Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader

by Padmini Mongia (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367717797
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/31/2021
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Padmini Mongia (Edited by)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements, Introduction, PART ONE: SHIFTING TERRAINS, 1. From Orientalism, 2. The Other Question, 3. Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?, 4. Unsettling the Empire: Resistance Theory for the Second World, 5. Resistance Theory/Theorizing Resistance, or Two Cheers for Nativism, 6. Cultural Identity and Diaspora, 7. Where Have All the Natives Gone?, PART TWO: DISCIPLINING KNOWLEDGE, 8. The Race for Theory, 9. The Nature of Things: Arrested Decolonization and Critical Theory, 10. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, 11. Poststructuralism, Marginality, Postcoloniality and Value, 12. Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts?, 13. "The Whisper Wakes, the Shudder Plays": "Race," Nation and Ethnic Absolutism, PART THREE: LOCATING PRACTICE, 14. The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality, 15. The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, 16. Notes on the Post-Colonial, 17. Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition, 18. Crosscurrents, Crosstalk: Race, "Postcoloniality" and the Politics of Location, 19. Rehearsals of Liberation: Contemporary Postcolonial Discourse and the New South Africa, Bibliography, Index