The Postcolonial Country in Contemporary Literature

The Postcolonial Country in Contemporary Literature
Author: L. Loh
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-11-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137314613

By situating a range of contemporary literary texts against the backdrop of the legacies of a vast rural network of empire, this book collectively critiques not only the rural heritage industry of the 1980s in Britain but also the effect of neocolonial globalisation on postcolonial rural spaces.

The Postcolonial Contemporary

The Postcolonial Contemporary
Author: Jini Kim Watson
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-07-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 082328008X

This volume invokes the “postcolonial contemporary” in order to recognize and reflect upon the emphatically postcolonial character of the contemporary conjuncture, as well as to inquire into whether postcolonial criticism can adequately grasp it. Neither simply for nor against postcolonialism, the volume seeks to cut across this false alternative, and to think with postcolonial theory about political contemporaneity. Many of the most influential frameworks of postcolonial theory were developed during the 1970s and 1990s, during what we may now recognize as the twilight of the postwar period. If forms of capitalist imperialism are entering into new configurations of neoliberal privatization, wars-without-end, xenophobic nationalism and unsustainable extraction, what aspects of postcolonial inquiry must be reworked or revised in order to grasp our political present? In twelve essays that draw from a number of disciplines—history, anthropology, literature, geography, indigenous studies— and regional locations (the Black Atlantic, South Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Australia, Argentina) The Postcolonial Contemporary seeks to move beyond the habitual oppositions that have often characterized the field, such as universal vs. particular; Marxism vs. postcolonialism; and politics vs. culture. These essays signal an attempt to reckon with new and persisting postcolonial predicaments and do so under four inter-related analytics: Postcolonial Temporality; Deprovincializing the Global South; Beyond Marxism versus Postcolonial Studies; and Postcolonial Spatiality and New Political Imaginaries.

Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction

Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction
Author: Pramod K. Nayar
Publisher: Pearson Education India
Total Pages: 402
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 8131785343

Postcolonial writing originating from Africa, Asia, and South America in the mid-twentieth century has constantly examined, negotiated with, and reacted to the overarching experience of colonial subjugation. Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction, with its seven thematically organized chapters, lucidly elucidates complex concepts and formulations of postcolonial literature and theory and critically analyses their various dimensions with relevant examples from contemporary postcolonial writing. The book would also appeal to the general reader aiming to gain a thorough understanding of the fundamental themes and discourses of postcolonial literature.

Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
Author: Elleke Boehmer
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2005-10-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191608300

Colonial and Postcolonial Literature is the leading critical overview of and historical introduction to colonial and postcolonial literary studies. Highly praised from the time of its first publication for its lucidity, breadth, and insight, the book has itself played a crucial part in founding and shaping this rapidly expanding field. The author, an internationally renowned postcolonial critic, provides a broad contextualizing narrative about the evolution of colonial and postcolonial writing in English. Illuminating close readings of texts by a wide variety of writers - from Kipling and Conrad through to Kincaid, from Ngugi to Noonuccal and Naipaul - explicate key theoretical terms such as 'subaltern', 'colonial resistance', 'writing back', and 'hybridity'. This revised edition includes new critiques of postcolonial women's writing, an expanded and fully annotated bibliography, and a new chapter and conclusion on postcolonialism exploring keynote debates in the field relating to sexuality, transnationalism, and local resistance.

Contemporary Postcolonial Theory

Contemporary Postcolonial Theory
Author: Padmini Mongia
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2021-01-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 100032432X

There is a crisis in contemporary postcolonial theory: while an enormous body of challenging research has been produced under its auspices, severely critical questions about the validity and usefulness of this theory have also been raised. This Reader is positioned at the juncture where it can address these contestations. It makes available some of the 'classics' of the field; engages with the issues raised by contemporary practitioners; but also offers several of the arguments that strongly critique postcolonial theory. Although postcolonial theory purports to be inter-disciplinary and frequently anti-foundationalist, traces of disciplinary formations and linearity have continued to haunt its articulations. This Reader, on the other hand, offers a uniquely inter-disciplinary mapping. It is concerned with three main areas: definitional problems and contests including the current challenges to postcolonial theory; the 'disciplining of knowledge', where the multiple resonances of the word 'disciplining' are all engaged; and the location of practice where the relations between intellectual practice and historical conditions are explored. Finally, since the guiding principle of this Reader is simultaneous attention to the enabling and constraining mechanisms of historical realities and institutional practices, the commentary problematizes the writing of histories, the formations of canons, and indeed the production of Readers.

Post-colonial Theory and English Literature

Post-colonial Theory and English Literature
Author: Peter Childs
Publisher:
Total Pages: 480
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

Includes critical essays on William Shakespeare's The Tempest; Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; Rudyard Kipling's Kim; James Joyce's Ulysses; E.M. Forster's A passage to India; and, Salman Rushdie's The satanic verses.

What Postcolonial Theory Doesn't Say

What Postcolonial Theory Doesn't Say
Author: Anna Bernard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135096112

This book reclaims postcolonial theory, addressing persistent limitations in the geographical, disciplinary, and methodological assumptions of its dominant formations. It emerges, however, from an investment in the future of postcolonial studies and a commitment to its basic premise: namely, that literature and culture are fundamental to the response to structures of colonial and imperial domination. To a certain extent, postcolonial theory is a victim of its own success, not least because of the institutionalization of the insights that it has enabled. Now that these insights no longer seem new, it is hard to know what the field should address beyond its general commitments. Yet the renewal of popular anti-imperial energies across the globe provides an important opportunity to reassert the political and theoretical value of the postcolonial as a comparative, interdisciplinary, and oppositional paradigm. This collection makes a claim for what postcolonial theory can say through the work of scholars articulating what it still cannot or will not say. It explores ideas that a more aesthetically sophisticated postcolonial theory might be able to address, focusing on questions of visibility, performance, and literariness. Contributors highlight some of the shortcomings of current postcolonial theory in relation to contemporary political developments such as Zimbabwean land reform, postcommunism, and the economic rise of Asia. Finally, they address the disciplinary, geographical, and methodological exclusions from postcolonial studies through a detailed focus on new disciplinary directions (management studies, international relations, disaster studies), overlooked locations and perspectives (Palestine, Weimar Germany, the commons), and the necessity of materialist analysis for understanding both the contemporary world and world literary systems.

Discourses of Postcolonialism in Contemporary British Children's Literature

Discourses of Postcolonialism in Contemporary British Children's Literature
Author: Blanka Grzegorczyk
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2014-10-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317962621

This book considers how contemporary British children’s books engage with some of the major cultural debates of recent years, and how they resonate with the current preoccupations and tastes of the white mainstream British reading public. A central assumption of this volume is that Britain’s imperial past continues to play a key role in its representations of race, identity, and history. The insistent inclusion of questions relating to colonialism and power structures in recent children’s novels exposes the complexities and contradictions surrounding the fictional treatment of race relations and ethnicity. Postcolonial children’s literature in Britain has been inherently ambivalent since its cautious beginnings: it is both transgressive and authorizing, both undercutting and excluding. Grzegorczyk considers the ways in which children’s fictions have worked with and against particular ideologies of race. The texts analyzed in this collection portray ethnic minorities as complex, hybrid products of colonialism, global migrations, and the ideology of multiculturalism. By examining the ideological content of these novels, Grzegorczyk demonstrates the centrality of the colonial past to contemporary British writing for the young.