theory. The perspectives represented and contexts considered (South Africa, Canada, the United States, India, Pakistan) are the result of an especial-and still all-too-uncommon-effort to attend to scholarship produced in the global South, rather than simply entrenching further the association of postcolonial studies with a relatively narrow coterie of metropolitan migrants. At the same time, in bringing together work engaged with subaltern studies historiography in India (particularly the contributions of Sanjay Seth and Rosinka Chaudhuri) and work explicitly concerned with U.S. imperialism and contemporary globalization (particularly the contributions of Pius Adesanmi and Mark Driscoll), the issue poses once more a question raised by the last Social Text special issue on this topic-published in 1992, in the wake of the first Gulf War-around the theorization of the postcolonial itself. 1 Vigorously questioned in that setting in now-classic essays by Ella Shohat and Anne McClintock, the term postcolonial may have proven itself to be most useful precisely when it is placed under severe pressure, angled to highlight the necessarily uneasy relationship between colonial past and neocolonial present, history writing and current critique, cultural studies and political economy, as a task or problematic rather than a method or map. 2 In 1992 Shohat noted what she termed the "puzzling" absence of the term postcolonial in the rhetoric of the academic opposition to the Gulf War (in contrast to commonly invoked terms such as imperialism and even neocolonialism). She wondered in response whether something about the rubric of the postcolonial "does not lend itself to a geopolitical critique"; in the open-ended present of the "war on terror," the relative invisibility of explicitly postcolonial analysis must beg the same question. 3 Instead of rehearsing those definitional debates or simply offering overviews of the essays that follow, I will comment briefly on an issue that has long haunted methodological concerns in postcolonial studies: the politics of interdisciplinarity. The following essays raise this issue in disparate arenas and different ways (whether Sarah Nuttall's recourse to ethnography and feminist critique; Rosinka Chaudhuri's conjoining of poetics, translation studies, and historiography; Kamran Asdar Ali's attending to reader-response criticism as well as the sociology of religion; or Mark

2009

Re-Routing the Postcolonial re-orientates and re-invigorates the field of Postcolonial Studies in line with recent trends in critical theory, reconnecting the ethical and political with the aesthetic aspect of postcolonial culture. Bringing together a group of leading and emerging intellectuals, and mapping new directions in postcolonial studies, the volume includes sections on: • New growth areas from cosmopolitan theories and the utopian to diaspora and transnationalism • New subject matters such as sexuality and queer theory, ecocriticism and postcolonialism in new locations (Eastern Europe, China) • New theoretical perspectives on globalization (fundamentalism, terror and theories of ‘affect’) Each section incorporates a clear, concise introduction, making this volume both an accessible overview of current concerns in the field whilst also an invigorating collection of scholarship for the new millennium. Contributors include: Bill Ashcroft, Anna Ball, Elleke Boehmer, Diana Brydon, Simon Gikandi, Erin Goheen Glanville, James Graham, Dorota Kołodziejczyk, Victor Li, Nadia Louar, Deborah Madsen, Jeffrey Mather, Nirmala Menon, Kaori Nagai, Jane Poyner, Robert Spencer and Patrick Williams.

Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50.2 (2014): 243-245

The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions is not an historical survey (12), but there is nevertheless an impressive degree of coverage. The odd utopian gesture towards "true freedom" or "true postcoloniality" (47, 63) is difficult to criticize, given what is at stake in this context and the kinds of commitment which Ball makes to it. Her passion, as well as unfailing critical courtesy, combine with analytical acuity in what is a valuable addition to the postcolonial field.

Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 2006

Ariel-a Review of International English Literature, 2005

In Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri contend that "postmodernist and postcolonial theories may end up in a dead end because they fail to recognize adequately the contemporary object of critique, that is, they mistake today's real enemy" (137). It is to respond to critiques such as this and others that the "Politics of Postcoloniality: Contexts and Conflicts" conference was held at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario Canada in October 2003. Bringing together many North American scholars in the field, the conference organizers sought to find answers to the question of whether it was time to move "beyond postcolonialism." Through keynote speakers--Diana Brydon, Himani Bannerji, and Asha Varadharajan--as well as a number of other panelists, the conference was more than just a host of postcolonial scholars trying to save the field in which they work. In addition to addressing the problems of postcolonial theory, the participants also put forwa...