Postcolonialisms - by Gaurav Desai (Paperback)

About the Book

Canonical articles, most unexcerpted, explore postcolonialism's key themes--power and knowledge--while articles by contemporary scholars expand the discipline to include discussions of the discovery of the New World, Native American and indigenous identities in Latin America and the Pacific, settler colonies in Africa and Australia, English colonialism in Ireland, and feminism in Nigeria and Egypt. The inclusion of a broad sampling of histories and theories attests to multiple, even competing postcolonialisms, while the skillful organization of the volume provides a useful map of the field in terms of recognizable patterns, shared family resemblances, and common genealogies.

Book Synopsis

Bringing together thirty-seven essays that have helped define the study of colonial and postcolonial cultures, this expansive and thoughtfully organized anthology offers an up-to-date and in-depth overview of this rapidly developing field.

Canonical articles, most unexcerpted, explore postcolonialism's key themes-power and knowledge-while articles by contemporary scholars expand the discipline to include discussions of the discovery of the New World, Native American and indigenous identities in Latin America and the Pacific, settler colonies in Africa and Australia, English colonialism in Ireland, and feminism in Nigeria and Egypt. The inclusion of a broad sampling of histories and theories attests to multiple, even competing postcolonialisms, while the skillful organization of the volume provides a useful map of the field in terms of recognizable patterns, shared family resemblances, and common genealogies.

The book is divided into nine sections: Ideologies of Imperialism, The Critique of Colonial Discourse, The Politics of Language and Literary Studies, Nationalisms and Nativisms, Hybrid Identities, Gender and Sexualities, Reading the Subaltern, Comparative (Post)colonialisms, and Globalization and Postcoloniality. Detailed introductions to each section serve to develop key themes, encourage debate, and contextualize the wide-ranging voices that contribute to the topic.

The most cogent and teachable collection of postcolonial texts yet compiled, this anthology is equally suitable for undergraduate students and seasoned scholars.

Review Quotes

Postcolonialisms provides in one place critical essays which account both for the discourses of imperialism as well as generations and movements of anti-colonial critique. With its inclusion of gendered readings and a nice range of voices and positions from across the diaspora this is perhaps the best collection of its kind in postcolonial studies.--Carole Boyce Davies "Florida International University"

A well conceived book...the organization is excellent, properly balanced between the canonical and the updated, between geographical regions, and in terms of the liveliest controversies.--Bruce Robbins "Columbia University"

One of the best anthologies of contemporary postcolonial studies, this is a very useful resource for students. The editors do justice both to the history of the field and its most current concerns. The book provides a wide range of intellectual perspectives, accompanied by lucid and helpful section introductions.--Laura Chrisman "professor of postcolonial studies, University of York, UK"

The interdisciplinary field of postcolonial studies has expanded and transformed itself in many new directions since the mid-1990s, and it is time to have this new reader with selections that are in touch with these developments.--Amritjit Singh "coeditor of Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Lite"

About the Author

GAURAV DESAI is an associate professor of English at Tulane University and the author of Subject to Colonialism: African Self-fashioning and the Colonial Library.

SUPRIYA NAIR is an associate professor of English at Tulane University and the author of Caliban's Curse: George Lamming and the Revisioning of History.