ABSTRACT

This book is an essential introduction to significant texts in postcolonial theory. It looks at seminal works in the ‘moments of their making’ and delineates the different threads that bind postcolonial studies. Each chapter presents a comprehensive discussion of a major text and contextualises it in the wake of contemporary themes and debates. The volume:

  • Studies major texts by foremost scholars — Edward W. Said, Chinua Achebe, Albert Memmi, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Paul Carter, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Ashis Nandy, Robert J. C. Young, Ngugi wa Thiongo, and Sara Suleri

  • Shifts focus from colonial experience to underlying principles of critical engagement

  • Uses accessible, jargon-free language

Focused, engaging and critically insightful, this book will be indispensable to students and scholars of literary and cultural studies, comparative literature, and postcolonial studies.

chapter |7 pages

Introduction

chapter |21 pages

Albert Memmi: The Colonizer and the Colonized

Albert Memmi and Francophone critical theory

chapter |24 pages

Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth

Fanon: registers, impact and the question of theory

chapter |20 pages

Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Decolonising the Mind

Ngugi and the language question in African literature

chapter |23 pages

Edward W. Said: Orientalism

The framing of the case: Said's ‘introduction’ to Orientalism

chapter |21 pages

Chinua Achebe: Home and Exile

Chinua Achebe and modern African writing

chapter |21 pages

Paul Carter: The Road to Botany Bay

Land-marked: space, memory, colonization

chapter |21 pages

Ashis Nandy: The Intimate Enemy

Ashis Nandy and contemporary cultural discourse

chapter |22 pages

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In Other Worlds

Forms of engagement and cultures of reading

chapter |21 pages

Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture

The question of agency: Bhabha's postcolonial imperative

chapter |22 pages

Robert J. C. Young: White Mythologies

Robert Young and the critical context of White Mythologies

chapter |21 pages

Sara Suleri: The Rhetoric of English India

Unreadable India: difficulties of mapping a nation and its culture