ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors induct the reader into the stakes at play in approaching global politics as, specifically, postcolonial politics. In pursuit of a more adequate understanding of the political dynamics, intellectuals have variously deployed a 'postcolonial critique'. If not enjoying a singular originating moment, postcolonial critique was first named as a definitive approach in the late 1980s and in the fields of English and Commonwealth literature specifically. The 'post' in postcolonial functioned, therefore, not as an escape from history but as a marker of limits: to think beyond colonialism was to unavoidably grapple with the intellectual and practical legacies of empire. While postcolonial critique was named and consolidated largely in English and Commonwealth literature, the project that it expounded was homologous to a variety of other extant and contemporaneous work spread across the humanities and social sciences. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
