ABSTRACT
Examination of the complex legacies of European colonialism is virtually de rigueur in most contemporary studies of social, economic, and political developments in Africa. Yet while analyses of postcoloniality have reserved a significant role for the former colonizer, such studies have tended to focus upon processes unfolding within the former colonies themselves. Despite critiques that such approaches merely reconstitute the “third world” under a new name (the “postcolonial”), 1 and despite calls for redefining the field instead in terms of the “complexes of trans-national relations between ex-colonies and ex-colonizing centers,” 2 few scholars have ventured to explore the postcoloniality of former colonizer societies themselves.
