Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, Jed Esty, Postcolonial Studies and Beyond
Duke University Press, 2005, 512 p.
ISBN : 0-8223-3523-9
An interdisciplinary collection of essays designed to map out a wide-ranging and productive future for postcolonial studies, this volume assesses the current state of the field and points toward its most promising new developments. In addressing questions about the definition and relevance of postcolonial scholarship, many of the essays consider its relation to the study of globalization. While some contributors offer broad reflections on the existing two-way influence between postcolonial theory and established university disciplines such as literary criticism and history, others forge ahead into some vital, if nascent, areas for postcolonial research such as media studies, environmental studies, religious studies, and linguistic and semantic analysis.
The contributors represent many of the fields altered by postcolonial studies over the past two decades, including literary studies, history, anthropology, Asian and African studies, and political science. They model diverse applications of postcolonial theory to Latin America, East Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. Postcolonial Studies and Beyond propels the field forward. It showcases scholars coming from intellectual precincts usually considered outside the purview of the postcolonial finding new ways to deploy classic techniques of postcolonial analysis, and scholars strongly associated with postcolonial studies offering substantial critiques designed to challenge the field's most fundamental assumptions.
Contributors. Tani E. Barlow, Ali Behdad, Daniel Boyarin, Timothy Brennan, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, Laura Chrisman, Jean Comaroff, Frederick Cooper, Vilashini Cooppan, Jed Esty, James Ferguson, Peter Hulme, Suvir Kaul, Neil Lazarus, Ania Loomba, Florencia E. Mallon, Nivedita Menon, Rob Nixon, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, David Scott, Ella Shohat, Kelwyn Sole, Robert Stam, Rebecca L. Stein
Ania Loomba is Catherine Bryson Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Suvir Kaul is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Matti Bunzl is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Antoinette Burton is Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Jed Esty is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Bunzl, Burton, and Esty are each affiliated with the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Acknowledgments ix
Beyond What? An Introduction / Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, and Jed Esty 1
Part 1. Globalization and the Postcolonial Eclipse
Beyond the Straits: Postcolonial Allegories of the Globe / Peter Hulme 41
On Globalization, Again! / Ali Behdad 62
The Ruins of Empire: The National and Global Politics of America's Return to Rome / Vilashini Cooppan 80
The Economic Image-Function of the Periphery / Timothy Brennan 101
Part 2. Neoliberalism and the Postcolonial World
The End of History, Again? Pursuing the Past in the Postcolony / Jean Comaroff 125
A Flight from Freedom / Elizabeth A. Povinelli 145
Decomposing Modernity: History and Hierarchy after Development / James Ferguson 166
“The Deep Thoughts the One in Need Falls Into”: Quotidian Experience and the Perspectives of Poetry in Postliberation South Africa / Kelwyn Sole 182
Between the Burqa and the Beauty Parlor? Globalization, Cultural Nationalism, and Feminist Politics / Nivedita Menon 206
Part 3. Beyond the Nation-State (and Back Again)
Environmentalism and Postcolonialism / Rob Nixon 233
Beyond Black Atlantic and Postcolonial Studies: The South African Differences of Sol Plaatje and Peter Abrahams / Laura Chrisman 252
Pathways to Postcolonial Nationhood: The Democratization of Difference in Contemporary Latin America / Florencia E. Mallon 272
Traveling Multiculturalism: A Trinational Debate in Translation / Robert Stam and Ella Shohat 293
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe: Israeli Leisure, Palestinian Terror, and the Post/colonial Question / Rebecca L. Stein 317
Part 4. Postcolonial Studies and the Disciplines in Transformation
Hybridity and Heresy: Apartheid Comparative Religion in Late Antiquity / Daniel Boyarin 339
Eugenic Woman, Semicolonialism, and Colonial Modernity as Problems for Postcolonial Theory / Tani E. Barlow 359
The Social Construction of Postcolonial Studies / David Scott 385
Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History / Frederick Cooper 401
The Politics of Postcolonial Modernism / Neil Lazarus
Bibliography 439
Contributors 479
Index 483